Mock Caldecott 2015

I’m working on trying to get some programming planned before Thanksgiving rolls around next week, so I’m scrambling to come up with some great ideas that are easy to plan and implement.  We have one more Fun Friday program before the end of the semester and as it’s on Friday, December 12th, I can only imagine the kids will be getting a little stir-crazy for the holiday.  So, my plan is to do my own version of a Mock Caldecott Award.  We have anywhere between 15 – 25 kids attend this 45-minute program, which I think will be just about perfect.

First, I pulled some of the previous Caldecott winners as a way to introduce the topic. Kids are often familiar with the Caldecott award, but are a little confused as to what it is for. We also took a look at some of the basic criteria required to win the Caldecott, before we set off to review books.

I collected about 40 books that have been published in 2014 for us to review.  This is a perfect program for this age group (grades 1 – 4) because they don’t necessarily have to be able to read well to do the program.  I’m going to put everyone into a circle and pass the books around the circle in a 30 – 60 second time span.  This way everyone should be able to get a chance to see most of the books and choose one they think should win their award. 

I’ve also created our own certificates for the kids to write the title and illustrator on, and then decorate.
The list of books we’ll be looking at includes:

1. A Dance Like Starlight
2. The Adventures of Beekle
3. Baby Bear
4. The Baby Tree
5. Bad Bye, Good Bye
6. Brimsby’s Hats
7. Draw
8. Emily’s Blue Period
9. Eye to Eye
10. The Farmer and the Clown
11. Firefly July
12. Flashlight
13. Flora and the Penguin
14. Grandfather Ghandi
15. Gravity
16. Haiti, My Country
17. Harlem Hellfighters
18. Have You Heard the Nesting Bird?
19. Here is the Baby
20. Hi, Koo!
21. Hug Machine
22. Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads
23. Maple
24. My Teacher is a Monster!
25. Nana in the City
26. Okay, Andy!
27. The Pilot and the Little Prince
28. The Promise
29. Quest
30. Remy and Lulu
31. Sam & Dave Dig a Hole
32. The Scraps Book
33. Shackleton’s Journey
34. Sparky!
35. Telephone
36. Three Bears in a Boat
37. Time for Bed, Fred
38. The Troublemaker
39. Viva Frida
40. Where’s Mommy?

I, personally, haven’t had the chance to view all of these books, so a couple might be pulled before the kids see them if a few of the informational texts are more mature. I think this will be a fun project for the kids and is very simple to implement as well!