October 15, 2012

Today was a FANTASTIC day!

In Skills
The Organic Squirrels reviewed the different spellings for the /k/ sound (c as in cake, k as in kid, and ck as in back).  They read Which is the Best and worked more on turning the question around to answer in a complete sentence.

The Zesty Wombats reviewed bossy r and read the story The Pancake Part I, which is a lot like the gingerbread man.

The Screaming Mustaches continued learning about long o.  They reviewed the old spellings and learned two more.  Now they know o_e, oa, oe, o, and ow.  They read The Swimming Sisters, which is about two sisters who excel at swimming.

The Ice Dragons read more in The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

In Centers
One group heard a story and worked to sequence it.  The first graders had to cut out sentences about the story and put them in order.  The second graders had to come up with their own sentences to summarize.

The other group started to learn about SuperFlex and The Unthinkables.  SuperFlex is a superhero that lives inside everyone and works hard to defeat The Unthinkables, who are "evil villains" who try to make us act in unexpected or inappropriate or rigid ways.

Michelle started by introducing them to what it means to have a "flexible brain."

She likened a flexible brain to putty, and an inflexible brain to a rock.  

Next, she explained how we use our flexible-thinking brains to be social detectives, figuring out what's expected and what's unexpected by using clues from the people around us.  

Last, she started reading a story about SuperFlex, which introduces The Unthinkables.  We only got about halfway through the story, but the idea was to expose the kids to the language and let them see where we're going with our social curriculum.

In Writing
I gave the kids some characters (a man with a mustache, a detective, and a fancy lady), a setting (a boat), and a problem (the jewelry is missing!), and asked the kids to come up with a beginning, middle, and end to a story.  It was just a pre-writing activity that goes along with all the sequencing/summarizing that we've been working on.  The kids did a good job with it!  They got really creative, introducing other characters and showing intrigue, love, and a little bit of taking-care-of-business.  We're going to turn these beginning-middle-end outlines into stories!

In all
The kids had a great day.  They were well-behaved, kind, and helpful.  There were no instances where anyone ended up on yellow.  They worked hard, and worked together.  It was so wonderful!

Have a great night!