It's Magic!

Recently, kindergartners have been practicing "coloring inside the lines" using the Magic-Fill tools in TuxPaint. It's sure easier than trying to color back and forth, even with a digital brush! Here are a few of their spring flowers!

Ladybug Book #9: Interrupting Chicken

The author of Interrupting Chicken is David Ezra Stein. The little red chicken interrupts his Papa when he reads to him at bedtime. He promises he will not to do it again, but he does! The illustrator uses tea over the paint in the illustrations to make them look old, and it does! It is a very funny story! 

written by Miss Bocko's Class

Ladybug Book #6: Rubia and the Three Osos

We listened to this book. Miss Bocko's class thinks the story was special because it had Spanish words like osos (bears), Rubia (girl with blond hair), sillas (chairs), and las tres camas (three beds). Can you guess the name of the story in English? That's right! Golidlocks and the Three Bears!

But Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya is different from other Goldilocks stories we've heard. In this version, Rubia ate Bebé's sopa, not his porridge. After she ran away from the osos, Rubia did a good deed and made soup at home which she delivered to the bears to replace the soup she'd eaten. She glued the chair and she apologized to the family.

We noticed a Welcome mat in on one page said Bienvenido - and we even figured out what that meant!

Ladybug Book #4: Ugly Pie

Primary grade students have heard a story about an ugly pie and Ol' Bear's quest to gather the ingredients. The author, Lisa Wheeler, wrote Ugly Pie in a regional dialect. Words like Ol', hankerin', and taste-bud-temptin' made for some interesting discussion about the purpose of apostrophes in words along with a quick review of contractions. The illustrator, Heather Solomon, used interesting art techniques like drawing Ol' Bear five times on the same page to show that he's traveling down a path in the woods.

At the end of the story came the recipe for Ugly Pie! Most children knew what it was just from looking at the formatting of the text! A quick email to Lisa Wheeler gave us permission to reproduce the (copyrighted) recipe here in case you want to try it at home with your children. If you make it, leave a comment to let us know how it was! By the way, the author reports "The pie is yummy. Tastes kind of like carmel apple."

If you've been itchin' for some Ugly Pie, today is your lucky day! 

Here's Ol' Bear's recipe, handed down from bear to bear for generations. 

Recipe for Ugly Pie  

Ugly Crust 

2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup lard (or shortening)
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 to 8 tablespoons icy cold water (brrrrr) 

First, mix together the flour and salt. Then, using a fork, cut little chunks of that ugly lard into your flour until you get what looks like itty-bitty pea-sized balls. Set aside half this mixture in another bowl for later. Next, sprinkle 1 tablespoon of icy cold water over those pea-sized balls. Gently toss it with a fork. Repeat until your flour mixture forms an ugly ball of dough 

Spread a little bit of flour on a flat surface (like your kitchen counter). Pat that ball of ugly dough down like you mean business. Then roll it with a rolling pin until it becomes a flat, ugly crust. It doesn't matter if it looks nice and round and pretty. This is Ugly Pie! Place in a 9" deep-dish pie plate. 

Ugly Filling 

6 cups peeled, sliced Granny Smith apples
1/4 cup molasses
1 teaspoon lemon juice 

In a large bowl, toss apple slices with lemon juice. Then mix in molasses until apples are completely coated with ugly brown goo. Set aside. 

5 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar 

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the dry ingredients listed above. Add to the ugly apple mixture until everything is nice 'n' moist. 

3/4 cup red raisins or cran-raisins
1/4 walnuts chopped fine 

Toss raisins and walnuts into apple mixture. Make sure all ingredients are well coated. Place into pie crust. Your pie should look fairly ugly by now. 

Ugly Topping 

Take the crumbly flour mixture you set aside earlier. Sprinkle over the top of the pie. 

Cover the pie with an aluminum foil tent to prevent overbrowning. Bake at 400° for 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 20 minutes. 

When your pie is done, you will have the most delicious, most beautiful UGLY PIE you ever saw!

reprinted with permission from Ugly Pie by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Heather Solomon.  Thanks for showing kids an example of copyright in action!

Ladybug Book #3: Memoirs of a Goldfish

This week's picture book was Memoirs of a Goldfish by Devin Scillian. It's the tale of a lonely goldfish who ends up with more companionship than he can handle! The illustrator of this book is Tim Bowers. We visited his website and noticed that all the illustrations in his gallery were copyrighted. Copyright shows that the work belongs to the person who created it, so when second graders drew self-portraits using TuxPaint, they made sure to copyright their own work!

Ladybug Book #2: In The Wild

In The Wild by New Hampshire author David Elliott is a collection of short poems about wild animals. Primary grade students listened to these poems, then visited the author's website to hear some of the poems read aloud. We noticed that the online version of the poems had music and animal noises in the background to enhance the setting of the poem. Take a listen for yourself!

This book is nominated for the NH Ladybug Award. The illustrations are done with woodcuts and watercolor paint.

Kindergartners also visited Bembo's Zoo, where letters make animal sounds and turn into wild creatures!

2011 NH Ladybug Awards

Every fall, kindergarten, first, and second graders have the opportunity to see and hear the picture books that are nominated for our state's award, the Ladybug Award, in preparation for voting for their favorite in November. Oddly enough, two of this year's nominees were already in our library so many of the children have heard City Dog, Country Frog and Interrupting Chicken.

NHCS loves cookies!

This week's Ladybug-nominated book was The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson. It's a funny rhyming story about a cow who is always eating cookies. After we read the book, we visited the author's website, then made a Wordle showing our favorite cookies. Here's a combination of two classes responses  - can you tell by the size which is our favorite kind of cookie?

Field Trip Follow-Up

Recently, kindergarten traveled to a New Hampton sugar house to see how sap is turned into maple syrup. In ICT classes, they used their blossoming TuxPaint skills to draw and write about the experience.

Time to Vote!

The votes for the Ladybug Award are in - at least for New Hampton Community School!! And it's Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep by a nose! After listening to the third graders' Ladybug Award Podcast, here's how K-3 NHCS students voted. These results will be sent to the Center for the Book in Concord and will be combined with the votes of primary grade children from all over New Hampshire. The winner will be announced sometime in December - we'll post those results here as well!

Ladybug Book #7: Otis

Otis is a tractor.
He loves living at the farm.
He makes friends with a little calf.
The problem in the book is that the little calf gets stuck in the mud.
The resolution is that Otis goes round and round and the calf comes out.

Otis the tractor reminds us of Thomas the Tank Engine because they both have steam and they are both have fuel.

Ladybug Book #4: Creaky Old House

Kindergarten and first grade listened to the story Creaky Old House, by Linda Ashman. It's an amusing story about a family who tries to fix up the old house that they love living in.

Jacob thought the story started funny when Pa opened the door and the knob fell right off. Max liked when the light landed on Grandpa when he found a new doorknob that he thought was perfect. Caroline's favorite part was when they finally realized that doorknob was too long!

Zoe laughed because the new door the family bought was too wide. Bailey thought their plans for fixing up their house were amazing! Brady liked that the baby in the house fixed the big problem and Keith thought it was pretty funny that the family did all that work for nothing!

The subtitle of this book is A Topsy-Turvy Tale of a Real Fixer-Upper! Just as a subway goes under the ground and a submarine goes under the water, a subtitle goes under the regular title of the book. It really is a topsy-turvy tale and we all agree that this is a very interesting and exciting book! And Michael Chesworth's illustrations are so full of detail they're just fantastic!