November is one of my favorite months for read alouds.

Eventually I am going to need a larger bookshelf, because there is certainly no such thing as too many books. November is a month full of so much stuff to teach about… especially this year. Thanksgiving, the Election, fall, fall turning to winter soon, turkeys. AHH!

Just thinking about it makes me so excited to set up my classroom bookshelf, especially because there is one book I am so excited to share with my students…

Houston, I have a problem… I am deeply in love with the Little Old Lady books.

Well, it’s not really a problem… mostly because these books are fabulous kids and fun for adults too!

The silliness of the book and the colorful illustrations, tied in with the repetition, rhyming, and opportunities for lesson extensions, makes this book one that every elementary school teacher should have on the bookshelf.

This is the latest book from Lucille Colandro, having just been released in August 2016. You can find it here.*

My students are very familiar with this Old Lady. We read about her several times a year, and it never gets old to them that she eats the craziest things!

It’s a great conversation piece, though, that gets them talking about what a person can and cannot eat (or should and should not eat).

Sequencing and retelling a story are skills we focus on a lot in the classroom. This story also offers a lot of opportunities for answering “wh” questions, like “who is the main character?” “what did she swallow?” “why did she swallow the ___?”

The pictures in the story are a great form of context clues for my students, helping them to answer questions.

We use a variety of worksheets, differentiated for all of my students, that focus on sequencing, vocabulary, and… their favorite! The dauber activity where they get to daub the items found in the story. Let’s be honest, any time we get out the daubers, they know it’s going to be fun!

Plus the fine motor practice of cutting and pasting the story in order or matching vocabulary words to their picture counterpart is a skill I love to always incorporate.

We work on the story for 2-3 days, depending on how quickly we work through activities. On the first day, we read the story and complete the dauber activity. We will also work on a sequencing worksheet and a vocabulary worksheet.

To finish out the first day, we complete the hands on sequencing activity shown in the picture above.

On the second day, we will start with looking at the pictures in the story. Then we will sequence the events from the story again using a different worksheet. We also talk about vocabulary again. Repetition of the skill is key.

To finish out the lesson in full, we will make a paper bag Old Lady and use her to sequence the story once again.

I really like doing activities like this with my students because they are things the students can take home and share with their families. It’s simple to write numbers on the backs of the sequencing cards to help parents know the order of the story, and it’s a great way to include parents in their child’s education (which is important!).

{ Grab the book companion here. }

To keep the exciting momentum going from reading about this Old Lady, I add the Adapted Book to our monthly-themed library. You can see the sample video of what it looks like here.

The adapted piece book set is included in the book companion.

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