Nursery Rhyme Fun

The Connected Ones are excited about their upcoming performance on October 31st.  On Monday, students will choose the nursery rhyme to perform.  On the day of the performance, students will come dressed as their character and recite their rhyme at the show.  Remember, the costumes can be simple. This performance is to celebrate reading , it is not meant to cause stress.  The photo to the left is from last year, just to give you an idea of how easy a costume can be.  My son was "Little Boy Blue."  We dressed him in blue and borrowed a horn. Simple!

On Monday, please make sure your child has a list of several rhymes he/she would be happy to perform.  That way, we don't have any tears if their favorite rhyme is taken by another child.  Here are some great resources to read and enjoy a variety of different nursery rhymes.  There is a great site at http://www.speakaboos.com/ that will read nursery rhymes and other stories aloud.  Also, on the top button bar of the blog, I have linked some videos of different rhymes.  I will be updating the symbaloo as I find more.

Our subscription to RazKids includes a nursery rhyme section!  To get to the rhymes, log in to RazKids.  Our username is "connectedones."  Then, go to the bookroom.

Once in the bookroom, on the left change "leveled books" to nursery rhymes...then enjoy!  I can't wait to show the kids this feature on Monday!  They will be so excited. 

  

Literacy Centers

Our literacy centers are going strong. This week was our second week at literacy centers. Center time is one of the students' favorite times of the day. The children love this time because they get to work independently on all sorts of engaging activities. Our center time practices important skills related to their academic and social development. At each center, the students are in groups of 4. Center time is filled with social interactions so the children are practicing important social skills like sharing, taking turns, cooperating, using manners, polite conversation, and encouraging others. They are also learning to handle and clean up classroom materials. Of course, all this while practicing their literacy skills. While the children are busy working at their centers, I have time to pull small reading groups. In the small groups, we work on reading strategies. So many great things going on during reader's workshop.

Alphabet School

   As part of our Alphabet book study, we read this amazing Caldecott winner, Alphabet City.  The Caldecott medal is given to children's books for illustrations.  The book is full of city photos that have all the letters of the alphabet made from city scenes.     The students loved the book.  We talked about how the author really had to concentrate on details to find the letters hidden in around the city.  We decided to be letter detectives as well.  We searched the playground to see if we could find the letters in the details.  We all worked together on the detail search.

 

The letter detectives did end up finding all 26 letters....although we had to get a bit creative on a few.  View the slideshow below and see if you can see the letters we found.

Slideshow design generated with Smilebox

Alphabet Books

We have been reviewing the alphabet letters and sounds by reading and writing alphabet books. Here are some of our favorite books. There are so many fun and interesting stories organized as abc books! 

When we read the book A my name is Alice, we did our own version of a rewrite.  The students had to use the first letter of their name and find something they liked that started with that letter.  Then, they made a self portrait.  The pages turned out darling!  The children love looking at them hanging up in our classroom.

We also wrote a class alphabet chart and individual alphabet books. During these writing projects the students learned how to navigate their way through a dictionary...the ultimate ABC book!

The students even used the letters in their names to make their own abc book.  They are dictionary experts!

There are some great apps that work on identifying letters and sounds and writing letters.  Also, the app Endless Alphabet is a great vocabulary builder set up as an alphabet book.  The kids LOVE it!  Click on the app name to be taken to more information. Letter School, Starfall, Writing Wizard, Sound Sorting, ABC Magic, Endless Alphabet

 

Hooray for A

We have been working hard building words with short a.  In phonics and spelling, we have done a variety of activities to practice reading and writing short a words.  While we have been spelling many short a words our focus words have been: an, can, man, fan, ran, pan, at, sat, cat, hat, rat, and bat.

In this game, students use the foldable to practice their words.  The students were having so much fun with the actions that I don't think they even realized how much learning they were doing.

For clipboard cruising this week at centers, the students found short a words taped up around the room.  Then, they sorted the words by the shape they make.  Also, in centers the students stamped the short a words.  For the tiny word search, students used a magnifying glass to find their words.

One of my favorite spelling activities this week was a short a word scramble.  The children got a list of the words scrambled then used their ipad to help them unscramble the words.  We used an app called Word Wizard.  Word Wizard is a moveable alphabet that reads the students the words they create.  The students were able to move the letters around and hear the sequence of sounds and determine if they created a correctly spelled short a word.

 In addition to Word Wizard, there are some other great apps for building words.  Segmenting is a very important early reading and writing skill.  The Reading Magic (1,2,3,and 4) and Spelling Magic (1, 2, and 3) are some free apps that help practice segmenting and blending words. It is a great series that gets progressively harder with each numbered addition. Good news, they are all FREE!