Journals

Celebrate birthdays and promote literacy development in your classroom by sending home the Birthday Bag and Journal. On birthdays or half birthdays send home this brightly colored, washable, child-sized canvas bag with the birthday journal inside. The children illustrate and dictate or write a paragraph telling about their special day. The children return the Birthday Bag and Journal the next day and share the picture and story with the class. Keep the Bag and Journal on a special hook in your reading corner for the class to enjoy throughout the year!

The Mascot Journal is an exciting way to promote class unity, build literacy skills within a meaningful context, and stimulate oral and written communication between home and school. Once a week, our mascot, Spot, travels home in a special backpack to share an adventure with a child. The child dictates or writes about Spot's antics with his family. Spot has traveled to England, Hawaii, Mexico, and Disneyland! He has visited doctors, dentists, and radio stations! As California Teacher of the Year in 1999, Spot journeyed with me to the gala awards reception in Sacramento. Spot lives forever in the hearts and memories of my students.

Every young child believes in the magic of the tooth fairy! The Tooth Fairy Journal travels home with the children when they loose a tooth. The children illustrate and write (first and second graders) or dictate how their tooth was lost. The children love this journal!

Encourage children to observe and record seed/plant growth by planting seeds in clear individual containers and utilizing individual Plant Journals. For each journal entry they print the day of the week and number of days their seeds have been growing. Students illustrate exactly what they see each day. Your students will love feeling like real scientists!

Send home the classroom Caterpillar Journal with a miniature stuffed caterpillar in a plastic jar and the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. After reading the book with their parents, the children write or dictate and illustrate a page in the Caterpillar Journal explaining what the caterpillar ate at their homes. There are 12 student pages to complete. (I let half of my students complete an entry in the caterpillar journal and the other half completes the Mouse Journal. This journal is included when you order Caterpillar Capers.

Encourage critical thinking by utilizing the Mouse Journal! The Mouse Journal is an extension based on the book, If you give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff. The students take home the story, a stuffed mouse, and the Mouse Journal. After reading the book, they complete an entry in the journal by brainstorming ideas that "go together." One of my favorite entries was, "If you give a mouse a heart, he'll want love to go with it."

These individual journals are sent home with each student to be complete as daily homework for one week only. The parent direction page asks an adult to supervise the child's work during the week. I also utilize this journal when a student is placed on an independent study contract due to a family vacation. The child completes one entry every night during the vacation week. The result is a priceless journal describing the many activities that the child engaged in during the week.