Humphrey and Rex

Whew! I have been so busy printing, cutting, and re-cutting out of laminating that it’s left me no time for anything else!

I am really super excited about some things going on this week!  First of all have you ever read this book…?

 

I had a teacher friend from another school who I play Bunco with recommend this book to me as a read-aloud. Oh my gosh! The kiddos loved it!  It’s from the point of view of Humphrey the Hamster, the class pet of Room 26.  I’ve read Junie B. Jones and some other funny, cute books, but let me say, even if you are wary because it’s a  fourth grade level book, my students soaked it in!  They would beg me not to stop even after 20 minutes!  There’s a whole series of Humphrey books and one of my little high readers is devouring them!  We finished it Friday and now I don’t know how I’m going to choose another book that will live up to it.  Today they were telling me if their predictions had come true, were commenting on funny parts, and did a fabulous job retelling the story. I loved it!

What I even loved more was that this book was a perfect segue into something I started last year!  I’d had this book and idea before last year, but when I moved to first grade and got a student teacher, I knew I had to try it out.  I know a lot of people do take home bags – which I am totally going to start doing doing.  I know Erica Bohrer at

has a bunch of mascot (Pete the Cat, Scaredy Squirrel, Skippyjon Jones) related take home bags kinda like the one I’m going to share. I love it when we bring stuffed animals and other items in to make learning more meaningful for our students. Just like Heather at

did with Cranky Crab and Flora Flamingo ! I totally found a new blog to stalk  !

Anywho….sorta got off track…a long time ago I found this book…

It’s a short picture book about a class pet: Rex the chameleon.  Everyday someone  in the class gets to take him home and write in a journal about what they did with Rex. The illustrations are fun because some of them are drawn as if the children actually drew them in their journal.  I love how the book ends with, “What would you do with Rex if he came home with you?” (that’s not completely exact but the gist).  I like that it’s open-ended and a perfect segue into the kiddos getting to take their own Rex home (he’s our “class pet”) and journal about Rex’s adventures with them.

I bought this beanie baby off Amazon.  Then created my own journal…it’s kinda not as cutesy as I would like it, but it was even worse last year.  I did it at the last minute last year, so it wasn’t all done up, but I wanted to keep the same journal so my students from this year could see and read what my students did last year.

I added some car stickers this year and a pic of the book.  It’s not beautiful but it’ll do : ).  Then tonight I attempted this…

This is not all that cutesy either, but I was drawing a blank.  Actually, you could say this is my second attempt because the first time I had this black bag made out of a funky material I’d bought real cheap somewhere that I’ve learned does not like to be ironed. Let’s just say I bought a new iron tonight and a new bag at Hobby Lobby that I made sure was made out of cotton canvas.  Other than still learning what material can be used for iron-ons, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with iron-ons.  It looks better than the Toys-R-us recyclable bag I’ve been using!

The first kiddo went home with Rex today!  I’m excited to see how much effort they put into it this year!  Last year I had some kiddos take pics with Rex all the places they went and glue them in the journal.  It was pretty cute!  I’ll have to take some pics of some journal entries later.

Hope you enjoy the books as much as I do!