Sharing stories about sneaky ninjas is fun. It is so much fun, in fact, I decided to begin this school year by sharing a couple ninja stories with my pre-k and 1st grade students. Whenever I want to share new books with a particular theme, I find it helpful to borrow a wide selection of relevant titles from my public library. I do an insane amount of inter-library loaning — this enables me to “test drive” different books to see if they’re worthy of our permanent media center collection. It allows me to get a sense of what’s out there, but it’s also a great way to solicit student feedback before spending any money. I pay special attention to contemporary eye-catching cover design and (of course) starred reviews. So far this year, I’ve shared 10 Little Ninjas by Miranda Paul with my preschoolers and Ninja Boy Goes to School by N. D. Wilson with my 1st graders.
For both grades, I started out with a ninja training video on GoNoodle as a warm-up. Just as I browse through several books before selecting the ones I share with my students, I also browse through many videos, songs, and action rhymes before picking out one I think will be most engaging and enjoyable. I chose this video because I really love to use action rhymes — students can follow along singing and dancing, and they always have a great time doing it. I rarely choose songs that feature singing exclusively — in case you haven’t noticed, students often have trouble sitting still! Especially when they’re having fun! I prefer to channel all that energy into our activities. It’s such a positive, team-oriented way to start out our story-rug time. This particular song and dance is catchy and the dancers in the video make funny faces that crack me up. I knew the students would laugh and have a good time with it too as they got their blood pumping.
After reading the books (more on those in a bit!), the 1st graders and I discussed how we could be careful — like ninjas! — and protect our valuable library materials. With this activity, I was inspired by this presentation (available on TeachersPayTeachers.com, if you want to save some time and purchase it for $3.00). We looked at various images of books that had been damaged and talked about how good Library Ninjas keep books away from pets, younger siblings, food and drink, etc.
With pre-k, we talked about shapes, cutting and gluing paper circles and rectangles to make our own little ninjas (I found this art activity on the “No Time for Flash Cards” blog). The Georgia Pre-K (GELDS) standard I centered this activity around is CD-MA6: “The child will explore, recognize, and describe shapes and shape concepts.” Finally, we watched the circle and rectangle song clips from StoryBots. (The kids always love singing along to the lively videos published by StoryBots and this time was no exception.)
Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing a few other ninja-themed stories, as well as ideas for discussions and activities to accompany them. Stay tuned!
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