March Madness in Kindergarten

It's March, we're in Indiana, so I thought we would have some March Madness in the classroom. Instead of tracking basketball teams, we're reading books! Each day we read two books as a class. Students vote for which book is their favorite, and the winning book moves on to the next round. We might not get to 64 books--that would take us 32 days and there are only 41 days left of school! It would have to be called Spring Madness instead and that just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I broke up the brackets into four categories: fiction, non-fiction, traditional stories (fairy tales, fractured fairy tales, folk tales, etc.), and favorite characters/authors. I'm excited to see which type of book is the winner! First the fiction books Let's Do Nothing by Tony Fucile faced off against Me Want Pet! written by Tammi Sauer.  Who won?  See below!

Ask your child if he or she voted for this book.  Ask your child which part was his or her favorite.

Next up we read about some of our favorite characters:  Pigeon in The Pigeon Needs a Bath written by Mo Willems and Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons written by Eric Litwin.  We've ready many books with these characters in them, but these two books were new to us.  I was not surprised as to which book won.  Let's just say that I think this book is going to be the "Kentucky Wildcats" of this series!

Ask your child about what he or she knows about Pigeon.

For our first non-fiction books, we read Who Has These Feet? written by Laura Hulbert and What if You Had Animal Teeth by Sandra Markle.  I thought this was going to be a close call, but I was wrong!  This book came out on top:

Ask your child which animal teeth he or she would like to have (if any!).

On Thursday we read Somebody and the Three Blairs by Marilyn Tolhurst and Beware of the Bears by Alan MacDonald.  This was fun because both books are what we call fractured fairy tales--they are new stories inspired by traditional fairy tales.  The book that came out on top?  It's one of my favorites!

Friday brought us back to fiction again.  I didn't realize it beforehand, but I think the winning book from these two might be the Cinderella story of this March Madness.  We read Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton and The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak.  Here is the winner with  100% of the students voting for it:

Ask your child what made him or her vote for The Book with no Pictures.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Pigeon can beat out B.J. Novak's book! This week we have a new batch of books.  Which books will move on to the finals?  We'll see!