March - May Literacy Events

Most recent listed first.

May 14th to May 18th

Read Aloud Stories

  • Butterfly Story by Anca Hariton

  • Butterflies by Joni Phelps Hunt

  • I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe

  • Daisy and the Egg by Jane Simmons

  • See How They Grow: Butterfly photographed by Kim Taylor

  • Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

  • Rainbow Fish to the Rescue by Marcus Pfister

  • Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale by Marcus Pfister

  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

  • Five Little Ducks by Raffi

  • Baby Beluga by Raffi

  • Down by the Bay by Raffi

Literacy Activities

  • The Rainbow Fish stories are wonderful.  I have a number of sea creature puppets and a beautiful Rainbow Fish puppet.  I have some children role playing the story with puppets and I of course adapt the story to the puppets that we have.  Rainbow fish shares a shiny scale with an octopus, a lobster, a crab, a tuna fish and other fish as well in our story.  The children love Rainbow Fish and will role play the story with the puppets during their choice time as well. 

  • With each Rainbow Fish story we have been focusing on beginning, middle, end and on fiction versus information stories.  We also talk about how we can be more like Rainbow fish.

  • The Raffi sing-a-long stories are wonderful. 

Ø     With the song Five Little Ducks, I have a mama duck puppet with 5 baby ducks Velcroed to her that I purchased from Wintergreen.  This is an excellent activity to teach subtraction.  The children love to role play to this song as well.

Ø     With the song Baby Beluga, I have some toy Beluga whales that the children use to role-play as well.

Ø     Finally the Down by the Bay song.  I have this song in my pocket chart.  I have sentence strips as well as individual word cards to this song.  During Literacy centers the children can take a sentence strip out and match up the word cards or create the sentences by singing the song and putting the word cards in order.

 

  • We received caterpillars this week that had just hatched, the caterpillars were very small.  As soon as we received them we measured them.  I asked the children what we should use to measure them.  Some children said paper, our finger or a ruler.  We decided to use both paper and a ruler.  First we put a sheet of paper up to a caterpillar and marked with a pencil how long it was and then we used a ruler to count how many boxes it was.  After the measurement, we predicted how much it would grow each day.  Some children predicted 1 box a day, some 2 boxes and others said it would grow by 100 boxes a day.

Each day we measured and the caterpillar grew by approximately 1 box a day.

  • We painted a half of a cardboard egg carton to represent a caterpillar and glued on eyes and a nose.  When the real caterpillars change so will ours.  The next life cycle change will be the formation of a cocoon in a couple of days.

New Poems

Jellyfish

I know that there are jellyfish
But tell me if it’s true:
Could their also be
In the sea
Peanut butter fish too?

 

Fish

Look at them flit
Lickety-split
Wiggling
Swiggling
Swerving
Curving
Hurrying
Scurrying
Chasing
Racing
Whizzing
Whisking
Flying
Frisking
Tearing around
With a leap and a bound
But none of them making the teeniest, teeniest sound.

 

May 7th- May 11th

Read Aloud Stories

  • Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

  • In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming

  • Five Little Ducks by Raffi

  • The Berenstain Bears Grow-It! by Stan and Jan Berenstain

  • Emma’s Eggs by Margriet Ruurs

  • Too Many Chickens by Paulette Bourgeois and Bill Slavin

  • Egg, A photographic Story of Hatching by Jane Burton and Kim Taylor

 

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Phonemic Awareness: The children sorted objects that started with the letter M and P

  • Listening Center: The children listened to the stories

    • The Grumpy Morning by Darcia Labrosse,

    • Have you Seen Birds?  By Joanne Oppenheim and Barbara Reid

    • Six Crows by Leo Lionni.

  • Guided Writing:  I started pattern writing with my groups of students. I folded a 8 ½ *11 sheet of construction paper and glued a white cover on the front and a white insert in the middle, the children had a little book that they could be the authors and illustrators of.  I asked them to write about what they saw on the farm.  I gave them the pattern, ”I saw … on the farm.”  My expectations were different for each group and for each child.  Some children I expected them to write all of the words in the  pattern sentence while others copied from my print into their book.  The children also illustrated their book.

  • Independent Reading: The children choose books that they were comfortable reading to read independently.

  • ABC’s: The children matched upper case to lower case.  I have blue whales colored and laminated with the upper case letter printed on them and I also have water sprays colored and laminated with the lower case letters printed on them.  I have Velcro on each piece to attach upper case to lower case.

