Ten Apples Up on Top! by Dr. Seuss is a picture book about animals seeing how many apples they can stack on their heads.  This book will help beginning readers read simple rhyming sentences.  Ten Apples Up on Top! also gives teachers a perfect opportunity to have students practice counting to ten and doing math.  An activity that can be done with this book is to have students count by ones to ten using red counters.  Another activity is to have students identify the rhyming words within the book and see if the students could think of anymore words that rhyme with the words in the book.  The Lexile Leveling system rates this book as 200L (1st grade).  

"Bear Says Thanks", by Karma Wilson, is a sweet story about a lonely bear in his cave. He wants to have his friends over for a feast, but there is one problem. He doesn't have any food! What's a bear to do? His friends start to drop by one by one bringing him treats such as pies, muffins, fish, nuts, and tea. Bear is so thankful, but he starts to feel bad for not having anything to contribute to the feast. His friends assured him it was fine and that all they wanted was to be together. This is a good lesson on friendship and the importance of being together. Some fun activities while reading this story would be to get a picnic blanket or table cloth to lay out on the floor for the students to join you while you read. Another extra would be to have a picnic basket full of some of the treats in the story. For the fish, you could substitute goldfish. Of course you would need to know allergies before serving food. To go along with the story, since it is like a poem, would be for them to make a thankful lapbook. The middle could be an acrostic poem using the word "thankful". They can list other things they are thankful for on the sides of the lapbook.

Accelerated Reader Level: 2.3

Lexile: AD540L

Guided Reading Level: L 

I would use this book in K-2 to talk about rhyming and nonsense words. Though in Grade 2 I may only use this as a review of what the student should already know. 

Room on the Broom is a fun book that I got to see being used in my placement this semester. Therefore I would personally use this book for kindergarten to second grade. The way I would use this book is, in the same way, I saw it used first hand. I would first use it to introduce a few new words to the students' vocabulary, such as cauldron and cloak. Then when reading the book I would use it to provide practice with rhyming words for my students. To do this I would read the first two pages with few pauses and then I would start to stop at the end of a sentence. This would give the students an opportunity to call out a rhyming word that they believe is used where I paused in the story.

The Snatchabook has come to town!  Have no fear though.  This is a good story to promote literacy at home and encourage children to grow a love of books.  I would read this fun story at the beginning of the year to kindergarten, first, or even second grade students when I introduce their reading logs and the expectations of nightly reading.  This is a fun rhyming story with superb illustrations to keep anyone's attention.