Read Aloud Books for February 17

Guess How Much I Love You is a beautiful story to share on Valentine's Day. It's the story of a small rabbit trying to let a large rabbit know how much he loves him. The class had a great discussion about love. I asked them, "Can you hold love in your hand?", "Can you draw love?", "Can you buy love at a store?". They answered "no" to each question of course, and in doing so they realized why the little rabbit was showing how much he loved the large rabbit by opening his arms wide and reaching up to the sky. In the end, the little rabbit thought of the biggest distance he could and declares, "I love you up to the moon and back again!" This book has great memories for me, because my younger son would say that to me when he was kindergarten age.

Corduroy has been a popular read aloud story for young children for 40 years. Our class even has a stuffed Corduroy bear in green overalls. Corduroy is a bear that has an adventure in a toy store at night and is later taken home by a little girl. At the end of the story, Corduroy is happy that he has a new home and a new friend. This is a great book to get the children to think about how the characters are feeling at different parts of the story. Sad, afraid, surprised and happy were some of the feelings the class talked about. It also shows that even if you look different (at the beginning of the story, Corduroy has lost a button, and so does not look "new"), you can still be accepted for who you are.

A Pocket for Corduroy is the follow-up story to the original Corduroy book. Corduroy has another adventure, this time at a laundromat. He gets lost, almost gets put in the dryer and has a "snow" adventure involving soap flakes, after the laudromat is closed. In the end, the little girl and Corduroy are reunited. She decides to sew a pocket on his overalls and tucked an information card inside so that if he gets lost again, they will know who he belongs to. The Corduroy stories are a great tie-in to our upcoming class project where the stuffed Corduroy bear goes home with the star student each day and the family writes a short adventure for him.