Drop #4: The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing

Hello! I'm still here. Yesterday afternoon (Friday) my oldest son and I did a book drop. When I pick him up from school (which is usually only once a week or so, otherwise my husband picks him up) we sometimes stop at a fabulous cookie shop on the way home. It's been weeks since we went there and luckily I had a book pack in the van. So.............we smuggled the pack into the store in my purse and left it right outside the doors to the bathrooms. The bathrooms are around a corner from where the customers pick out their cookies so we were able to leave it there without anyone seeing us. I snapped a quick photo before my camera battery died. Hopefully someone will love finding this book and doing the fun valentine counting activity. CLICK HERE to read the full post about the book pack for this title.

NOTE: I felt comfortable leaving this book pack inside a store since clearly a cookie shop wouldn't sell anything similar to what is contained in the pack. I am still hoping that one of these days the recipient of a book pack will leave me a comment. I am dying to know whether or not my packs are finding happy homes. But I also love the "no strings attached" model of giving.

I'm still here!

Sorry for having gone AWOL for the past week or so. I am still here, still dedicated to this project. I am hoping to have a few changes in place by the end of the week to make the blog even better, so please stop back. I'm also planning to work on a bunch more book pack ideas to post soon. So..........stay tuned and keep spreading the word. (And let me know when you've made a book drop so I can add it to our total count.) THANKS so much for your support!

The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing

As I put away all our Christmas books I quickly looked through our much smaller selection of Valentine's books. I was excited to find two copies of this book. That meant that I could set one aside for gifting. I love the rhyming text and fun illustrations in this book. To go with this book I printed off some of the Conversation Heart Counting Cards from Making Learning Fun. I also added some tiny little heart clothespins that I've had in my scrapbooking stash for YEARS and have never used. I think whoever finds this pack will love using them to mark the number of hearts on each card.

Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood

I have kind of a funny story about how I acquired this particular book. I had gone to our local community storehouse (a thrift store, but not my FAVORITE thrift store that I always talk about) to look for some books to use for Random Acts of Reading. This one caught my eye because I was familiar with it and knew I could find a cute activity to pair with it. Then I realized that it WAS one of my books, one that I had apparently donated to the storehouse in my big spring-cleaning attempt last March. The way I knew it was my book is because it had a blue sticker on the spine. A couple of summers ago I color-coded pretty much every childrens' book in my house to try to organize better. And sure enough, I paid 25 cents for a book I had donated to the storehouse for free. Isn't that a funny coincidence? (If you are interested you can read all about my book organization project here. My books are still to this day pretty well-organized with this system.)

Below is a description of the book pack I developed for my reclaimed book. :-)

This is a fun little rhyming story that all children will love. The perfect activity for a fish counting book is fish counting cards. I found the perfect ones at Making Learning Fun. One thing I particularly like about these cards is that instead of counting the total number of fish you have to count the number of a certain color of fish. This is a good variation from some of the other counting cards I've put into book packs. I printed these off and included some tiny little clothespins from my scrapbook stash. The clothespins will be used to mark the correct number.

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

I know I have written this about other books, but this is a MUST-READ. I have been reading this to children for over 20 years as a teacher and children of all ages love it (adults too!). I have several copies of this book so I had to whip out a book pack to gift one away for this project.

There is a great website that I came across that is all about Esphyr Slobodkina, the author of Caps for Sale. There are several printable activity pages. For this book pack I printed off the How Many Caps? page as well as a monkey maze page. The cards are laminated and I will include a dry-erase pen in the bag so children can do the activity over and over. On a sidenote: When I was getting the picture and link from Amazon I saw that Esphyr Slobodkina has also written a book called Circus Caps for Sale. Did anyone else know that? I had never heard of that title before but now I want to track down a copy. I'm sure it will be as awesome as the original. If you've heard of that one, I'd love to hear how you like it.

This photo shows the maze and counting caps cards along with the book itself.

Drop #3: Goodnight Moon (and an interview---YIPPEE!)

Tonight both my boys had swimming lessons at our local YMCA. Afterwards I did a book drop in the family locker room.......locker #14. I had planned this ahead and taken the book pack and my camera with me. Luckily no one saw me (except my husband). I hope someone finds it soon. It's killing me that I haven't heard what happened to my first two drops. This book pack was for the book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Sorry for the bad photo. My camera battery was just about to die so I didn't get a better one. Plus I was trying to be surreptitious. :-)







In other news...........Shannon from Letters, Numbers and Books Oh My! asked to interview me about Random Acts of Reading for her blog. She posted the interview today. I was so thrilled to do this since it's my first blog interview!! You can head over and read it RIGHT HERE.

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Here is a book pack I've prepared for the classic book, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I am hoping to be able to drop this soon because it is PERFECT reading for the type of wintry weather we've been having here in the Midwest.

This is a total classic must-read book for everyone. Seriously. What a great story. In the bag with this book I included some story sequencing cards printed from Homeschoolshare. Click here for lots more great resources for this book from Homeschoolshare.