That's when I found this series called Tim the Tree Limb.
You have my guarantee that everything teaching resource on this site, I have or am still using. (I just used my Relief Daze 1 in a year 7 class on Friday and will use it again on Monday)
anyway..... These books are FANTASTIC!
There are four story books in this series and they deal with morals including: friendship, respect, kindness, family, acceptance of others and helping one another. Australian resource written by Australians with a background setting of the Australian Bush.
The whole concept is so appealing to me I downloaded the set immediately. The files are quite big so it took a few minutes to download them all. (HINT: When you are taken to the jump off point for the download - BOOKMARK the site to your favourites. That way if it closes accidentally (or by mistake), you can get back to your download point.
If already want to see the series CLICK HERE - if not, read on.
The art work is pretty basic but I reckon kids would respond to these drawings.
But then the classroom application hit me.
The text is perfect for all sorts of language activities. (I am going to make a series of activity sheets just for these books to use in my country school gigs, so look out for these on reliefteaching.com soon where I will upload them for you for FREE.)
Because they are eBook format, copying and pasting the text is easy. I am thinking a closure activity would be fantastic to develop reading comprehension skills - anyway, that's for later
They are eBooks so it makes them PERFECT for the classroom. Just put the four books on your laptop and you have a whole class BIG BOOK. What class wouldn't love that?
The series is about Tim, who is a Tree Limb with magical powers. He goes on an adventure through the bush. The books follow on to each other. So for less than $20, I am rapt with my purchase.
Want to check it out yet CLICK HERE or else read on.
As well as the classroom application, I am going to visit my grandkids soon, so I uploaded the books to my iPad for a "Reading with Pop" session. If you have kids at home these series would be fantastic.
So feeling pretty pleased with myself, I started to muck around with the books before I downloaded the extras.
You also get, as a download, the mp3 file for each book. So not only could I use the books I could play the mp3 file so the kids could read along. BRILLIANT!
Then came the 24 page ACTIVITY book. How cool is this? You could turn this into a full blown unit of work - and I might just do that.
Also included in the deal is EACH of the four books in a COLOUR-IN Format. A really cool activity would be to photocopy the pages individually, have the kids colour in their own page AND then as a group work activity have then reconstruct the story. What a fabulous sequencing activity. (I just don't know how I come up with these brilliant ideas).
There is also another free eBook which shows craft units on creating library bags. I probably won't use that, but you might.
Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with my purchase. For less than $20 I got 4 eBooks, an Activity Book, all books in mp3 format, ALL 4 books as colour-in activities, and a craft template. BARGAIN.
But then another thought crossed my mind. These books could be used for older year levels as a MODEL to develop their own reading text for younger kids. I'll give that a go and let you know how it went.
So if you want to check it out you can CLICK HERE.
