What Makes You Smile?

Last weekend, my husband surprised me for our 15th year wedding anniversary.  He planned an evening away in Granville, Ohio. We stayed at the Granville Inn, enjoyed a carriage ride through town and walked up and down the streets of this beautiful college town.  We browsed the bakery and bought yummy cinnamon sticks for Easter breakfast, and shopped in a small store filled with scented candles, jewelry, where I found this book: What Makes You Smile?

I picked it up and thought how it would (1) be fun to share with even first graders and (2) has possibilities for opinion writing ( and we are immersed in thinking about it right now).  The book begins with an explanation of its purpose and how it is just the beginning of a list of things (list book too and I can use at the beginning of the year as a mentor) that make you smile. Then the writer invites us to start our own list.  We have read a handful of pages over the past two days and kids are loving it, agreeing and sometimes disagreeing with the ideas the author has written like puppies, homemade cookies, slumber parties, running through sprinklers and towels hot from the dryer.  Today, we decided to write our own (opinions) ideas about what makes each of us smile.  We jotted them in less than five minutes and then I read them aloud and the kids loved hearing each other's responses. It has inspired kids to create their own books about what makes them smile and tomorrow we talked about adding our reasons for each to build on supporting our opinions so that we can create a class book. Tonight I will leave you with with a few hoping you'll enjoy or even share what makes you smile. And yes, the 3rd post it on the right says: Chipotle:)