Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A busy place...

Our Mystery Reader fun continued today.  I only wish I could have a hidden camera in the hallway to capture this moment even better.  It's so sweet to see their faces light up!  Of course, it's also resulted in a few tears for those who find out today's not their parent.  Soooo I've talked to them and tried to help them understand that we're continuing into January and we'll get everyone in somehow!

I'd say our Mystery Readers are helping us read voraciously this week! Our day is FILLED with text and thinking about them...which I absolutely LOVE.  Today's morning book was The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg. It was fun to find out that the author visited our Mystery Reader's school when she was in the second grade. What a special memory!

Two other (non-mystery) guests came in our room today to help us finish a fun handprint ornament. You can see them hard at work here in the art center.  We hung them from our line to dry and they are going to be SO CUTE when they are finished. I hope to have pics tomorrow to share.

  
Of course, we're having a blast with all this holiday FUN, but there's STILL learning to be done.  One book (and song) we've enjoyed this week is The Marvelous Toy by Tom Paxton (performed by him as well as Peter, Paul and Mary). This is a very fun story of a toy that the writer received when he was a child and passed on to his little boy later on. Today our thinkers created their OWN marvelous toy in their reading journals complete with its own sounds. So cute!
  Here they are coming up with their toys....







And we also practiced reading the sight words "I see the______" and matching the sentence with a picture.  This is a little hard for some of us because we have to think about what the holiday word might look like.  It was fun to watch the kids problem solve this activity.  Some asked neighbors.  Some listened for the first sound. Others pointed and tried until the word popped out! These are all good reading strategies.



And since it was a handprint day, we made these cute little reindeer too!
 Here's the herd....is it a herd? Or is it a "team"? Anyway, here they are!

 This afternoon we played Roll a Tree where we practiced counting and trying to be the first to fill in our holiday tree.


 And we capped off our day with another Mystery Reader who shared the book "Snowmen at Christmas". This is a GREAT book.  If you have it at home, did you know there are hidden pictures in it?  Check it out and let us know if you find any.

  We discovered that the author and illustrator, Carolyn Buehner and Mark Buehner have written another Snowmen book.  We pulled it out and read and compared them.  It's so fun discovering all the text to text connections that can be made with these books.  Then we talked about that great vocabulary word:  similar.  Have you found books with your reader that are similar?

Tomorrow we will decorate our Gingerbread Houses with our families.  It should be a fun time.  Watch this space for details!

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