Hi friends! Hope you are warm and safe where you are! This week has been pretty crazy. It started snowing on Tuesday morning and my school system dismissed early. The snow was falling pretty quickly and sticking because most of the roads weren’t treated. The forecast called for a dusting to 2 inches and we ended up with close to 4 inches. To you Northerners, that seems like nothing but it’s a lot of us in the South. The roads where I live are extremely curvy and hilly and they just aren’t made for snow and ice. I’ve been off since Tuesday afternoon and I just found out school is cancelled for tomorrow too. I’m loving these snow days but I know I am going to pay for it next week.

I’ve been working on something to teach my kiddos plot and theme. Plot is pretty easy but theme is a doozy. I spent last Sunday looking for something to use to teach theme and they are pretty hard to come by, especially for second graders. One of my favorite ideas was from Megan at I Teach. What’s your super power? Her idea is a great way to introduce theme to your kiddos.

I still needed something more though because theme is so hard for 2nd graders to understand. It’s kinda like the main idea for fiction and we all know that main idea can be next to impossible for them to understand. So I found some picture books that have an overall theme and I created some pages and activities to go with them.

I tried to use books that I thought most teachers might have.  I also have activities and things that you can use with any book.
Here are the books that I used: 

I’ve included a sample of the set in the preview. The sample is for the book The Wolf’s Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza. If you click on any of the images above or below, you can click on Download Preview to get the freebies. Here’s part of what is included in the freebie: