Welcome Friends! Thanks so much for stopping by on your way through The Reading Crew's blog hop! We hope you'll enjoy the ideas and resources we've shared in celebration of the arrival of the new year!  May they warm up your reading plans this winter! ...

Welcome! Thanks for joining my friends from The Reading Crew this weekend for a celebration of the spring season! I am so glad you are here, and hope that you are ready to "get down and dirty" as we step inside one of my favorite seasonal picture books!  Get ready to boost vocabulary and build alliterative writing skills! Grab your  gloves, galoshes, and trusty trowel, fellow gardeners and join me now as we do some spring planting along with Kate Messner and Christopher Silas Neal.  Prepare to share the magic of Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt with your primary grade students! Kate Messner's rich language and Christopher Silas Neal's vibrant, point-of-view illustrations draw the reader right into a garden where a grandmother and her granddaughter are preparing to plant.  The story's patterned structure and pictures go from what is happening above the ground "up in the garden" to what is going on underground......