Week 3 Post

A terrific book to use with fourth or fifth grade students is "The Cricket in Times Square" by George Selden. There are soo many cross-curricular activities that you can do with this story! The summary of the story is basically about a cricket, Chester, who lives in the country and jumps into a person's picnic basket, eats too much of their food, and falls asleep. When is awakes, he realizes he is on the train and the destination is Times Square, New York. Chester makes a variety of friends, including a cat and mouse and a young boy. The young boy discovers that Chester can play music with his wings and he sounds like a violin. In order to raise money for the boy's family, Chester plays music in the boy's newstand in Times Square and attracts many people, who then buy magazines and newspapers. Eventually Chester gets homesick and goes back to the country where he belongs.
This book is excellent to use to compare the city and country, as well as weather patterns in each of these places. There is a part of the story when the boy goes to Chinatown and befriends an older Chinese man who lets him in on secrets about crickets and how to take care of them. The two even eat a traditional Chinese meal. During this part of the book I bought Chinese food for my class and we shared dishes that were mentioned in the story. We also did a study on crickets and the opera.
This is a really fun book that you can incorporate exciting activities into!! I strongly recommend it!!