Mercer+Mayer

Our first author is Mercer Mayer. The Little Critter books have topics that fit in well with the beginning of the year "me" theme. There also several wordless books that work weel the beginning of first grade. I will start in the media classroom with a Little Critter book called First Day of School. We will do activities related to learning procedures. We will not check out books the first week.

The second week we will watch a [|video clip] (4 minutes, 40 seconds) featuring Mercer Mayer and a puppet of Little Critter. The video shows Mayer drawing, also. We will learn about book care and start checking books out from baskets. The third and fourth weeks we will read __Just for You__ and __I Was So Mad__, and use one of those books as a writing pattern for a class book. Students will have a chance to write a caption for a wordless book page and "read to self" from a variety of Mercer Mayer books.

[|Little Critter books and games] http://www.littlecritter.com Welcome to the world of Critterville, home to popular children’s book character Little Critter. Here you can have fun with Little Critter through printables, games, interactive stories, and more. There are even videos of author/illustrator Mercer Mayer reading some of the books. Flash player is needed for many of the interactive elements. (description from [|ALA Great Sites for Kids] )