Lit Block Blog

Hygiene..You Stink!, written by Julia Cook, is a book about a fork named Jean. Jean goes through many trials and decides that since she is a stainless steel fork that she does not have to "take a bath", or "brush her teeth", among other basic hygiene needs. She is eventually told how important it is to take care of herself and how taking a bath and brushing your teeth can help you do that. This is a great book to help incorporate health into your reading curriculum. This would be a great lesson that you can do as a shared group reading and writing lesson. You can introduce the topic of hygiene to the students and then proceed to do a picture walk and then read the book. After reading the book you can then give each child their writing journal and allow them to write what they learned about hygiene from Jean and why they think hygiene is important. I would recommended this book, for kindergarten through third grade. Again, this is a great way to incorporate health curriculum into the class.