(bright music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to Camp Read-A-Lot, the place where we read books, sing songs and keep the learning going all summer long.

My name is Ms. Lara.

Can you tell me your name?

I'm so excited that you made it back today.

Today is Friday and the last day where we're gonna be learning about Stellaluna, our book about being yourself.

So we have Ms. Maria here, who's gonna help us sing a good morning song.

Let's get started.

Ready?

♪ Good morning, good morning ♪ ♪ It's a sunshine kind of day ♪ ♪ Come join Ms. Lara for some learning and some play ♪ ♪ Will we sing a song ♪ ♪ Of course, we will ♪ ♪ Make our brain strong ♪ ♪ Like super strong ♪ ♪ So come along ♪ ♪ Yes, come on friends for some learning and some play ♪ ♪ Hello, jello ♪ ♪ What's up, buttercup ♪ ♪ We have so much to do ♪ ♪ I'm glad that you are up ♪ We do.

We have so much to do, boys and girls.

I'm gonna put Ms. Maria down.

So wipe the sleep from your eyes.

Get a good stretch going.

So this morning, we're going to focus on another book too about a little girl who comes to school all mismatched.

We're going to do our hokey pokey feeling song, some writing and then, I have a fun project that we're gonna do together that involves letters and music using pots and pans and a spoon.

We're gonna make a ruckus.

Are you ready to get started?

Okay.

We're going to sing our hokey pokey feeling song.

So for that, I need you to dance along with me.

So make a nice space wherever you are and make sure you're not gonna bump into anything.

I'm gonna turn my music on in a little bit, but let's practice our faces.

We're gonna need a happy face, a sad face, a mad face, oh, scary, a worried face, a tired face (yawning) and a loved face.

Hey, are you ready to get started?

Let me turn my music on and we'll stand up.

(playful music) ♪ You put your happy face in ♪ ♪ You put your happy face out ♪ ♪ You put your happy face in ♪ ♪ And say, "woo-hoo" with the shout ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ And turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (clapping) ♪ ♪ You put your sad face in ♪ ♪ You put your sad face out ♪ ♪ You put your sad face in ♪ ♪ And you cry your sad face out ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ And turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ You put your worried face in ♪ ♪ You put your worried face out ♪ ♪ You put your worried face in ♪ ♪ And you're scared and all about ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey ♪ ♪ And you turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ You put your tired face in ♪ ♪ You put your tired face out ♪ ♪ You put your tired face in ♪ ♪ And you yawn your sleepiness out ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey ♪ ♪ And you turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ Two more ♪ ♪ You put your tired face in ♪ ♪ You put your tired face out ♪ ♪ And again, let's put our tired face in ♪ ♪ And we're gonna yawn our sleepiness out again ♪ ♪ Do the feelings hokey ♪ ♪ And you turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (clapping) ♪ ♪ Last one ♪ ♪ You put your loved face in ♪ ♪ You put your loved face out ♪ ♪ You put your loved face in ♪ ♪ And say, "I love you" with the shout ♪ ♪ You do the feelings hokey ♪ ♪ And you turn yourself around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ ♪ We're doing the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ We're doing the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ We're doing the feelings hokey pokey ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about ♪ Oh, I'm so glad that you got to do that song with me.

Oh, I think we did tired two times.

I must be tired too.

Now, right now, I hear- (doorbell rings) Our doorbell.

Ms. Maria left us a letter.

Let's see what it says.

Now, of course, when we read our letter, we start, where?

The left and then swing over to the right.

So here we go.

♪ This is the left (finger snapping) ♪ ♪ This is the right (finger snapping) ♪ ♪ When we read ♪ ♪ We started the left and go to the right (finger snapping) ♪ Let's see what it says.

Dear Mrs. Lara, why be like everyone else when you can be yourself?

That's true.

Can you read "Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match"?

I think I can.

Like me, she tried to fit in, but decided to be her true self.

Really, instead.

Love, our character, Stellaluna.

So let's see if Ms. Maria left me that book that Stellaluna wants me to read.

Oh, here it is.

And look, like Stellaluna, she's hanging backwards.

Here's our story, "Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match".

It is by Monica Brown.

She's the author and wrote the words.

What do you think the story is gonna be about?

Let's see.

A little girl with orange hair.

Oh, and look, tortillas, peanut butter and jelly right here.

Let's read.

Ready?

My name is Marisol McDonald and I don't match.

At least, that's what everyone tells me.

Look, (inaudible).

She's wearing stripe pants and a star belt.

And her shirt has flowers all over it.

I play soccer with my cousin Tato and he says, "Marisol, your skin is brown like mine, but your hair is the color of carrots.

You don't match!"

"Actually, my hair is the color of fire," I say, and I kick the ball over to Tato's head and into the goal.

Oh, she's pretty cool.

Huh?

Lot of confidence.

My brother says, "Marisol, those pants don't match that shirt!

They clash."

But I love green polka dots and purple stripes.

I think they go great together.

Don't you?

I also love peanut butter and jelly burritos and speaking Spanish and English, and sometimes both.

"Can I have a puppy?

A furry, sweet perrito?

I ask.

Por favor?"

"Quizas," Mommy says.

"Maybe," Dad says, smiling and winking.

Those were a lot of Spanish words.

Huh?

My teacher, Ms. Apple doesn't like the way I sign my name.

"Marisol McDonald," she says, "this doesn't match!

At school, we learn to print and use cursive, but not at the same time."

But I like the way my name looks.

Look at here, she is the teacher.

She sounds like she's doing things her own way.

Do you have things that you do like no one else does?

At recess, Ollie and Emma want to play pirates, and Noah wants to play soccer.

"How about soccer-playing pirates?"

I said.

"No way!"

they say, so I run off to play on the swings by myself.

Oh, soccer-playing pirates sounds fun though.

Huh?

After recess, we have art, my favorite subject.

I think my drawings surprise my friends.

Here's her drawing.

You can see, there's a little pink elephant there with glasses on.

So silly.

At lunch, Ollie walks over to me and scrunches his nose.

"Ew, a peanut butter and jelly burrito?"

he asks.

"I know, I know," I say, it doesn't match.

But it sure tastes good."

"Marisol, you couldn't match if you wanted to!, Ollie says.

"Oh yeah?

I bet I can."

So let's think, Ollie wants her to match and Marisol is saying, I think I can do it.

What do you think is gonna happen in the rest of the story?

Let's see.

The next day I wake up and decide that today, I, Marisol McDonald, will match.

It's a little hard to find clothes that are all the same color.

Look at.

Look at everyone.

See in the mirror, she's looking in there?

She looks so sad.

She's not colorful.

Her hair is orange.

Her shirt is orange.

Her pants are orange.

She lost her zest.

I play pirates with Ollie at recess, but it's not very fun.

Why can't pirates play soccer, anyway?

I have a regular peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch and the bread tastes mushy.

Oh no.

How do you think Marisol's feeling?

Even our class is a little bit boring.

"Marisol," Ms. Apple says, "What's wrong?

This doesn't look like your usual work?"

"I'm trying to match," I say with a frown.

"Why?"

asks Ms. Apple.

I can't think of a single good reason.

There she is matching cry.

I'm glad she had a teacher who noticed.

At the end of the day, Ms. Apple hands me a note.

Oh, we get notes all the time here.

Don't we?

I open it and it says, "Marisol, I want you to know that I love you just the way you are, because the Marisol McDonald that I know is a creative, unique, bilingual, Peruvian-Scottish-American, soccer-playing artist and simply marvelous!

Ms.

Apple."

I skip all the way home.

How do you think that letter makes Marisol feel?

Hm.

She's not frowning anymore.

When I wake up on Saturday, I put on my pink shirts, my polka dot skirt and my favorite hat, the one albuelita brought me from Peru.

At breakfast I say, "My name is Marisol McDonald and I don't match, because I don't want to!"

"Bravo!"

says mommy.

"Good for you," says dad.

"Now let's go to the pound to get a puppy."

Now the pound is a place where dogs go when they don't have owners.

So it sounds like she's gonna get a new pet.

When we go to the pound, there are big dogs and little dogs.

Dogs with long noses and smushed faces, chocolate colored puppies and smoky gray puppies and puppies the color of caramel.

How will we ever choose?

So here she is trying to choose.

Then I see him.

He has one floppy ear, flop and one pointy ear, flop one blue eye and one brown eye.

He is beautiful!

I walk over if he leaps into my lap, I cuddle him and it sounds like he purrs.

"I think we found the just right dog for you, Marisol," mommy says.

My puppy is perfect.

He's mismatched and simply marvelous, just like me.

I think I'll name my puppy, Kitty!

The end.

Now boys and girls, if you check out this book from the library, there's a whole space here where it talks about the authors inspiration for writing the text.

So what do you think?

At the end of the day, Marisol decided that she was better all mismatched, because that was who she was.

And all this week, we've been reading books that talk about being your true self.

Now, what I'd like to do right now is do some writing with you on my board about being yourself.

Writing helps us learn to read, because it helps to see that words convey a message and the thoughts in our head and helps us figure out beginning sounds and sometimes even rhyming words.

Now you may think, "Mrs. Lara, I don't know how to write, yet."

That's okay, because drawing pictures is a form of writing when you're three or four years old.

So you can try to write too in your own way.

All right.

♪ Will you write some words with me ♪ ♪ Some words with me, some words with me ♪ ♪ Will you write some words with me ♪ ♪ What will we write about ♪ We're gonna write about being yourself.

Now on Monday and Tuesday, we introduced a story about a little girl.

Do you remember what her name was?

Her name was Camilla Cream.

Wasn't it?

Let's see if I can draw a picture of Camilla Cream right here.

Here she is.

Now Camilla Cream was not very happy, because she woke up with a bad case of stripes.

Do you remember why?

She loved lima beans?

She loved to eat them.

But did she get to eat lima beans?

No, because she wanted to impress people.

She wasn't herself.

Was she?

Now one way that she found her true self was by learning to not impress people.

So we're gonna write that at the top.

You were yourself when you do not worry about impressing people.

So I'm gonna start it here.

Duh, oh, Do.

I'm gonna leave a finger space here.

Do not worry wah, worry about impressing people.

So let's see.

Impress.

That's a really hard word.

Impressing, I-N-G people.

Let's see if I'm on my board here.

So that's one way you can be your true self.

And then, we read a story about a bat named Stellaluna.

So let's draw our bat here.

Have a face and some wings.

Now, Stellaluna learned to be herself as well.

Let's see.

How did Stellaluna do that?

Here's Stellaluna.

Stellaluna learned to be herself by, let's see, eating grasshoppers?

No, she loved to eat mangoes.

But she didn't know that she loved to eat mangoes, because an owl attacked her mother, right?

It wasn't until her mother found her that she decided, "Yep, I'm going to eat the mango and be a bat and not a bird."

So the lesson that Stellaluna taught us about being yourself was find where you fit in.

So we're gonna write that here.

Fuh, ind, end with a D and leave a finger space.

Find where you, you is one of our sight words we learned in kindergarten, fit, fuh, it, fit in.

Find where you fit in.

And then we had our friend, Marisol, our last book.

What did she teach us about being ourself?

Let's draw Marisol right here.

Do you remember she had orange hair and she was very smiley and she probably had a striped bow and she loved to mismatch, and maybe some stripes and some stars.

And maybe I'll do fingers on her.

When you draw your people, do you draw fingers on them?

Now, what did she learn about being yourself in the story we just read?

Hmm.

She learned that it's okay to be different.

So let's write that.

It is okay to be different.

Let's see if I can squeeze that over.

I might come down here to write it.

Different.

So look at all this week we learned.

Do not worry about impressing people, find where you fit in, and it's okay to be different.

All of that to be yourself.

Now, I have our project that you can do at home that'll help you realize how unique you really are using letters and music.

So let's go over to our project place.

So here we are in our project place.

To do this activity with me, you're going to need some pots, pans, boxes, anything you have in your house that will make some noise and a spoon, wooden or metal and a post-it note or some paper and a marker.

Now what you're going to do, is we're gonna make our name into some music.

Let's see.

I'm gonna write some letters of my name, because our names are one thing that's very special about us.

Isn't it?

So my name is Ms. Lara.

So I'm gonna write L for Lara.

I think I'll put it on this pan.

A, right here.

La.

I'll put the A here.

Lar.

Lar.

And then my last letter is A right here.

Lara.

Now, you notice that I labeled my different pans with different letters like this.

Now what we're going to do is we're gonna make music with our name.

So let's see what our name sounds like when we make music.

So Lara, I'm gonna do L-A-R-A.

I'm gonna take my spoon.

Are you ready?

Okay.

I feel like a rockstar.

Here we go.

(pots and pans clanging) Oh, that's what my name sounds like in music.

Let's try it again.

(pots and pans clanging) Ooh, super cool.

All right.

Then you can kind of switch it around.

Let's try switching them around.

And what would my name sound like this way?

So unique, so special.

Let's try it again and then we'll try a different name.

Okay.

(pots and pans clanging) Ooh, that's my name when I make it like that.

So you can see, parents, how this could be a fun activity for learning how to spell if you have older children, or for letter recognition, I guarantee you that children will loved to learn their letters more when they get to pound on something that makes noise versus flashcards or worksheets.

All right.

Let's try a different name.

How about Marisol from the book we just read?

I wonder what her name sounds like in music.

Her name is such a special name.

It sounds like it's Peruvian.

Peru's another place I would like to visit.

Maybe some of you are from Peru.

So Marisol's special letter, her beginning sound is M so I'm gonna put it here.

Then A. Ma.

R. I. Maris.

S. All right.

O.

And if you ran out, just double up, but I have just enough.

Marisol.

Okay.

Are you ready to hear what her name sounds in music?

Let's try it.

Okay.

I have to think.

Marisol, beginning sound M. Here we go.

(pots and pans clanging) Ooh, what do you think?

That sound beautiful?

Let's try it one more time so you can listen.

(pots and pans clanging) (Lara chuckles) All right.

One more name.

Whose name should I put on here?

We have Stellaluna?

How about bat?

Do you think we can make the word bat into music?

Let's try that.

I bet bat sounds really beautiful when made into music.

We'll try that one and that'll be our last one before we sing our goodbye song.

So bat, buh.

Buh, buh.

Let's try it over here.

And you can see A, bat.

Okay.

Last one.

Let's see what bat sounds like in music.

Here we go.

(pots and pans clanging) Ooh, doesn't that sound beautiful?

(pots and pans clanging) So now that we've made the word bat, we get to play a little music, can you make some music on your own?

Let's use our wooden spoon and our metal spoon to rock out for a second.

Ready?

(pots and pans clanging) Yeah.

Making music is one way you can show just how special and talented you are.

It looks like it's time for us to sing our goodbye song and in the week.

So let me get my letters.

Here we go.

♪ A is for amazing and that's what you are ♪ ♪ B is for brave that will carry you far ♪ ♪ C is for caring and community ♪ ♪ And D is for determined and be the very best me ♪ ♪ E is for empathy, caring for all ♪ ♪ F is for friends that'll catch you when you fall ♪ ♪ G is for grateful for everything around ♪ ♪ And H is for hopeful there's more good to be found ♪ ♪ I is for imagine all the fun things we can do ♪ ♪ J is for joyful how I feel when I'm with you ♪ ♪ K is for kind to people and animals too ♪ ♪ And L is for love, put it in all that you do ♪ ♪ M is for mindful, be present every day ♪ ♪ N is for nice words in everything you say ♪ ♪ O is for original, always be you ♪ ♪ And P is for perseverance until you make it through ♪ ♪ Q is for quiet those bad thoughts ♪ ♪ R is for remember all the greatness that you've got ♪ ♪ S is for strong body and mind ♪ ♪ And T is for talent why not make yours being kind ♪ ♪ U is for unique, special and loved ♪ ♪ V is for victorious always rise above ♪ ♪ W is for worthy and wonderful too ♪ ♪ X don't next out those mistakes ♪ ♪ They're what make you you ♪ ♪ Y is for yes we're getting the end of this rhyme ♪ ♪ And Z is for tomorrow when I'll Z you next time ♪ All right, boys and girls, I hope you had so much fun this week learning about being yourself through our books, "Stellaluna", "Marisol Doesn't Match", and of course, "A Bad Case of Stripes".

Remember that you can always come back and watch these episodes on YouTube and on the Valley PBS website.

Next week, we'll have a whole new book that we'll get to read and play with and do lots of activities around.

Until then, I want you to have a really great weekend.

Ms. Lara is gonna send you a big squeeze, a big smudge, mwah.

I said, slobbery and remind you to read and play and to use your imagination every single day.

Until next week, boys and girls, have a great weekend.

Goodbye.

(bright music)