Eric Carle, Morning Work, the Mystery Bag and much more!

There is so much to post about.  This is our 11th day of Kindergarten and the children are starting to get into the routine of school and we are starting to get into more academic work now that we are getting the procedures and expectations down.  We are still working on learning about a Level One voice (this is a whispering voice we use during Reading and Writing Workshop).  They have Level Zero under control now!  Please practice a Level One voice at home.  Now onto the pictures!

This was our Anchor Chart today during Reading Workshop.  All of the students said they were Book Lovers and not Book Bullies~ they know how to treat book correctly.

Our morning work is getting harder.  The children are having to follow multi-step directions, cutting, gluing and drawing.  We will be doing more activities like this during our morning work.

 

We are reading some Eric Carle books this week.  Eric Carle is also an author and illustrator.  We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See and the children wanted to write their own story like Eric Carle.  Eric Carle uses a very specific technique to create his illustrations and the children borrowed some of my Eric Carle vocabulary cards for their "research" while they created their stories.  They used multiple colors like Eric Carle in their illustrations.  The snake is not just green but yellow and red are added in his work to add depth.  The children did a great job studying his words and art to create their stories.

Here are some of their stories.  I thought they did a great job of not using the characters in the book we read but created new characters instead.  That was wonderful thinking on their part and shows that they really understood the book and were able to use it as a template to create their stories.

Spider, spider, what do you see?  I see a frog looking at me.

This child took the Pigeon from the book we read last week and the characters from the Angry Birds game and incorporated both of those into his story.  How clever is that?

Pigeon, pigeon what do you see?  I see an Angry Bird looking at me.
 

Snake, snake what do you see?  I see a butterfly looking at me.

I see a cat looking at me.

Tiger, tiger what do you see?  I see a monkey looking at me.

We have started using the Smart Board for some of our lessons.  One of the most popular is practicing writing on the Smart Board.  These two girls were doing shapes and patterning.

 

 

We also attempted our first group project.  We will be doing several this year, including making volcanoes, making butter, making stone soup and others if the children are interested.  This was a group project to paint like Eric Carle and create a painting for our classroom.  This was the first step.  We will eventually add tissue paper and more paint to create a class collage.  The children really enjoyed the project as you probably noticed from the paint on them when they came home!

Today we had our first Mystery Bag brought in.  It was a major success!  The bag was full of lovely Ll words!  The student loved showing the class all of the items and the kids loved looking at and playing with the Ll items.  This was the "hit" activity for the day.  We are all looking forward to many more Mystery Bags this year.  Thanks you to the student and parent that put our first one together for us.  You Rocked the assignment!

Some of the Ll items included: lilac, locomotive, lasagna, lips, lemon, lion, limousine, lights (holiday, flashing and a flashlight), Lego, loader, lenses, loop, ladle and many more!

 I wanted to end this post with some pictures of the children kicking back and reading during Reading Workshop today.  They were definitely enjoying the new books.  They get to "book shop" (choose new books from the classroom library) on Wednesdays.  Each child chooses five books to keep for the week.  This gives them time to become familiar with the books and gain confidence from viewing them multiple times.  They were in heaven!  They couldn't wait to read their books.  I was so excited to see them developing a deep love of books.  It is truly magical to see them excited about reading.

 

Keep Reading At Home!

 

David and Pigeon

Wow, the kids loved the unit on the No, David and the Pigeon books during Reading and Writing Workshop.  I wanted to share some of their writing from Writing Workshop.  I think you will be amazed, I was!

 

This time during Writing Workshop many of the children wanted copies of the books by David Shannon so they could refer to them while they wrote their stories.  I told them that was called research.  I will use that word many times this year.  Powerful readers and writers do research.

 

You can tell we used the No, David books to teach about making choices, both good and bad.  I was glad this student concentrated on the end of the book where David makes good choices!

Poor David!  This child took the story and then placed David into a whole new situation.  I didn't ask what David did to get arrested.  I should have.  This would have helped this child expand their story even further.  I will come back to this illustration a little later in the year and ask this child why David got arrested and encourage him to expand the story.

 

The next set of samples are from the children that wrote about Pigeon.  You will notice that the students are all at different stages of the writing process.  That is very normal at this age.  Right now Writing Workshop is all about thinking, creating and forming stories.  If you ask your child about the picture they can tell you the whole story in their drawing.  This is why I started the unit using people who write and illustrate their books, such as Mo Williams and David Shannon.  This way the children learn that the illustrations are just as important to the story as the pictures.  The more they practice studying the illustrations the better they will get at visualizing their own illustrations for their own stories.

 

 

This group is working very hard on their illustrations for their story.

Look at how this child researchers in the book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive The Bus to capture the "crazy" reaction Pigeon has when he can't drive the bus.  See how this child looked at the illustration by Mo Williams and tried to recreate that "crazy" on their illustration?  When you look at the drawings side by side you can see that the child is working hard to recreate "crazy" in their drawing.  Pretty smart!

You can see in this illustration how this child took the story from the book and expanded on it, making the Pigeon a giant.  The bus is very small.  Great imagination.  I will come back to this drawing with this child later in the school year to see if they can expand the story into a beginning, middle and end and then publish it.  We will then place the story into our classroom library!