Activities

  • We planted bean seeds

Ø    I folded up a brown paper towel and inserted it in a small Ziploc bag.

Ø    I stapled staples all across the bag so that the bean seeds could sit half way up in the bag.  I left about a half an inch in between each staple.

Ø    The children picked three bean seeds and put them in the bag.

Ø    The children water the bean seeds and closed up the bag.

The paper towel absorbs up the water and keeps the bean seeds moisturized. The children can watch the seeds grow.  First they can see the roots come out of the seeds and go down and then they can see the sprouts go up and grow and grow.  If you see the paper towel drying up you need to add more water but most of the towels stayed wet until the bag was opened.  The bag needs to be opened when the sprouts need more room.  After the bag is opened the bean plants need to be watered quite frequently. 

 

  • We made grass heads by planting grass seeds.

Ø    The children glue on googly eyes, a pom pom and draw a smile on a foam cup to make the face of the grass head.

Ø    After the glue has dried the children fill up the cup with soil about ¾ full.

Ø    The children then take a hand full of seeds and sprinkle them on top.

Ø    They then cover the seeds with more soil.

Ø    I poke a hole at the bottom of the cup for drainage and the children water their grass head.

Ø    I place their grass heads in a shallow foam tray and we watch the grass grow.

Ø    We predict how long it would take for the grass to grow.

After their grass grows they can then give their grass heads a hair cut!

 

Mother’s Day Activities

  • We made bath bombs for our moms by mixing baking soda, corn starch, citric acid, oils, food coloring and witch hazel.

  • We painted wooden pots.

  • We made chocolates.

  • We made stained glass candle holders.  We glued squares of tissue paper on a baby food jar and put a tea light inside.

  • We also made a card for our moms saying, “I love my mom because… “ 

 

April 31st to May 4th

This week was very exciting we started off the week by going to the farm.  This was an excellent fieldtrip!  The farm was booked through the Multicultural Center in Stony Plain.  It was very clean, it had many great activities and had a picnic area where the children could keep their coats/ backpacks and lunches.  Each station was very close to the other and the outhouse was close and CLEAN!

The activities were riding a horse, milking a cow, hayride, a lesson on eggs, lambs/pigs/sheep and making ice cream.  The staff was helpful and friendly.

Our theme for this month is Spring/New Life and Oceans.

We are hatching chicks, ducks and geese.  We are also learning about Sea Life.

Stories we read

  • Chicken and egg by Christine Back and Jens Olesen

  • Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

  • Seeds Grow!  By Angela Shelf Medearis

  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

  • The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle

  • Duck in the Truck by Jez Alborough

  • Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones by Ruth Heller

Literacy Activities

After our fieldtrip to the farm we had many things to write about.  All of the children drew pictures of their favorite things from the farm and then I asked them to label them or to write their story.  With the varying abilities of children I gave them a few options.

 Ø     Option #1- to write down all of the sounds they hear when they say the word.
Ø     Option #2- to write down the beginning sounds.
Ø     Option #3- to write down some letters they think are in the words (the letters that are familiar to them).
Ø      Option #4- to tell me what their story is and I would script for them.
Ø     Option #5- to “pretend” write and tell me their story.

I know where all of my kids are and what option they are capable of and I expect them to meet the challenge.

New Poems:

Hermit Crab

Hermit crab you live all alone
In an empty shell in the sea,
With all those fish,
Don’t you ever wish
For a little company.

 

With this poem I focus on the sh sound in fish and wish.

 

Turtle Poem

There was a giant turtle
He lived in the sea.
He swam in the ocean.
He climbed on the rocks.
 
He snapped at a mosquito
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me!
 
He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn’t catch me!
 

With this poem, my focus is on the words me, he, at and the.

I ask the children to identify the words by pointing to them, by standing up when they hear the word the or by putting up their hand when they hear the word he.

April 23- 27

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Puppets- The children at the puppet center can retell the Hungry Caterpillar story by Eric Carle.  I have read the story a number of times with the children and they are quite familiar with the story.  I also have a green sock for a caterpillar and all of the fruits and various foods of the story cut out of felt with a hole in the middle so that the caterpillar can eat through 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums etc… The children have been taking turns being the caterpillar and retelling the story.

  • Listening Center- The children are listening to the stories Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Jump, Frog, Jump! By Robert Kalan.

