The Best Year Ever

This is going to be a great year.  A fabulous year.  The best year ever!  I am excited to be teaching this wonderful group of children.  We will work together to cultivate a classroom environment that is warm, friendly and supportive to everyone.  We will all strive to learn more, be kinder, work smarter and try harder than we have before.  It will be a group effort and I’m really looking forward to seeing how things progress.

When I decided to make this class website, I really wanted it to be a resource for me, my students and the parents to use regularly.  I wanted it to be more than a list of homework (although that will be helpful!).  I wanted it to be an extension of our regular classroom.

The blog name and address are inspired by one of my favourite children’s book series.  The “Timbuctoo” series was written by Roger Hargreaves, who is also the author of the Mr. Men and Little Miss series.  The Timbuctoo books hold such dear memories in my heart because my dad always read them in such a wonderful way to my brothers and I.  I now read them to my boys and I can’t help but use the same inflections that he used when reading them.  One night this summer as I was reading one of the books to Brody and Rylan (my sons), they joined in with me and read it “the same” as I did and as my dad did.  That was the moment that I really felt the power of these books.  That was the moment that inspired the website name and address. 

The books are fun, simply and follow a very similar text format.  The illustrations are clean, colourful and inviting.  Every book begins like this:
“Hoot was a sort of owl.  A Timbuctoo owl.” and “Puff was a sort of panda.  A Timbuctoo panda.” 

This is why the blog name is called “a sort of classroom” and the address is “a timbuctoo class”.  I was just playing with format of the books. 

I will be using the Timbuctoo books in our class this year.  We’ll use them to learn creative writing techniques, writing formats and for visual art activities.  More importantly, I will to use them to help instill an absolute love of the power of oral reading, storytelling and love of books with the kids.  I know they’ll learn to love this series as much as I do!

I believe that all families have a book, or series of books that mean a lot to them.  Think about what you and your family loves to read together.  Is it poetry?  Robert Munsch books?  Mercer Mayer books?  What were your favourite childhood books?  Frog and Toad?  Berenstain Bears?  Feel free to leave a comment below this post so we can all enjoy the memories and share good books with each other!