Workshop Rundown: 4/2

This week, we continued to talk about eggs.  The kids had fun "cracking" an egg to reveal a mixed up sentence.  Each sentence contained the word "egg."  Here, the kids are learning sentence structure, word order, and remembering that a sentence begins with an uppercase letter and ends with a period.

 Making chocolate nests was the most fun!  The recipe card will tell you how to make these sweet treats at home!

We went on an egg hunt!  Each hidden egg contained a HFW.  The kids walked around the room looking for hidden eggs, reading the HFW inside each one, and then marking it off their recording sheet.

We have been talking a lot about oviparous animals - animals that lay eggs.  Everyone chose an oviparous animal and then wrote clues about their animal on an egg.  Lift up the egg, and you'll find out which oviparous animal it was!  These fun "Who Am I?" writings are hanging in the hallway.

This week, we began to explore digraphs - these are 2 consonants that make a new sound when blended together such as "sh," "th," and "ch."  To work on "sh," the kids sorted shoes in a shoebox to find the beginning and ending "sh" sound.  Then, they wrote the words.  In this activity, the goal is for kids to recognize the "sh" sound as well as write it correctly.

After working with the "sh" sound,  the kids had fun practicing tying shoes.  At this age, shoe tying is very developmental and takes a lot of time and practice.

Our word family this week was E.  Everyone is catching onto the word families so well!  Be sure to read this book with your child.  Our challenge was to write an additional word for each word family.

Workshop Rundown: 3/25

While this is handwriting, I thought you might like an explanation of our lower case letter b and d bed.  As a visual reminder, you can remember the shape of b & d with the word "bed."  The word bed begins with a b and ends with a d.  If you hold your hands up in fists, with the thumbs sticking up, you can form a hand "bed."  Ask your child to show you.  Lower case b & d are some of the hardest letters to recognize.  With practice, and the "bed" reminder, kids should be able to remember these tricky letters!

This week, we began working on word families.  Word families are essential for good early reading.  We are beginning with A and will work our way through the vowels.  Be sure to read this book with your child at home.  You can find word families in books and even think of new words to add to the book.

After watching this wonderful video and sequencing pictures, we wrote little books about the cycle of eggs in a nest.  Such cute, sweet stories!

 We cracked the code to write HFW!  This workshop was so much fun!  To revel the HFW, you match the number with a letter.  This activity reinforces number and letter recognition as well as HFW.

In the Egg Discovery Lab, the kids had fun working on a variety of activities involving eggs.  A favorite was a memory game where the kids set it up themselves.  They hid tiny objects under a half egg and then tried to remember where they were.  Such fun!

We also had fun making tiny nests on little paper plates.  Using a variety of materials, a little nest collage was created.  They are so cute, we had to hang them on the wall for everyone to enjoy.

Eggcellent Experiments

 To kick off our unit about eggs, we had fun with "Eggcellent" experiments.

 Experiment #1:  Rubber Egg (also called a Naked Egg)

Find out what happens when you soak a raw egg in vinegar for a few days.  Ours broke open to reveal a yolk that felt like jelly.  Ewwwww!!!!

 Experiment #2:  Strong Egg

This was a favorite.  Hold a raw egg in your hand and squeeze from end to end as hard as you can.  It won't break!  Really, it won't!

 Experiment #3:   Egg in a Bottle

This one involves a peeled, hard boiled egg being sucked into a bottle.  How does it happen?!

 Experiment #4:  Spinning Egg

Just by spinning an egg, you can tell if it's hard boiled or raw.

 We recorded our findings in a little book.

Even Mr. Surberl stopped by to join in the fun.  He wanted to test the strength of eggs using the cone.  He cracked the egg!

I found several more "eggcellent" experiments here if you want to try them too.

Workshop Rundown: 3/18

 We had fun drawing our spring self portraits.  Yea for spring!

 Our letter study this week was on the letter Q.  We spent a lot of time talking about how Q and U are always together in the English language; but U can stand alone.  We wondered how Q and U got together and wrote our own stories about their friendship.  After writing the stories, the kids "edited" them with teacher help, checking for punctuation, spelling of HFW, and clear understanding of content.  Then, they read the stories to the class.  Be sure to read your child's story at home!

 Everyone had fun making a patchwork Q journal by gluing fabric scraps onto card stock.  Later, paper will be added.

Our wonderful Q quilts are hanging in the hallway.  For this project, the kids drew and labeled Q words on paper quilt squares and then glued them onto a fabric backing.  Here, the focus was on writing QU together every time a Q word was written.

The friendship quilt has become a Brilliant Bug tradition!  Everyone drew a self portrait of a friend onto a fabric square.  Next, we will sew the squares together to form a very special class quilt!  We'll be sure to share the finished quilt with you.

To practice HFW, we used quills to write them.  This was MUCH harder than it looked!  The slow practice of writing the words, helped the kids to really focus on how the HFW were spelled and letter formation.

Counting by 2's

If you're like me, you count by 2's a lot.  I find myself counting by 2's much more than 5's or 10's - it's just so handy.  I noticed while making our 2x2 necklace, that several kids could count by 2's by rote, but were unable to count actual objects.  Well, that would not do!

So, we practiced counting objects by 2's.

 First, the kids wrote numbers 1-30 then highlighted them, counting by 2's.

They used the number chart to help them count beads strung onto chenille strips by 2's.  I made a lot of strips using different beads and numbers.  By the end the kids were doing a much better job of counting by 2's and felt confident.

 The next week we switched it up by having the kids count different kinds of objects.

I filled several bags with different items that could be counted easily by 2's.  Right now, I made sure that the amounts are even, but as they become more advanced, odd numbers would be a fun challenge.

The kids dumped the bag out onto one side of the tray and then slide the objects over by 2's to the other side.  For many, this activity made a lot of sense and they really started to get it!  The kids used a recording sheet to write down their numbers and number grids to help them count if needed.

In a few weeks, we'll revisit these activities and check for progress.

Like in Japan

 Writing and counting 1-10 in Japanese!  Use this fun accordion book to practice at home.

We had fun writing a "Japanese style" book.  This book is read backwards from how we read in English.  Everyone chose a topic to complete the HFW book.  We had everything from frogs, to lovies, to Justin Bieber!  Please read this book with your child to practice many HFW that are not in our take-home books.

On Friday, Emiya's mom came to visit us!

 Emiya read to us from a favorite Japanese book!

 His mom read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in Japanese - some of the words sounded the same.

 Next, we made tiger rice balls.  We mushed the yellow and white rice balls together.

 Then, they were decorated with little pieces of seaweed.

 She also brought us a Japanese treat to try.  It was kind of like a gummy, but filled with red bean paste.

 Dressing in kimonos and trying to walk in the geta shoes was great fun.

 Group photo - we are making a "peace" sign, which is what all the kids in Japan like to do!

What a fun week we had learning about Japanese culture!