  • Alphabet Games- The children are playing the Alphabet Match game.  This game is like an alphabet bingo game. The children put all of the letter cards face down and on their turn pick a card and try to match all of the letters they pick up to the letters on their card.

  • Paired Reading- The children choose independent readers to read with a partner.  The children can choose where they want to read, a favorite spot is in the open area on the couches.  I do need to give reminders to bring back all of the books that they choose.

  • Guided Reading- From the Collections series we are now reading Where?  We have been talking about a number of different things with this book.  In this story a little boy is looking through a book of nursery rhymes.  When the children look at the pictures they immediately relate their background knowledge and start reciting the rhyme.  On the first page it has a picture of Humpty Dumpty on the wall and off the wall, after the children have recited the rhyme we look at the words on the page.  The words are:  on the wall         off the wall

We talked about the darker words and talked about why they are darker than the others.  Some ideas were they both start with the letter o, they are at the starting of the words and finally they are opposites.  Throughout the story there are pictures of various nursery rhymes with simple text at the bottom with bolded opposite words.  After previewing the book first the children were quite successful reading it after!

 

Tuesday, April 17

Books We Read

  • The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle

  • The Clumsy Click Beetle by Eric Carle

Oral Language

  • Today we reviewed the Easter story and talked about what happened on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and on Easter Sunday.  We also talked about the significance of the egg and why we hunt for eggs at Easter time. 

  • While the children were reading a story in the open area I hid about 150 colorful plastic eggs around the classroom.  When the children came back to the classroom they were thrilled to find all of the Easter eggs, they collected them and placed them all in the middle of our carpet.  When we were finished we split the eggs down the middle and divided into two groups. In our groups we had to come up with a sorting rule for our eggs.

Ø       One group decided to divide the eggs first by size, big and small.  Once they started to sort they found some that didn’t quite fit the criteria.  I asked them whether they were going to put it with the small eggs or with the big eggs.  They said that it was a medium size and that they were going to make a pile for medium eggs. 

Ø       Once they sorted by size they again sorted them by color within their size groupings.  Color sorting was interesting because there were some eggs that were light yellow and bright yellow, the children decided to sort them by shades of color as well.  I asked them why this color yellow and the other color yellow were not put together.  They responded by saying that they were not the same color.  I questioned them again and told them they were both yellow though.  They then responded by saying one was bright and one was light, I then responded by saying Oh! They are a different shade of yellow O.K. giving them the vocabulary for their sorting rules.

Ø       After each group had finished sorting we looked at each other’s groupings and tried to guess what their sorting rule or rules were.

Ø       I then extended the activity by asking the children to sit in front of a grouping of eggs.  I asked them to take 2 eggs in one hand and 3 eggs in the other.  I modeled it as well.  Then I asked them what 2 + 3 was?  When I asked I held out one hand and then the other and then I put them together showing them that adding is taking one group and putting it together with another group.  I asked them how many all together?  We did this activity with a few other number combinations and then I asked them to take 0 in one hand and 0 in another.  What is 0+0? They responded by saying 0.  It was a great activity and the children really enjoyed it!

Friday, April 6

Books We Read

  • Hopper’s Easter Surprise by Marcus Pfister

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Guided Reading

Ø      Still continuing with I Wonder from the collections series, I had another group of students, we continued to:

Ø       Look for page numbers
Ø       Look at where the picture was
Ø       Look at where the words were
Ø       Look for a word
Ø       Look for a letter
Ø       Look for upper case letters
Ø       Look for lower case letters

  • Phonemic Awareness

    • At this center I had a number of new activities.  In one activity I have 4 sets of word cards.  One set has 4 cards that have objects that start with the letter K.  One set had the letter L, another the letter P and another the letter T.  The cards are mixed up and the students need to put all the word cards in order according to beginning sounds. 

    • The other new activity is I have all the letters of the alphabet and pictures of 3 objects that start with each letter mixed up.  The students need to set out all of the letters and match the objects with the letter. 

  • ABC’s

  • Browsing Books
  • Computers

 

Thursday, April 5

Books we read

  • Hopper Hunts For Spring by Marcus Pfister

  • Bunnies Noisy Book by Margaret Wise

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Guided Reading

Ø      With my group today, we did a lot of the same things as the previous group.
Ø       Looked for page numbers
Ø       Looked at where the picture was
Ø       Looked at where the words were
Ø       Looked for a word
Ø       Looked for a letter
Ø       Looked for upper case letters
Ø       Looked for lower case letters

Ø      We first previewed the book focusing on the pictures and what they saw in the pictures.

