The Secret Garden Dioramas

My sweet second grade students celebrated the ending of our read aloud, The Secret Garden, by doing a very creative “diorama” art project, and then later in the week watching one of the movie versions of the story (it’s the version with  “Professor McGonagall,” Mrs. R, “it’s Professor McGonagall!“). We had a great class discussion about the similarities and differences between the book and the movie, and the class voted and decided that the book was better than the movie, although we all liked the movie. Fun overall book experience!

 

The Secret Garden

This is the book my students didn’t want me to stop reading last week…they offered to stay in at recess to listen (we didn’t do that). This post, from my other blog, explains it all…

Without realizing it, most of my reading recently has been about gardens and gardening. Our beautiful old house in the Grove is waiting patiently for us to become full-time residents. The gardens, so bare and simple and easily maintained, are also waiting to be lovingly planned and planted. It will be fun to show you “before-and-after” photos in the next few years.

So, with gardening on my mind, it won’t seem strange to you at all that the current Read Aloud in my second grade classroom, is The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My students are enraptured by it. I chose the word “enraptured” very carefully because there is a lovely Magic in this book, and my students have been captured by it, my boys perhaps even more than my girls!

One sweet example of that Magic happened last week. One of my boys, who is a struggling reader but an rapt listener, came to me quietly one afternoon and said, “Mrs. R, I think I’m starting to speak Yorkshire!  “Tha’ and Thee just come out of me without thinking about it.” That kind of magic is helping him love reading even though it is difficult for him.

I think my Reading Self also chose this book (without consciously thinking about it), because it is a book about emotional healing. And I must confess that reading it aloud to this sweet group of children has had a very healing effect on me! I so enjoyed the beautiful descriptions of the garden and of the healing power of gardening!

Wordless Wednesday: Blue Trees

Click here to read an article about these blue trees…

To enjoy more photos from Wordless Wednesday, click here.

I’d Rather be Reading

Graphic from: http://www.westfordlibrary.org/pages/JVFletcherLibrary_JustforKids/storytimes

Many things have changed for me in the last two years, but many things remain the same. One of the delightful things that has remained the same is that I am still teaching [second grade], and still enjoying it even though I am getting closer and closer to retirement. And the absolute unchanging thing:  I still love to read aloud books to children.

As I sat in an exhaustingly intense meeting for this entire afternoon, away from my kiddos, I found myself wishing fervently that I could be back in the classroom finishing our current read aloud.  “I’d rather be reading” was never more true!

My students groaned when I told them we’d have to wait until Friday to finish this book. Honestly, they’ve groaned every day when read aloud time ended.  This is dearly loved book in my classroom, so I’ll be posting about it soon!

Wordless Wednesday

Oops! There are words in the photo! Oh well…to see more Wordless Wednesday posts, click here.

Whitefoot: A Story from the Center of the World

Wendell Berry is one of my favorite authors. I read this lovely little book of his, Whitefoot: A Story From the Center of the World, which was beautifully illustrated by Davis Te Selle, and can’t wait to read it aloud to my second graders. I’m sure they will enjoy it as much as I did. It’s a simple story, beautifully told and illustrated, about a little mouse who is swept away from home during a spring flood. A lovely read.

Finding my Voice Again

How does one return to blogging after a silence of 18 months? I don’t know how it’s done, but I’d like to try because I miss reading, I miss writing about my reading, and I miss my blogging friends.

The last two years have been very difficult ones for my family, and our emotional struggles really impacted my reading and completely silenced my blog. All my energies went into dealing with our emotional turmoil, and finishing a book required a focus that just wasn’t there. But things are better, and I am slowly getting back to my books, have been shyly reaching out to blogging friends, and have also begun to think about and write posts…I’m trying to find my voice again after all this time.

We don’t fully understand how our blogs affect other people, but I want to tell you that continuing to read your blogs throughout this period of silence has been very important to me and very healing. So I thank you, dear friends, for your love of books and writing, and for the wonderful way you share that passion with the world. The book blogging community has always been very warm and welcoming, and I’ve missed it terribly.

I started this blog “shyly” in 2007, and now I quietly return to this ongoing record of my reading self. Thanks for stopping by, despite the long silence.