The Letter J Coloring sheet is a good reinforcement of the vocabulary words. Try to repeat the words a lot while the kids are coloring so that they remember the words and the J sound.

The paper plate jellyfish craft is super easy! If you can't find paper plates, you can always cut semi-circles out of a thick white paper. Review the parts of the body by asking the kids to draw "eyes, mouth and nose" on the jellyfish. 

You can use whatever is available to you for the tentacles. I like to use gift wrapping ribbon, but other ideas are tissue paper, construction paper, pipe cleaners, or even newspaper! I recommend also watching some jellyfish videos so that kids can connect what they are crafting with the actual animal. Its not one that they see every day!

I just finished my first book of the new year, and also the first book of my Travel by the Book Challenge for 2017, Behold the Dreamers by first time author Imbolo Mbue. It is a new novel from 2016 that tells the story of an immigrant family from Cameroon - Jende, Neni and son Liome - that has landed in New York City to pursue a new life of opportunity and happiness. It begins in 2007 and follow through the financial crisis and historic presidential election in 2008. ​

It is an easy read, has an interesting plot and was pretty clean in content.  The story depicts everyday reality, so it is not overly predictable or overly surprising. At times I felt like there was something lacking in the character development and some stiffness in the dialogue. As the characters started to change toward the end of the book, I did not feel that I knew them as well as I would have liked to, in order to feel the full weight of the internal changes that they were going through.