Ø      After we previewed the story I read through it allowing them to read with me when they knew words or figured out the pattern.  For more success I gave them hints for words asking:
Ø       What color is the butterfly?
Ø       How many legs does a ladybug have?
Ø       What is a pig’s nose called?
Ø       What color is this frog?
Ø       What are all these black things on the frog called?

  • ABC’s

The group at ABC’s were putting the alphabet in order.  On the bulletin board I had a picture of a cracked eggshell separated and stapled up on the board leaving a space in between the two halves.  On the top half I had the letter A printed on it and on the bottom half I had the letter C printed on it.  I continued the eggshells all the way through the alphabet leaving out the letter to go in between the two eggshells.  In a Ziploc bag stapled beside the eggshells I have a picture of baby chicks colored and cut out with the missing letters on them.  For example the letter B is printed on the baby chick and it fits in between the two egg shells A and C. The letter E on the chick to fit between shells D and F and so on.  The students help each other to put the letters in order.  When they are finished I have two sets of letters of the alphabet and they can play a memory game with the letters finding a pair.

  • Computer

  • Phonemic Awareness

  • Listening Center

 

Tuesday, April 3

Books we read

  • Hang on Hopper by Marcus Pfister

  • Today it is Spring by Vera Trembach

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Guided Reading

Ø       We read I Wonder in the Early Collections Series.  Each child had a book and we previewed the book first.

Ø       I asked them to look at the pictures and to talk about what they saw.  On the first couple of pages there is a picture of a pond with pond life around it.  The children said they saw water or a lake and I asked them what a small area of water was?  I then told them that it was called a pond.  I asked them what they thought lived in a pond.  They looked at the pictures and picked out things they saw.

Ø       We then continued to the next page.  I asked them where the picture was, where the words were and where the page number was.  We talked about the picture and I asked them if they knew any of the words at the bottom of the page.  One child found the word butterfly and I asked that child how she knew it was the word butterfly and she responded by saying that it starts with the letter B and there is a picture of a butterfly on that page. 

Ø       On the following page my other students in the group were motivated to find the word ladybug because there was a picture of a ladybug.  They were very excited to find the words.  This excitement carried on throughout the story and I would continually ask them how they knew and they said they looked at the picture and then looked for the first letter.  I gave them a lot of positive reinforcement by saying that that is what good readers do and that they are awesome readers!

Ø       After previewing the story we went back and read the book, I did most of the reading and paused when we came to a word that I knew they knew.  They then helped with the reading and also read with me when they figured out the pattern of the story.

Ø       I keep the big book copy in my bookshelf so that they can return to the story and read it during browsing books time or independent reading time.

  • ABC’s

  • Listening Center

  • Browsing Books

  • Puppets

 

Monday, April 2

Read Aloud Stories

  • Hopper by Marcus Pfister

  • The Golden Egg by Maggie Kneen

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Phonemic Awareness: The children sorted objects that started with the letter K and B

  • Listening Center: The children listened to the stories

    • I’m a Little Teapot by Iza Trapani 

    • Alligator Baby by Robert Munsch

  • Guided Reading: For guided reading today we read I Wonder by Lynn Bryan, this story is from the First Collections for Kindergarten series.  This book is fantastic, the group that I had today were very eager and used many of their reading strategies that they have acquired to read the story.  Here is an example of the text in this story:

I wonder what lives in a pond?
Not a butterfly with orange wings!
Not a ladybug with six legs!
A spotted green frog lives in the pond.

This book has non-fiction pictures of the different creatures and it has some painting like drawings for the, I wonder pages.  I used this book to predict what they think lives in a pond... in the sand… in a hole… and then we turned to the next page to see what the book said lives in a pond.

 

  • With my group we first browsed through the book looking at the pictures and talked about what they saw.  I also asked them questions to help them with vocabulary when we would read through it.  For example, I would ask:

    • What color is the butterfly?

    • How many legs does a ladybug have?

    • What color is the frog?

    • What are these black things on the frog?

These questions will help when reading the story. After browsing we then read through the book together.  I didn’t take long for this group to catch onto the pattern in the story and they began to read it independently, with some facilitation. We went through the story a third time and the last time the children took turns reading through the book, helping each other as needed.

