authors, inventors, and researchers...

Over the past few weeks, we've been making lots of class books.

My two favorites were created during the week that our spelling words were "days of the week" and "months of the year."  We wrote "The Very Hungry First Graders" and "The Pigeon Munches All Year Long."

We're still illustrating, but here's how the story starts and ends.  

Here's "The Pigeon Munches All Year Long."

After we read "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog," the kids did a great job on some directed drawing.

I used the sketch below to guide them through the process.

We've also been conducting research about famous inventors and working on a few inventions of our own!

We're also taking a closer look at the animals and plants of the desert habitat. 

We've also been working on character analysis and higher level comprehension skills.  I loved these portraits of Miss Nelson along with her physical traits and character traits.  We were supposed to create one for Viola Swamp as well, but didn't get a chance to.  Harry Allard's "Miss Nelson" series is great for teaching character analysis because Miss Nelson and Viola Swamp have easily identifiable traits.