Silly Rabbit. . . Books are for Kids

Today we kicked off the last week of school with a "reading marathon."  Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we ate a little bit of cereal.  

Then we read, 

 read, 

read,

and read a little more!

 The students brought a favorite book, a stuffed animal, and their slippers.  

I wore my monkey slippers today, and even Yoda joined us!  The students loved switching books and discussing their favorite parts while they sat in the "reading marathon circle."  

 

   

 

 We took a break to create a new class book:  "Silly Rabbit...Books Are For Kids!"

 

 

 

  In case you're wondering why we were here at school on Memorial Day, it's because of all of the ice/snow mixture that we got during the first week of February!  Please excuse the mess and clutter you see in the background...I am in the process of preparing the room for summer!  

Mother's Day 2011

Here are a few cute ideas for Mother's Day.  They are connected to literature and can be completed within a couple of days!  In addition to these ideas I will probably have my student make a portrait of their mom with a water-color background because they always turn out so adorable.  In the past I've also done a class cook book where every student chooses a dish or dessert that their mom makes really well.  Then they write the "secret recipe" of how their mom makes the dish.  It's a really great review for expository writing, and they are hilarious!

I spotted these at Dollar Tree several weeks ago, and I thought they would make a perfect gift.  Each student will decorate their own "mug," and we'll place a few tea bags inside.


This is one of my favorite books about "mom's."  It has all kinds of things inside (and I mean all kinds of things-mom's have to be prepared)!  The kids always enjoy making predictions about what's inside.  Then we read the book to check our predictions.  As we read we also discuss which things are absolutely necessary and which things are optional.

I LOVE this part of the cover!

 SO true!

 Take a peek at a few pages. . .

This book is called "My Mommy's Tote."  The author is P.H. Hanson.
There are zillions of other ways to use this book!

This year I'm going to try something new.  Since we've already read "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse." We'll use it for comprehension as we complete some comparing and contrasting activities and text to self connections.
Students will make a purse for their mom using cute scrapbook paper. Then they'll write about things that their mom has inside her purse that help her to stay prepared!  I also made a venn diagram for students to compare and contrast Lilly's purse to their own mom's purse.


I have included a few examples of the class cookbook and a min-book about mom's (My Mom the Superhero).  My students will probably trace and cut two purses.  Then we'll seal the sides and bottom.  Inside the top we'll add the "mom" book and "purse" writing.

Class Cook Book_mother's Day

Mother's Day Book

Purse Onal Greeting

Compare and Contrast_purse

my cup of tea

mom's purse

I love Mother's Day because I have a wonderful mom, because I love being a mom, and because I know so many loving and dedicated moms who deserve to be showered and appreciated!

Ouch!

My kids had a fabulous job writing about their "owies." 

Last night at Old Navy I found the cutest band-aids!  I didn't buy them, but I'll probably regret that.  They had zebra, leopard, hearts, flowers, and really cute designs that would be perfect for this project.

Something to Shout About!

This week we're our phonemic awareness skill are "ou" and "ow".  Here are a few cute ideas that my class has enjoyed so far.  The book in the picture above is full of short poems which are perfect for primary learners.  They're short, funny, and have fabulous illustrations.  Today we talked about how April is national poetry month, and we promised to read at least one great poem every single day for the rest of the year.

Here's a copy of our poem of the week.

my cow_poem

I love this book because it is so comprehensive.  It has word families, consonant blends, digraphs, vowel combinations, prefixes and suffixes, and short skill assessments.  This week we're making the "ouch" and "own" books.  This is also a great tool for students because they store them in a ziploc bag inside their book boxes.  They can study their weekly spelling words and get accurate spellings for words that they're not sure about.  

I also love this book because it has so many open ended word sorts.  There are lots of ways to use this book with students of all levels.  I can adjust the parameters of the sort for my students depending on their phonemic awareness strengths and reading abilities.  My higher students like to use these as a word challenge to see how many different ways the words can be sorted.

On Monday we made these sunflowers and brainstormed lots of  "ow" words.  

We also read this book to learn more about the life cycle of  asunflower.  

Today we focused more on "ou."  We read "Arthur's Boo Boo's," and then each student completed a 

text-to-self connection about an injury or "owie" that they've had.  Most of the students are still working on theirs, but here is an example.  

I think they look so dang cute, and I guess I never really knew how much a neon colored band-aid could put a smile on a little one's face!

We're working on measurement in math right now so we got those sunflowers out again.  Each student's flower was just a little different.  They all had different lengths for their stem, petals, and leaves.  They measured their flowers and other items from around the room using snap cubes.  

We also painted these flowers for more measurement practice tomorrow.  We'll use paper clips, bear counters, snap cubes, color tiles, and crayons to measure these tomorrow.  

 

It's amazing how much six and seven year olds love to paint!

Tomorrow we're having a "sour" taste test with sour jelly beans, sour straws, and pickles. We'll graph the and analyze our results.  I can't wait to snap pictures of those cute little "sour" faces!