The Joy Of Lesson Plans Based On Amelia Bedelia Books

Amelia Bedelia is the main character in a series of children's books written by Peggy Parish, an American author. The main character of the series starts out as an older housekeeper, sort of a Miss Marple looking character. The first book in the series was published in 1963. As a housekeeper, Amelia Bedelia has a problem in that she takes everything that is asked of her literally. If you ask her to make a sponge cake - you will get a cake with a sponge in it. Or if she is asked to dust the furniture, she does just that with enthusiasm and liberal amounts of dust sprinkled all over the furniture. Children love her and she provides a delightful basic entry into the difficulties of the English language.

The young Amelia series

After Peggy Parish died in 1988, her nephew, Herman Parish, began the series again this time with a much younger Amelia Bedelia. The series has now been around for more than thirty years and has morphed into an excellent training module for children. There are Amelia Bedelia lesson plans for teachers which provide an entertaining method of teaching children all sorts of things including reading comprehension. The comical series of books together with lesson plans for teachers has become a staple of teachers in the early school grades including kindergarten. The books feature warm illustrations that are perfect with the humorous tone of the stories. The new series of books featuring Amelia Bedelia as a child doing all the things children do make the series perfect for young children.

Available lesson plans

The book Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School, shows us a young Amelia trying to figure out all sorts of new words and terminology. In her usual way, when the teacher tells her to stay glued, she does just that gluing herself to the chair. The book allows teachers to point out the kinds of misunderstandings and double meanings of words to children. There are lesson plans available for each book full of activities and games that teachers can use to keep children motivated and engaged with the reading material while they are learning idiomatic expressions and the meanings of words. In addition, all of the Amelia Bedelia books teach children its okay to make a mistake, and that you will learn from it. It is also fun to create new lesson plans based on the series of books, just let your imagination go.

Teaching children how to read can sometimes be difficult, particularly if the children are not engaged in the material. The popularity of the Amelia Bedelia books and the accompanying lesson plans for teachers, help teachers with organizing activities to accompany reading material. The lesson plans include exercises in phonics awareness, oral reading suggestions, crafts activities to go along with the stories, and word searches to increase vocabulary.

The books also give children a sense of confidence as they learn the meanings of words. They end up knowing more than Amelia does as she continues to follow the literal meanings of the words. So children feel good about themselves and their knowledge of the written word.

Enrichment Activities

Some of the activities in the lesson plans that work along with the Amelia Bedelia books include doing things like making puppets, theatrical activities such as pretending to be Amelia, and acting out how she would react to things, making items that could explain what words mean to Amelia, such as making a scrapbook or posters.

Other activities in lesson plans include word games where children can try and think of words or phrases that would be a problem for Amelia. Other suggested things to do are cooking. One of the things that Amelia always gets right at the end of the book is cooking. Cooking with children teaches them about words, vocabulary, math skills, cooperation, and how to follow directions.

To follow up the cooking experience, a suggestion is to come up with cooking directions in cookbooks that could be confusing to Amelia. Make it a contest among the students, and see who can come up with the best or the funniest directions. Give the students examples like a drop of oil, or a pinch of salt, or beat butter until soft. Visual aids can be fun to create to help Amelia Bedelia get through all the confusion. Have the children make pictures with examples of the right way to cook and the wrong way to cook based on an understanding of the cooking terminology.

Travis Blackstone is a well travelled blogger and journalist who specializes in education, and particularly in the area of teaching children reading comprehension strategies via the http://readingcomprehensionlessons.com site. He keeps latest breakthroughs in teaching resources and is especially interested in the creation of online resources for teachers.

Source: http://articles.submityourarticle.com/the-joy-of-lesson-plans-based-on-amelia-bedelia-books-299462

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