I'll start with our writing. We've been doing a ton of it lately. A few weeks ago, we used bubble maps to help us pre-write. I gave each kid a bubble map and they had to use it describe an animal.
Then, they used their bubble maps to write about their animals.
To continue our practice with pre-writing, I gave all of my kids one of those little round and white mints. They look like this:
(I had a TON left over from a Christmas acivity.)
They each drew the mint on the top of their paper and then had to make a bubble map to write facts about the mint.
Then, they used their maps to write about the mint. I also incorporated persuasive writing into this activity since it's one of our standards.
This one is my favorite, ha!
My little friend is obviously not a big fan of mints.
Moving right along...
I borrowed this ideas from Mrs. Saylor's blog. I love how she uses this technique to help her kiddos write great sentences. I made a little chart and we have been talking a TON about the difference between strong sentences and weak sentences. My kids are even calling out authors in books and saying that their sentences are too weak, ha. They love to hold their arms out like a body builder and tell me that strong sentences are long and heavy like a weight. I can see them trying to make their sentences stronger and it warms my heart. They are good little writers and now they're going to hopefully be even better!
We did a little unit on families about two weeks ago. I let my kids do a pre-writing activity about the members of their family (that I didn't get a picture of.) They had to write two facts about each family member. This was a good activity to differentiate because it was so easy to encourage my high babies to write more!
Next, they took their pre-writing and turned it into a story. When they were done writing, I gave them some people I cut out on the die-cut (sp?) and spread some scrapbook paper on the counter and let them make the people in their family. They turned out much cuter than I expected!
If you can't see their writing, click on the pictures to make them bigger :)
We also did a little unit on shadows. We talked a ton about how the placement of the sun effects the length of a shadow. So, I had my kiddos make a little graphic organizer to explain to me how it works!
Then, we read Bear Shadow by Frank Asch, which is an adorable book! We focused on finding the main idea and providing details about it. We verbally discussed what the main idea was and we kept retelling the story and pointing out the details. So, I made a little graphic organizer for them to complete. I was very proud of how well they did. They worked on these independently while I was doing guided reading.
Well, that's all I have to share right now. We're doing some cute Curious George things this week and penguins/birds next week so maybe I'll have more to share soon!
Thanks for reading!
