Winter Reading Fun!

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!  I am thankful for my precious students, their families, and my colleagues at St. Mary's:) 

I want to remind the girls that come to the Think Tank for small group reading (during and after-school) that you have access to the Reading Eggs program at home.  A great part of this program is the ability that you have to read books on a variety of levels and then "quiz" on them.  This is great practice for AR quizzes.  The site can be accessed at www.readingeggs.com.  They will click on the "Library" which is located beneath the Reading Eggspress side of the page.  When they enter the library they know to immediately change the reading "level" to an appropriate age range.  St. Mary's has a subscription and each student with a license has a username and password.  This information was in the 1st Quarter Report Card comment, but please don't hesitate to contact me if you need that information.

I would also like to share some apps that I ran across that are fun for "winter" reading on a cold winter's night or during travels to visit family during the break.  Some of these apps are free and others have a small fee.  
Snowman Joe - follow along in this musical storybook as readers travel through a winter wonderland.  Auto play can read the book aloud as it zooms into parts of the illustrations and highlights keywords.
Storia - a virtual bookshelf, Storia by Scholastic allows children to choose books that they are interested in and are at their reading level (there are audio and visual supports for struggling readers).
Read Me Stories - this app is full of picture books with illustrations that children will love.  Narrators read the books aloud and there is a new book available for download each day.
Dr. Seuss Bookshelf - This app for the iPad and iPhone has a wide variety of classic Dr. Seuss picture books.
Nothing Ever Happens at the South Pole - Read about the adventure of a penguin at the S. Pole in this classic book from Stan and Jan Berenstain (this book has interactive text).

Here are some ebook titles for winter fun:
Magic Tree House #32 Winter of the Ice Wizard
Walking With Dinosaurs:  The Winter Ground - this book connects to the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs and is a good option for introducing children to how winter impacts animals' habitats.
Bambi: The Winter Trail - this is a story about Bambi living in the forest during wintertime.
Winter According to Humphrey - From the Humphrey series, this ebook follows the main character through a winter adventure.
Splat the Cat - this book is great for beginning readers as it contains simple sentences and pictures that support comprehension.