WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Dozens of children's books are in Maddy Carpenter's kindergarten classroom at Cochran Primary School in Williamsport. But one book stands out, written by Mrs. Carpenter and her students. It's called "The ABCs of Kindergarten."
"These kids in kindergarten, I just feel like they're learning so much. Most people think it's just coloring or crafts, and we're really pushing them so far, and I just really wanted to document how hard these kids are working and how much they're learning," said Carpenter.
Mrs. Carpenter and her students started working on the book in February and sent it out for publishing last month.
"It took us about a month because we had to—as you can see in the book, we had to write it all, and then we had to draw pictures for it too, so every kid had two jobs," said Carpenter.
To write down ideas for the book, Mrs. Carpenter hung up pieces of poster paper around her classroom with letters of the alphabet on them.
"We talked about the ABCs. We found a word for every letter, and then we had to write a sentence about each one, and we tied it into our kindergarten life, so all of it is about what we do in kindergarten," said Carpenter.
Lillian Androsky, one of Mrs. Carpenter's students, helped out with writing sentences for the letters B and Z.
"Somebody helped me with my other one, and I made books before, but they were made out of paper, and I was really excited to make this book," said Lillian.
"I've been so excited. I'm like the typical proud teacher going around telling everyone, 'Oh, we wrote a book. You should ask my kindergarteners about it.' Everyone's so proud," said Carpenter.
Mrs. Carpenter says the project has been so successful that she's already working on plans for another book with next year's kindergarten class.