My kids are still loving these water colour observational drawings/paintings. Some of the items we have been looking closely at and painting include pinecones (pictured above) and caterpillars. We often put magnifying glasses out as well to encourage the kids to look carefully and draw with detail.
2. Adding Detail To Your Writing
We have such good writers this year and so many kids are ready to move past one sentence. Adding detail was a next step for so many of our kids after our monthly guided writing piece last month so we did this mini lesson and will continue to practice this once a week until the end of the year.
During our writing mini lesson I told them that I want to know more about their writing and taught them to ask themselves if they have answered most of the questions below. Who did it? What did they do? When did it happen? etc.
Then I had a student give me a sentence and we wrote the sentence together on the chart paper.
We underlined the who (“I”) in red and the what (“like to read books”) in orange. Then I asked them which other question we could answer to make the sentence longer. One of my students came up with “because reading books makes you a better reader” so we added that and underlined it in pink to show that that was the “why”.
I also added these “Adding Details To Your Writing” checklist to our writing wall so that the kids could use them for their independent writing.
You can grab the checklist for free by clicking on the image below:
3. Engagement!
If you follow me on my personal Facebook or on Instagram you may have seen this already but I got engaged 2 Sundays ago!
It was a total surprise. We have been together for 6 years but I really didn’t have a clue that he was going to ask. We have been so overwhelmed with the love and excitement of our family and friends 🙂
I wasn’t going to tell my kids that I got engaged but it came up naturally and it was a pretty hilarious conversation so I thought that I would share:
Context: The kids were asking about why different teachers had different “spelling” at the beginning of their names. I told them that “Mrs.” means that they are married, “Miss” means you are not and “Ms.” means you can’t tell. We talked about how my teaching partner was a Mrs. and I was a Miss.
Student: So you’re not married.
Me: That’s right
Student: Are you planning to get married?
Me: Well I actually got engaged last weekend. Do you know what that means?
Student: Kinda
Me: It means my boyfriend asked me to marry him.
Student: …so are you still thinking about it?
LOL
I told him that I did say yes but we still need to plan the wedding so it won’t be for a while. Then they all started to suggest that I get McDonald’s as the food for the wedding and soon I had 21 students asking me if they could come to my wedding…
These are the moments that make me laugh though and make me appreciate the time I spend with my students. They are a particularly thoughtful and precious group this year and my teaching partner and I will be really sad to see them go at the end of the year! We are in denial still lol
4. Rock Stacking Challenge/Provocation
I found this rock stacking challenge/provocation while scrolling through my Pinterest feed. The original idea is from Anamaria of
Wonders in Kindergarten. She has an amazing blog and Instagram account!
Although it only held their interest for a couple of days, they really loved the challenged for those two days. It is great for fine motor and it is actually very tricky to get the rocks to stack!
One of my boys really impressed me. First he asked me if he could “make a plan”. Well if that isn’t music to my ears I don’t know what is! I asked him about his plan and he told me that he thinks it will easier to stack the rocks if he can find the flattest ones. Then he proceeded to find all the flattest rocks and started to stack them. He drew a picture as he went of what was working.
I was so impressed by his thinking!
5. I Can Draw Books
I got these “I Can Draw” books from the June Scholastic Book Order (SeeSaw) and they have been such a huge hit!
Of course they are great to put out with paper or whiteboards but how they have been a real life saver is for guided reading. One of my little kiddos in my class has difficulty with drawing a picture to match at the end of guided reading when we do our writing portion. It doesn’t help that he thinks it needs to be just right for it to be good.
Usually I draw dots for him to trace or draw a step by step model for him to follow. Now I can (sometimes) flip to one of the pages and keep it open for him to follow!
I am planning to photocopy and put this page out at the water colour painting centre to support kids with a butterfly painting provocation I plan to put out next week! There are so many cute animals for the kids to draw with clear, easy steps! I highly recommend them if you are looking for one more thing to order from Scholastic!
That’s it from me for this week!
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