May 24, 2013

Hi everyone! We are going to be short and sweet this week because we flipped what we did last week- Anne's room completed the A New Coat For Anna activities, and Kim's room did the Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain activities. If you want more details about those activities, please refer back to last week's blog.

We thought we would start this week by sharing two of our word block activities. To help review the suffixes -er and -est, we read the book Things that are most in the World by Judi Barrett. Then we brainstormed adjectives that ended with -est and the students used those words to create their own -est page. It was very fast and simple lesson. The book was enough of a model for them to write creative, enteretaining sentences. We found the student page we used online, but we can't remember where it was from.

Another word block activity focused on homophones. We read the book, Dear Deer  by Gene Barretta and played Homophone Bingo. Then, we brainstormed an enormous list of homophones. To raise the bar a bit, we put up a ready made list of homophones we found online, and suggested that the students might stretch themselves and select homophones that they may not know the meaning of to use for their book page. We made a Pair of Pears class homophone book. The students had to use each of their homophones correctly in a sentence, and then illustrate.

On Friday, we had a beautiful day for our walk to the Prairie Path to culminate our unit on natural resources, and to review our plants and animal concepts, as well as our measurement concepts. The students had their iPads to take pictures, and a booklet to record their findings. They were so engaged and enthusiastic throughout the walk. Next week, they are going to use their pictures to create a story in Book Creator on their iPads.

Getting a tree bark rubbing.

Add caption

Measuring the circumference of a tree.

A Rolly Polly!!! We are so excited.

A snail found under a log.

Recording our work in our booklets.

Putting forth our best effort.

One full week left of school! It is kind of bittersweet for us. We both really had amazing classes this year. It will be hard to see them go. Next week, Anne's daughter is getting married so we will not be blogging. The following week, we intend to begin intensely working on our teacher's store lesson plans. We can't wait to share those with you! Remember, we will be blogging through the summer, so please stop by to download some of our free activities.

Kim and Anne