Characters Outside of Our Classroom

Who are your favorite characters?

My first graders have been reading books about their favorites and last week I promised we would paint our most loved friends. It wasn't surprising that Elephant and Piggie made it up to the bulletin board. It is one of the baskets of books that is always empty because kids always want these in their own book bins. I am very excited for the newest in this series, I Broke My Trunk, out next week !

Bossy Bear is another favorite of many of the boys. He is an overly bossy character who demands things his way but is challenged to change after making a friend, turtle. Turtle tells Bossy Bear that he is bossy but he doesn't have to be!

You may be able to make out Fancy Nancy at the end of the bulletin board. She is loved by some of my girls. They enjoy hearing the picture books in her series and often check out the little paperback (I can read) readers from our library.

Also featured under Nancy, is the Gingerbread Girl. Before a small group of students performed the Gingerbread Man play for the class, we read just about every version we could find ( The Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Friends as well as watched the movie on Speakaboos. The kids have become very familiar with the characters in these stories and many of the girls have loved the spunky phrase repeated by the Gingerbread Girl:" Run, run with a leap and a twirl, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Girl!"

Amelia Bedelia's picture book stories have been the favorite of one of my transitional readers. She often will sit and read aloud to a small group of kids (pretending to be teacher) at recess or free choice time. I have yet to read one of these as a read aloud because I know at the beginning of the year, many of my kids would need some scaffolding and talking through some of Bedelia's confusions. Ameila Bedelia's First Valentine will likely be read next week as the holiday approaches and we begin to know more about other student's favorite characters.

The last character that has made it up to our bulletin board thus far is Mouse from I Miss You Mouse by Greg Foley. Mouse is a kind friend and character in Foley's picture book series. This series is another perfect for first graders. It is a small amount of text with pictures and flaps that grab the reader. Once read aloud, these books also live in kid hands.

These are not all of our favorites but are certainly a strong representation. What characters are your kids loving?