School Bus (Virtual Book Club)

It’s Virtual Book Club time!  This month we are exploring books by Donald Crews.  Crews was a favorite in my former first grade classroom.  I often used his work during writing workshop time.  The children loved to emulate his work and the topics and length of story were perfect for this age group.  Since my boys are obsessed with school buses, we chose Crew’s book, School Bus for this month’s Virtual Book Club!

Told from the perspective of the school buses, the story starts at the bus lot as empty buses start their day.  Buses travel through the town, picking up kids and taking them to school.  After school, the routine is repeated until finally the students and buses are back at their homes.  This is definitely a timely read with school beginning for many children.

Did you know that Crews usually includes a picture of himself somewhere in his illustrations?  See if you can find him in School Bus!

Literacy Activity to Accompany School Bus by Donald Crews: School Bus Theme Bath

Materials We Used:  yellow foam school buses (I found 10 pre-cut ones in Target’s dollar bins this month.  We used 5 for the bath), 3 foam circles (red, green and yellow), yellow foam squares in various sizes (about 20), a permanent marker, and yellow food coloring (optional)

My boys love the song, “The Wheels on the Bus”.  Singing is a great way to model fluency,  build vocabulary and strengthen comprehension. On each bus I highlighted a part of the bus and wrote the word for the designated part.  As we sang each verse of the song, the boys found the correct bus and “drove” it to our stoplight (also made with red, green and yellow foam circles).  The kids had a good time pretending to slow down for a yellow light, stopping for a red light and zooming through a green light with the buses.

On the little foam squares, I wrote capital and lowercase “B’s”.  I sprinkled them on top of the water to float.  The boys then fished the letters out and sorted them into two categories (uppercase and lowercase) on the bathtub wall.

My 2 1/2 year-old also enjoyed labeling each bus with a letter “B”.

For a little extra color, we tinted our water yellow too.  They have played with the buses nightly since I introduced them!

Would you like to explore more books and activities by Donald Crews?  Check out the posts from great bloggers participating in the book club.  And, if you have a post about Donald Crew’s work, please link it so we can all learn and enjoy.

The new year of Virtual Book Club starts in September!  I’m thrilled to be participating with other great bloggers again this year.  There is an amazing line up of authors that will be featured this year including Bill Martin Jr., Karma Wilson, Marcus Pfister, Laura Numeroff and Eric Carle.  Please join us and read books by the chosen author each month.  And as always, there will be plenty of links for you to explore follow-up activities and projects to go with the books by each author.  See you in September for Bill Martin Jr. books!

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