ask me about wednesday, september 27, 2024

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we watched another animated short.  This time the llama has a different problem.  The problem is what gets the story going.  When talking about beginning, middle and end with the children, they were fixated on the llama getting shocked.  Jumping over the fence and being shocked was not what got the story going, it was that the llama was hungry and wanted better food that was in the other fenced areas.  The middle part of the story is the struggle to get over the fence and seeing that little armadillo come by and go under the fence.  This does not work out well for the llama.  Ask me to tell you how the story ends!
In Really Great Reading we worked with building compound words.  We also focused on the /l/.  Finally, we practiced peeling the beginning sounds off words.
I like to read a book that goes with the sound we are learning, and today was an easy pick.  I asked the children what the most important thing in the world is, and they had really great answers.  They guessed listening a few times, (we've been talking a lot about that lately), and guessed learning, and I tried to distract them by suggesting licorice but they weren't having it.  So I played a song by the Beatles to give them the answer.  We really enjoyed All You Need is Love.  Then we read the book Love, by Matt de la Pena and beautifully illustrated by Loren Long.  We talked about what love is as we read the book.  We looked carefully at the illustrations to understand more about what the words were describing.  I'm a huge fan of both Matt de la Pena and Loren Long and was so happy to share this with the children.  Although the trailer for Love is really more for adults, I showed most of it to the children.  I wanted them to see and hear the author and illustrator.  Then, the children drew four small pictures on the big paper to show what love is to them.  Ask me to show you my drawings and tell you what love is to me.  Then tell me what love is to you.

We are finishing up our Maryland KRA testing.  Today I was able to get a lot more done with the help of the "big paper."  When the children use this paper, some of them go to the carpet and put their paper on the hard part of the floor and stretch out on the carpet to draw and color.  It's quiet and they work so well that way. 
I will be the happiest teacher ever if I could get Dibels done by Friday with only a few make-ups next week.  I think I can do it if the children continue to work as quietly and independently and then we can really get into a normal school day routine.  
In math we worked more with hidden partners and subitizing.  It was a quick lesson so tomorrow we will spend more time on math learning a new game and working with bigger numbers to subitize and break into hidden partners.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe