October 14th, 2024

We started blending cvc words with the sounds we have introduced so far today.  We used /m/, /p/, /t/, and /a/.  The children did a really great job saying each sound then blending them to discover the word.  We tap our shoulder for the first sound, middle arm for the middle sound, and the wrist for the ending sound, then run our hand down our arm to blend the sounds together.  We try to involve different senses and movement when learning this skill.  I was hoping to have the children use sand to practice writing the words but as I left my condo this morning, I grabbed the wrong bag and brought six bottles of Diet Coke to school instead.  I told the children we could use the Diet Coke to practice, but they had sense enough to decide that would not be a good idea.  
In our Knowledge lesson, we worked with learning about the sense of taste.  We had some lovely vocabulary words to talk about.  We learned about the words flavorful, congested, saliva, pucker and taste buds.  We learned that the sense of smell makes the sense of taste more potent.  In fact, the sense of taste alone is the weakest of the senses, but when smell is involved the sense of taste is enhanced.  The children were skeptical of this when we looked at a child plugging his nose while taking medicine.  So I challenged them to try it tonight at home.  
The children are really doing a great job participating more.  We had a little group of about five for quite a while being the only volunteers, although I would call on others to answer or share their ideas.  I think they have become more confident with our picture talks, but I think what has really made a difference is the "game show" buzzers I bought.  What we are working on now is listening more closely to the question before answering.  The passages we are reading to the children in this part of the program are somewhat challenging.  
In math, we worked with ten today.  We drew the counting paths we used to find the total number of items.  We also worked with looking at five and counting-on from five if possible.  We also have been playing a simple game of counting to ten.  The children stand around the carpet, and one child starts the count, and the person next to them says the next number, until we get to ten.  The child that says ten sits down.  We keep going until all but one child is sitting.  When we played this on Friday they were rather leisurely and weren't really paying attention closely enough, so I put a timer on them today.  We still had some longer than necessary pauses.  While counting to ten is easy for them on their own, listening and figuring out what comes next is a little more challenging.  I repeated the game to practice staying focused and ready.  
Before our SEL lesson today, we had a little class meeting.  We started by giving each child an opportunity to thank someone if they wanted to for something special they had done for them.  I started by thanking a child for encouraging her partner to talk during our Picture Talks.  When I recognized her for doing this, my little class of "copy cats" caught on and now I'm hearing a lot of encouraging and words  like "what do you think?"  
We listened to a story The Invisible Boy, but Trudy Ludwig.  This is the story of a little boy who is consistently left out of activities and a party.  We talked about the word empathy again and thought about how this little boy must feel.  Ask me to tell you what happens to the little boy.
I was all set to begin reading The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown, today.  Sadly, it was in the bag with my sand.  So we listened to a picture book called The Robot and the Bluebird, by David Lucas.  This is a beautiful story of an old robot who has a broken heart.  He's old and of no use, so he's put on top of a huge heap of trash.  A bluebird who is trying to fly south arrives and is so tired she doesn't think she can make it south.  Ask me to tell you what happens and how the story ends.  
We are really excited to start reading The Wild Robot.  I don't normally read chapter books to children because there seems to be such a rush for kids to pick chapter books at the library and miss out on the amazing picture books.  Both kinds of books serve a great purpose, and honestly some of the beginning chapter books are not the best examples of children's literature, so I always want to immerse them in picture books!  But last Saturday I attended an online conference, and Peter Brown was the keynote speaker.  He talked about the short chapters and said he intentionally made the chapters short because when he was a student, he had a lot of difficulty reading.  He learned to stop and think about what he read when reading longer texts, but he said what a challenge it was to get through a chapter.  These short chapters provide struggling readers that opportunity to feel success with short amounts of text.  He also talked about how this is a great book for students in kindergarten and first grade because of the short chapters.  So as I often do at this conference, I opened another window on my computer and ordered it from Amazon.  It's a free conference so I always rationalize the purchases I make during the conference are really like the conference fee.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe