Friday, August 2, 2013

Indian in the Cupboard


(April 2013) I am reading The Return of the Indian to my oldest son this week while he's on break. I thought he'd be so interested that I'd find him reading it on his own, but when Matthew broke out the wooden Thomas trains, it sparked his interest and between those and Lego, he's had a full week of playing. At least he's not obsessed with his Nintendo. The Return of the Indian is just as interesting as the first book in the series; I am so eager to create materials for it. Gregory finished Indian in the Cupboard on his own and read through to series.

Indian in the Cupboard is the story of Omri, named after one of the author's three boys, who is given a plastic Indian figurine on his birthday by a friend as well as a metal medicine-type chest cupboard. The key his mother gives him actually locks the cupboard. Omri awakes one morning to meet Little Bear, alive, breathing and demanding Omri bring him some meat! It is such an imaginative story with heart. The author makes clear Omri's ambivalent and changing feelings as he embarks on this adventure; the book is a window into the thoughts of a little boy who has a secret he is sure he must keep---or maybe not. I love when Omri says:

The trouble was that, although grown-ups usually knew what to do, what they did was very seldom what children wanted to be done. What if they took the Indian to--say, some scientist, or whoever knew about strange things like that, who would question him and examine him and probably keep him in a laboratory or something of that sort?

I read that and thought of E.T., which the boys recently watched.


I created a 16 item {freebie} on adverbial clauses to accompany this delightful story. 


plastic whenever toy locked a the Omri cupboard in, it became real.

Students have to identify the adverbial and unscramble the clause. Adverbials begin a dependent clause and are followed by a subject and verb. An adverbial clause is dependent; it is not a complete sentence. When combined with an independent clause, an adverbial clause creates a complex sentence. An adverbial clause can precede or follow a dependent clause as you will see in this {freebie} on TpT.

I am hard at work on a Contextualized Grammar Review which will include vocabulary, parts of speech, homophones, possessive noun forms, . Check back soon!

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