Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Precocious

This afternoon I worked a shift at the elementary school book fair. When I got there I discovered that the librarian wanted one of us to pick something from the book fair inventory and read to the fifth graders coming in for their library time.

I raised my hand first. Lucky, lucky me!

I looked through my options and settled on a theme: precocious birds. Before I read the books, we talked about what the word precocious means. (I make a point of taking every opportunity to share a new vocabulary word. And precocious seemed to be a good word to share with a bunch of fifth graders.)

First I read Terrific by Jon Agee, which is about a grumpy man and a smart parrot with a broken wing stuck stranded on a desert isle. The parrot engineers their escape and the grumpy man gains a more optimistic outlook on life.

I followed that up with a story about the most awesomely precocious duck ever in Thump, Quack, Moo by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. Farmer Brown works hard on a corn maze during the day, but Duck puts on his night-vision goggles and reworks it during the night. They (and we) finally see their masterpiece when they take a balloon up to see it from above.

Duck never fails to pull the fast one on Farmer Brown. He quacks me up every time.

2 comments:

Kazzy said...

I just like the sound of the word precocious. ;)

Robin said...

I'd say you took full advantage of the teaching opportunity you were given.

I haven't read either of those books. I have, however, read a couple of the previous exploits of duck with Farmer Brown. He is a devious and clever soul. I'll have to see if I can get the new one from the library. Can't wait.

Well done not revealing what happened with the maze. That little tease is enough to make me read it. Well played!