Ask me about tuesday, october 6, 2020

We had a very busy, productive day!  We started our day by studying this photograph, rehearsing what we noticed with our study buddy stuffie, then sharing with the class.  Ask me to tell you what I notice about this ant.

We read two texts today about ants.  We will be comparing them more tomorrow, but we took time and noticed and talked about the text features in the non-fiction book.  Ask me to tell you which book is non-fiction.  

National Geographic has really great non-fiction books for all age levels, but in the past ten years has really done a great job of publishing books for the youngest readers and learners.  This Level 1 book is really at first or second grade reading level for most kids, but the interest level is great for kindergarten.  We read part of it, stopping along the way to talk and study pictures and text features, then read the rest later.  We also listened for verbs in the captions on one page.  Ask me to listen as you read the captions, and I"ll name the verbs.

We also read the book Hey, LIttle Ant.  This book is a good book to talk about with your kinder.  It has a good lesson.  I will be sending it as part of our Wednesday Work and will share it as Read to Me, Talk to Me book, like we would do in the classroom if kids were borrowing books.  You will have questions to use to guide your discussion with your child and a short "project" to do after, if you choose to.  It's not a requirement, but we hope with Read to Me, Talk to Me that families will read the book a couple of times over the week and use the questions that are supplied to guide your discussion.  When we are in the classroom, children bring their projects from the book to school and we hang them on a bulletin board, but if you just want to take a picture and send it in, I'll share it with the class.  You have a week to do these projects, and as I said, I will include it with your Wednesday Work.

We added another sound in Orton Gillingham today.  We began to work with the short sound of a, which is why we were talking about ants!  We will continue to work through our drills tomorrow with a, but we studied this picture to find words that started with a, or had short a in them.  Ask me to name at least five things in the picture that start with or have short a in them.

We had a lesson on calm-down strategies.  We talked about ten different ways to calm down, and learned about them.  One thing we did was listen to music.  A great way to deal with stress, sadness, or just a good alternative to time-out is to put on headphones and listen to music.  I think for me what works best is to listen to calming music.  We listened to excerpts from different pieces to determine if the music made us calm, or riled us up.  The kids did a really great job of identifying which, until the last piece!  It's such a treat for me to get to see their faces up close and watch them respond and move to the music.  We also talked about movement, and one thing I told them that I had read a lot about was hula hooping to relieve stress.  If your child doesn't already have a hula hoop, for some kids this can be very calming, once they have learned to hula hoop.  There are even weighted hula hoops that are supposed to be even better for relieving stress.  I'll be supplying a list of these strategies for the Calm-Down Kit we are working on tomorrow that you can choose to print out.  We also watched some Nature Relaxation videos.  I'll post some of these in our Google classroom in the next day or two.  I'm not sure if you are able to see what I post in there from YouTube, so please let me know if I post things in there you cannot access.  Here is an example of a Nature Relaxation video.  

Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe