Have you ever come across a new book that fits perfectly with a lesson you do or an idea you have and then you uncontrollably break out into a happy dance!?  That’s exactly how I felt when I came across this book: Your Fantastic Elastic Brain by JoAnn Deak Ph.D. 

     I periodically receive email updates on books I might be interested in from Amazon.com, and this book was a link in one of those emails.  It’s a wonderful picture book that teaches the reader all about their brain, but what I love most is the message the book promotes…making mistakes is a necessary process in learning!  I thought this book would be a perfect introduction next year to my lessons that I do with my Reading Brain Hat.  (You can read about those lessons here for Fiction and Non-Fiction books.)  

     I’m super excited because next year, there’s going to be some changes to our schedule.  The Library will now be part of the Specials rotation, along with Fine Arts (Music & Theater combined), P.E. and Art.  Instead of only a 30-minute weekly class time, I’ll be able to have the class for 50 minutes!  That gives me enough time now to do my normal lessons and extend them with additional activities or technology applications!  

     In this case, I’m thinking about having the students create their own brain hat like you can find here.  There are several different versions of the brain hat:  one with labels and even one without any labels.  On the first lesson, I’ll give them a copy of the brain hat with labels to review the parts of the brain.  I’ll give them a blank brain hat when we do our Fiction lessons so that they can write in the “thought bubbles” (for characters, setting, events  problem, and solution).   They can use this same brain hat when we do our lesson on Non-Fiction reading.  

     There’s also many websites out there like this one that has all kinds of different brain games for kids to help with their memory.  I’m going to add this to our library website so that they can use it throughout the year, to help increase their brain memory power!

Have you ever found a cool new book that gives you that “A-Ha!” kinda moment? I’d love to hear your ideas too!

Sandy