Kindergarten Students Find Alphabet Letters in the Library and Use an App to Capture Them

As part of learning about how some books are organized alphabetically in the library, the students and I have been exploring our ABC books. 

The students loved The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC's (the Hard Way) by Patrick McDonnell.  

A cat that wakes up from a nap takes advantage of an open front door. A chase ensues, adventures happen, friends are made. There is so much to love about this wordless picture book. It's a rollicking read (pretty awesome for a wordless book), made more fun by the engaging characters (and their expressions and body language).

Next, we read Stephen T. Johnson's Alphabet City. This 1996 Caldecott Honor book is still quite popular in my library. The photos are interesting and the students love seeing their world through a new lens. 

The idea of seeing the alphabet in the environment was all the kindergartners needed. They were instantly raising their hands to share letters they were seeing in our library environment. I introduced them to the Explain Everything app and off they went to capture those letters. They couldn't find all of them, but did a pretty impressive job. Here are a few of them:

We'll be coming back to this idea using the same app, but focusing on shapes. Stay tuned!