Happy Read Across America Day!

Did you know that March is National Reading Month? Well it is! And today is Read Across America day!

Because my kids' school celebrates Read Across America day, parents were invited into the classroom to read. You can bet I jumped at the chance.

When I got to Benjamin's second grade classroom, the mayor was there, reading them What Pet Should I Get? The new (posthumously published) Dr. Seuss book. Benjamin was very starstruck that the mayor had come to read to his class. I got to hear the kids ask him a few questions: "Is it fun being the mayor?" He answered that yes, it was. But he had only been the mayor for three months so far. And that it was a hard job too, but that "sometimes the hard jobs are the best jobs, because you get a sense of accomplishment." Good answer, Mr. Mayor.

I had brought a bag of books to read, and these were the ones I read with the second grade class:



They loved them!
The OK Book is a big hit with both my boys, and the second graders thought it was very funny. I pointed out to them that our little hero is made out of the letters O and K, and they thought he was pretty cool.

From the Babybug magazine, which Jubilee gets, we read a poem called Ten O'clock, which you can find in the Feb 2016 issue. Every issue has a poem with actions drawn to go along with it, and we all had a great time acting out a special mail delivery.

Chicks and Salsa really got the kids' excited. They couldn't resist pointing out the black-market mice on every page.

We finished off with Petite Rouge because it's one of my very favorite read-alouds of all time. Since this crowd was very familiar with the classic Red Riding Hood tale, they loved it. And we took a few minutes afterward to talk about time we had eaten spicy food.

Here are the books I read with Levi's Bilingual Kindergarten class:


We had a great time! When I arrived, the teacher warned me that the kids had already had several readers that day, so they might be a bit antsy. I let Levi pick the first book, and The OK Book is the one he chose. Then I led the class in the Babybug poem and they loved it.

Last but not least, we read a little bit from National Geographic's Little Kids First Big Book of Bugs. You'd have to be crazy to try and read this to Kindergarteners straight through, so we just read parts of Chapter 5. For each of the three common pests we chorused "Eeeewwww!" and read a few facts. Then we played the game at the end of the chapter, counting the bugs in Spanish.

Are you planning on celebrating Read Across America day in some way? Please share in the comments! I think I'll continue my celebrations by reading some more of Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson.

If you want to shop any of the books in this post, or just get more info about them, here are some affiliate links for you. When you make purchases from Amazon after clicking these links, I make a small commission. I can't believe what a good price Chicks and Salsa is right now . . . it's worth more than $7 for sure!