ask me about thursday, october 17, 2024

Busy day!  We worked with the /g/ sound like goat.  We practiced making the sound, being sure to just make the /g/ and not add on an /u/.  We also practicing making the /g/ and /k/ sound to hear the difference because there is also confusion with these two sounds.  
We practicing writing the letter g.  This is a tricky letter because the children often put it on the wrong line.  We will work more with this next week.  We got the shape of it down, we just need to work on placement more.  
We had an SEL lesson that reinforced our /g/.  We read Grumpy Goat, by Brett Helquist is a beautiful story about friendship.  Grumpy Goat arrives at a happy, friendly farm to live but is grumpy and mean to the other animals.  He has never had a friend until he sees a dandelion growing on top of a hill.  Ask me to tell you what happens. This story helps children see that their feelings can change, just as Grumpy Goat's feelings change throughout the story.  This is a good reminder when having sad, mad, grumpy, etc. feelings.  The lesson also shows how good friends are there for their friends when they are sad.  Ask me to tell you what happened when Grumpy Goat was sad.  This is such a beautiful story with beautiful illustrations also by Brett Helquist.
When we have time, we will have a guided drawing lesson with Mo Willems and the letters of the alphabet.  We didn't have time yesterday to do the drawing for the letter c so we did it today.  Your child is bringing home a picture of Charlie Brown they drew with Mo who explained how he loved Charlie Brown as a child and drew him often.  Here is the short video we watched to draw Charlie Brown.  Many of the lines we practiced in our Skills Units 1 and 2 are used in this character.

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In our Knowledge Unit, we learned about Ray Charles today.  I wasn't real happy with the story in the guide so I bought a children's book about Ray Charles that we will slip in on Monday.  Ray Charles starts our Friday mornings as he sings "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" for our signal to put books and reading spots away and come to the carpet.  Ask me to tell you about Ray Charles.
The kids should remember Ray Charles' name because when it was time for Social Studies and I put a picture up of President Biden and asked who it was many said Ray Charles.  I told you the book we read in the Knowledge part of our reading is not great!  Anyway, we had to rule out other names such as President Harrison and Mo Willems, and the word empathy.  I told them empathy was the most important word they would learn this year, and so it has become the default answer when they don't know!  I finally had to pick up my Woo-Hoo phone and pretend to call the White House and one of my friends very enthusiastically said "She's calling Joe."  We're on a first name president with Joe although we don't recognize him.  We finally got around to talking about what the president does, and I gave some current events examples like about how he is helping with the recent hurricanes.

I'll try and get some pictures of these rascals next week and post them so you can see them in action.  They are a special little group of learners and I enjoy working with them.
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Have a great evening!
Miss Wolfe