  • Computer

    • Franklin’s Reading World

    • Chicka Chicka Boom, Boom

  • Paired Reading

    • The children chose independent readers to read to a friend.

Wednesday, March 21

Read Aloud Stories

  • I Want to Learn to Fly!  by Judy Barron

  • I Want to Be an Astronaut by Byron Barton

Oral Language

This was our last day in space and the children wanted one final blast off!  We all fit into the space ship and the children pressed the buttons to get the engines rolling.  We counted down 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, Blast off!  We started to soar into space and the lights went off!  We looked out the windows to see what we saw!  I heard children saying they saw Mercury, the sun, Mars then one of my assistants started walking past the windows with pictures of the solar system.  We were soaring past planets and stars and meteors, dodging in and out of the space rocks and our destination was Pluto, the coldest planet.  We landed softly on Pluto and put on our space suits and air tanks before we left the space shuttle.  When we were walking on the coldest planet the children were shivering and were bouncing when they were walking we walked around and talked about what we saw.  It was a great adventure!

 

Tuesday, March 20

Read Aloud Stories

  • If I were the Moon by Sheree Fitch

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Phonemic Awareness: The children sorted objects that started with the letter F and B

  • Listening Center: The children listened to the story Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker

  • Guided Reading: I started another group with the book Up the Hill from the Collections series. When previewing the book I asked them to look at the contents page and we talked about books that have a number of different stories within the same book and that you can find the stories and which page they are on, on the contents page. 

After our discussion I asked them which story they would like to read and they chose “Big Duck’s Walk”.  I then asked what page they think it is on and how we can find out what page it is on.  Then we all flipped to page 11 and proceeded to preview the story by talking about the pictures.  After our preview I directed them to look at the words at the bottom and asked if them to read the story with me.  We shared the reading the first time and then they independently read the story the second time.

  • ABC’s: One group matched upper case with lower case, matched word cards to sentence strips in Twinkle, Twinkle.  The children also matched alphabet cards to an alphabet carpet.

  • Browse Books:  One group browsed Space books.

 

Monday, March 19

Read Aloud Stories

  • The Bubble Factory by Tomie dePaola

  • Laura’s Star by Klaus Baumgart

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Phonemic Awareness: The children sorted objects that started with the letter F and B

  • Listening Center: The children listened to the story Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker

  • Guided Reading: I started a new group with the book Up the Hill from the Collections series.  This particular book has two stories in it, the first is Apples a poem by Iris Zammit and the second is Big Duck’s Walk a factual recount by Liz Stenson .  When we were previewing the book I asked them to look at the contents page and we talked about books that have a number of different stories within the same book and that you can find the stories and which page they are on, on the contents page. 

After our discussion I asked them which story they would like to read and they chose “Big Duck’s Walk”.  I then asked what page they think it is on and how we can find out what page it is on.  Then we all flipped to page 11 and proceeded to preview the story by talking about the pictures.  After our preview I directed them to look at the words at the bottom and asked if them to read the story with me.  We shared the reading the first time and then they independently read the story the second time.

  • Independent Reading:  One group independently read books

  • Browse Books: One group browsed the Space books

 

Friday, March 16

Read Aloud Stories

  • Clever Tom and the Leprechaun as requested by the children

Shared Reading

  • Shamrocks on the…

Oral Language

Well the Leprechaun came to the classroom and made a mess.  He left green footprints on the floor, tables, walls and even on the spaceship.  He left Leprechaun dust all over the place.  He put our names for the attendance all over the classroom, he put poems upside down, he moved the tables all around, he mixed up all of the shoes, he put books all over the floor and put them upside down in the bookshelf.  

  • He also left us a note, it read:

Hello Children!

I had a wonderful time in your classroom, I hope I didn’t make too much of a mess… ha ha.  I loved playing with all of the toys and reading the books and I especially loved the spaceship.  You know us Leprechauns are not only lucky but we are tricky too!  Mrs. Bezubiak will let you know if you are hot or cold now go and find my pot of gold!  Signed Lucky the Leprechaun

  • He then left a pot of gold treasure hunt for us to follow.  The first clue was right beside the door and it read:

Say your pot of gold poem.
Now go to the place where you can run, jump and roll.
We then proceeded to the gym, the children found the next clue and it read:
Touch your toes, tummy and sky 3 times.
Now go to the place where you take down your attendance.
We then walked to the office, the children then found the next clue, and it read:
Sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
Now go to the place where you can sign out books
We then walked to the Library and found the last clue and it read:
Name 5 things that are green
Now go and find my gold at the end of the rainbow.
There was a rainbow on one of the bulletin boards and the pot of gold was at the end of the rainbow.