Ok, I am totally in love with this wedding van this child drew.  Again, look at how this child is expanding on the original story to create her own.  This shows wonderful attention to detail.  I wonder if she will make this into a book this year to publish?

This child is already trying to write her own story.  This is what is great about this type of writing project and why I love Writing Workshop.  Each child can work on the skills they are learning and don't have to work too far ahead of their skill level, or have to stay "with the class" if they are ready to jump ahead into inventive writing or actual writing.  At this age children have a wide range of skills and it is critical to let them work at their own pace.

 

Wow, a tornado is on the way!  Again, this child really stretched beyond the book and created a whole new situation for Pigeon.  I think this is going to be an amazing group of writers and readers this year! 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this little look into our Writing and Reading Workshops.  Show the pictures to you child and see if they can identify their story and have them retell it to you tonight.  I couldn't post them all, but you will see them at Parent-Teacher Conferences.



 

Finding our songs on You Tube

I know I said I would update the blog again this weekend but I ran out of time!  I did want to post how you can find some of the kids favorite songs we use in class.  If you go to You Tube and type in Jack Hartman you will find the ABC Sound Song that we are using to learn our letter sounds, The Vowel Song and The Pirate Song.  They love these.  There is also a Chicken Counting song they love.  You can also do a search for Harry Kindergarten and find lots of great learning songs. 

 

 

This week I am using the Smart Board for several math and reading activities.  The children earn time on the Smart Board for Being Safe, Being Responsible and Being Respectful.  I will have time at the end of the day for the students to cash in there points for time on the Smart Board.  This gives them the opportunity to earn something special for remember the rules. 

I will post more pictures tomorrow.  I was busy copying "popcorn words" (you will see those in their backpacks this week) and color words.  Our first popcorn word (these are site words) is AND and our first color word is RED.  We will add more words every week.

I will leave you with this pledge to you and to your child.

 

I loved this when I saw it. 

 

August 23, 2012

Wow, we have accomplished so much this week.  We just finished our 7th day of school.  Only 93 more until our 100th Day Celebration!  It will be here before you know it!  Here are some highlights from the past two days.

Morning Work - Math Style



Children use tanagrams to make pictures.  This is an introduction to geometry!

These puzzles are also a great way to fine tune their visual discrimination skills which they will use for math, illustrating stories, forming letters and words and reading.

Patterning and color recognition are also important math concepts.

 Now presenting:  Reading and Writing Workshop!

We read Mo Williams Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! The children fell in love with the book.  Mo Williams is like David Shannon from the No, David! books.  They both author and illustrate their books.

The children were asked what else should the pigeon not drive?  There answers were amazing!  They wanted to go write and illustrate their ideas.  Who am I to tell them no?  So, I scrapped the lesson plan and went the the children's idea.  It was an amazing lesson.

Are you as amazed at their illustrations as I am?  I was blown away!  This is definitely going to be my class of authors and illustrators this year.  I can't wait to see what class books they make this year.

This child said that the pigeon should not drive the bus!

This one said the pigeon drive the train.

Look at the detail this child is putting into his illustration!

Look at the windows and tires and use of color. 

Mo Williams would be proud.  Ask your child to draw the pigeon for you and to tell you the story.  Check it out from the library if you have never read it.  I am sure your child would read this to you!

During Math time we did some work with patterning.  This is a first quarter common core standard skills every child needs to have mastered by the end of October.  Work on patterning at home.



This is another tanagram activity that the child love!  They think they are just making pictures but really they are solving complex puzzles and developing critical thinking and problem solving skills.

We really started working on "Stamina" within our Reading Workshop.  Stamina means being able to do something for a long time without getting tired.  We are working on stamina to get through the Kindergarten day and we are working on stamina to sustain reading for longer and longer periods of time.  I will introduce them to the word and the concept of stamina.  Work on stamina in reading at home by asking extending questions about characters, plot and details from the story. 

We all were able to choose five books from our classroom library and we placed them into our large zip lock bags.  These five books remain with us all week long.  We keep them out our desks and whenever we finish our work early we can always pull out our books and read.  We are going to work a lot on reading to ourselves and reading with a partner.  I recommend that you take a large zip lock at home and let them place three to five books in it to keep for "bored" times, to keep in the car or to just enjoy reading for no reason.  This way they can model to you what they do at school.  Let them teach you how to sit EEKK.  Ask them this weekend to show you how to read EEKK.  I bet they can show you!

We are working on the letter Ll this week.  We are learning how to draw it and how it sounds in the beginning position of words.  This is the list of L words the class generated.  Pretty impressive!

The children love to sing along to songs that support math and reading concepts.  Some of their favorite songs are by Jack Hartman.  Go to YouTube and look him up.  The kids love the Letter Sounds Song, The Vowels Song and The Pirate Song.  You will laugh at how much they love these songs and how loudly they sing them.   Another favorite is the Chicken Counting Song.  If you show them this picture I bet they can sing it for you.

I will post more soon.  As always, Read!