Q:   What happened to the dog that swallowed a firefly?
A:   It barked with de-light!

I hope that you all enjoyed the long weekend – and that was actually a long weekend for you.  We are right back in the saddle here in Room 240!

After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop.  Today we read another book by the author that we are studying – Mem Fox.  The book of the day was Whoever You Are, a really nice book about acceptance and global understanding.  The skill that we worked on was getting the meaning/lesson that the author intended out of a text.  After that, the kids traded books from their bookbags, and then had Independent Reading and wrote in their response journals.

After that, I taught the kids a new song – Shake My Sillies Out (also a book by Raffi, if you’re interested).  Then it was on to Writer’s Workshop.  Today we talked about the importance of making our writing easy for our reader to read and understand – the morning message today lookedalllikethiswiththewordsallbunchedtogethersothatthetkidscould
realizethatitisreallyhardtoreadwithoutspacesbetweenwords.  We then talked about how they can make their own writing easy for their readers, and then they went out to write.  At the end of workshop our sharing time was for them to share with their fellow writers how they went about making their writing easy for their readers.

We then got bundled up and headed down for lunch and recess.  When we got back up to our room, we had Read Aloud – I read the kids a book called Pig Pig Goes to Camp.  Then we trundled down the hallway to Media for class with Mrs. Hennen.

When we got back to our room, we had a combined Math Workshop and Science Lab – the kids worked on various activities that had to do with aquatic animals and reading, writing, and math. 

After that, we spent some time doing social studies, related, of course, to our science theme.  Each student labeled the oceans and the continents on a world map – ask them to see if they can remember how many oceans there are (4), and how many continents there are (7 – don’t forget Antarctica…).  I also taught them a song to help remember the names of the oceans – it is to the tune of “My Bonny Lies over the Ocean.”

After all of that, it was time to pack up and head home!