  • In the pot was gold loonies taped to a task card, there was a note on the pot of gold that told us we had to play a pass the hat game to music and when the music stopped the person who was holding the pot picked out a card and completed the task that was requested on the card.  Some of the tasks were: “Name 5 people in your class”, “What is your phone number?” “Sing I’m a Little Teapot”, “ What is the only star you can see during the day?”  Each card had a different task and the tasks were selected so that the children were successful.  The children were very excited and were curious as to see what else the Leprechaun was up to and we investigated it further.

 

Thursday, March 15

Read Aloud Stories

  • Clever Tom and the Leprechaun

Shared Reading

  • Another pattern story

    • Shamrocks on the…

Cat, Hat
Door, Floor
Coat, Shoes
Plates, table
Chair, Window
Walls, Everywhere

  • An Alphabet Book:

    • My Little F Book

Five fish
Fry food
And find forks
Five fat fish.

 Oral Language

  • I focused on the F sound. I read them “My Little F Book” and then I had a number of F objects in a bag.  I asked some children to feel the object and to guess what it was, I gave them clues that it starts with the letter F or I asked them what it felt like and gave them a choice is it___ or is it___ etc…

Songs and Poems

  • Poems:

    • Pot of Gold

  • Songs:

    • Jellybean

    • Clap, Stamp and Shake

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Phonemic Awareness:  A different group working on sorting objects that start with the letter S and F.

  • Listening Center: Listening to Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle

  • Paired Reading: The children read independent readers to their friends in their group.

  • Guided Writing:

I had a group writing in their journals:
Ø      we listened to the sounds in the word my and family 
Ø      we stretched out the sounds and then clapped the sounds we heard 
Ø      the children wrote the words in their journal.  
Ø      After writing the words I asked them to write the names of the people in their family 

The children were asked to draw their family

  • ABC’s: This group matched upper case with lower case, matched word cards to sentence strips in Twinkle, Twinkle.  The children also matched alphabet cards to an alphabet carpet.  

 

Wednesday, March 14

Read Aloud Stories

  • Architect of the Moon by Tim Wynne-Jones

  • Little Critter Astronaut by Mercer Mayer

Oral Language

After reading the Mercer Mayer story the children noticed the flag that the little critter made to show that he was on the moon.  I had one student who wanted to make a flag that he could stake out on his trip to the moon.

He painted a red flag with a nice leaf in the middle to resemble the Canadian Flag.  Before he decided on the design of his flag we looked through a few books and he noticed the American flag and he asked about it.  I took out the globe and pointed to the location of the United States and showed him a picture of the Canadian flag.  He decided that he wanted his flag to resemble the Canadian flag.

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Listening Center:  The children listened to Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle

  • Paired Reading:  The children read independent readers to their friends in their group.

  • Guided Writing: I had a group writing in their journals:

    • we listened to the sounds in the word my and family 

    • we stretched out the sounds and then clapped the sounds we heard

    • the children wrote the words in their journal. 

    • After writing the words I asked them to write the names of the people in their family

    • The children were asked to draw their family

  • ABC’s:  This group matched upper case with lower case, matched word cards to sentence strips in Twinkle, Twinkle.  The children also matched alphabet cards to an alphabet carpet.

 

Tuesday, March 13

Read Aloud Stories

  • Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!  I’m off to the Moon!  By Dan Yaccarino

Songs and Poems

  • Poems:

    • Pot of Gold

    • Mercury, Venus, the Earth…

    • In a Rocket

  • Songs:

    • Twinkle, Twinkle

    • Star Light, Star Bright

    • I’m a Little Rocket

    • Clap, Stamp and Shake

Balanced Literacy Centers

  • Puppets:   

At the puppet center the students have a choice of four different finger puppet stories to choose from. The choices are:  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs.  I have the finger puppets in a Ziploc Bag with the corresponding book.  They can then retell the story.  I also tell them that it is O.K. to change the story if they would like to and create their own story using the puppets.

  • Phonemic Awareness:  Today the group sorted objects starting with S and F.

  • Computer:  The children on the computer today played Franklin’s Reading World  and Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!

  • Paired Reading: