Today was Book Giving Day. This day, Febuary 14, is a lessor know holiday because it shares the spotlight with Valentines Day. Oh, but my little book worm would not forget a day to celebrate getting books!!
I pretended to forget about Book Giving Day in order to surprise Him. AND he was surprised by my gift plus momma son card!
The card was a simple craft we made together previously thus week. It was my hand print…
with his handprint using a different color paint on top.
By uploading the picture of handprints into a free photo app, I was able to add this old quote to it…
The saved image can later be printed and put in a frame or added to his photo album! I’m in love:)
These are the books I gave him along with the Mommy Son card. I thought “Why not Valentines Day Books?” The First book is a Firster reader. The second book, “Valentine Be Mine”, is absolutely perfect for finding history and facts about Valentines Day! Last, is a short chapter book from the Black Lagoon series. I’ve included the links below for your convenience.
My son lost another tooth today. Or rather, he pulled his bloody tooth out and directly put it in my hand.
Yuck!
I was grossed out momentarily before getting excited all over again about him losing another tooth. …But not excited that he pulled it.
Pj after he lost his tooth..Very excited
In our house, the tooth fairy is highly decorated;)
He writes letters to him/ her, he makes crafts, and he really learns more about Dental Health each time he loses a Tooth.
And the timing of this pulled tooth was great!!…Except that we were writing spelling words and blood got on his fingers which got on the table… which got on his spelling work…Honestly, I didn’t remember the bloody part of teeth loss until that. None the less, I did get pretty excited because…..
February is Dental Health Month. Plus, I haven’t taught him nearly enough about Cavities or Tooth Decay. These are topics every kid absolutely needs to fully understand, right?! They are also things WE can explore BEST by reading books. His Favorite past time EVER!
Books are great!! Reading books help my son wind down (self regulate) from a busy day at school. He is still, quiet, and I can even see his breathing slow when he reads by himself! I make them very accessible so he can pick one up when he feels like its time to clear his head. There are 5 children’s books on my kitchen table, 2 on the living rm floor, 1 on an end table, 1 in the bathroom, a stack more in his book nook area, and a self full in his room right now. Let’s not forget the wonderful connection we get from reading to him at bedtime or the creation of life long memories and the instillation of educational values. What’s not to love when he picks up a book to read?!?!
In honor of my son and all the little book worms out there, I’m posting this book list. This list will be about Tooth Decay and Cavities for Dental Health Month and Toothache Day. Each month I will post a new list of books relevant to that months calender observances. I hope his list will help your family enjoy reading as much as we do!!
We’re feeling the need to celebrate Groundhog Day all over again:). Groundhogs are so cute and fuzzy! They play peak a boo, nibble food like a gerbil, and have the sweetest little babies! But we don’t get to celebrate them again until next year!?!?
This post was originally wrote Feb 2, 2016
That’s why my 6 yr will come home from school asking to watch them on you tube or me to read another book about them. I already see it happening:)
What IS Groundhog Day?
Groundhog Day is the day we watch for the groundhog to come out of his burrow.
PJ: “To celebrate the Mama haven babies” eeee ” so Cute!!”
To watch the groundhog. If the groundhog sees his shadow and returns to his burrow, we will have 6 more weeks of winter. If the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, then we will have an early spring.
I was wondering if this year would be the year for a snow storm and then came news that our area was under an emergency alert for snow. While others may worry with milk and bread on snow days I’m more concerned about having enough practice work to keep PJ on a schedule similar to that of his school day. Going back to school from unexpected school closing s are much easier these days but only because I try to keep a school day schedule at home when his school is closed due to bad weather. For example:
8:00-9:00am Book reading and topic discovery 9:00-9:30 Topic related sensory break 10:00-10:30 Sentence practice with games to warmup for writing about topic of the day 10:30- 11:00 Writing activity (story map, compare/contrast, fact finding, retell, ect…..Then LUNCH!!
When I need a good incentive for homework or my son needs a sensorial break, I fill in with STEM. PJ loves science because its hands on, visual, and sensory evoking:). I love it because we can add Language Arts by writing to the mix!
Our science project with real snow…
We did a similar activity last year but our ingredients were not the right measurements. The mixture fizzled out the top of the bottle instead of blasting up. The mistake was a learning experience for us both. I knew we could make it work if we kept trying!
What you will need:
3 teaspoons baking soda
3 teaspoons dish detergent
blue food coloring
3 small empty bottles
3 cups or more depending on the size of bottle of tomato juice, vinegar, and pickle juice
I wanted this project to have a writing component so we added 2 more variables (pickle juice and tomato juice)….. Having 3 variables allowed PJ to compare 3 different experiment reactions.
Procedure
He measured out Baking soda, dish soap, and green food coloring. Then, he added everything but the pickle juice to 1 empty bottle.
I helped him bury the first bottle in a mound of snow so that only the top of the bottled showed. — This is what is left of our attempt to make an igloo:) We made 3 mounds for each test.
I asked him what he thought would happen or to make a prediction. He said “It will explode up into a rainbow!”
His first test substance was Pickle juice. Using pickle juice was his idea!:) Smart cookie!
Test 1
The pickle juice had less vinegar than pure vinegar but more vinegar than the tomato juice. We talked about what he observed which was a little green bubbling inside the bottle. He said “it didn’t work” but enjoyed the bubbles.
For the WRITING, PJ wrote down his SUPPLY LIST, PREDICTION, PROCEDURE, and TEST OUTCOME.
The next day we completed the other 2 tests with the vinegar and tomato juice/ dressing. The vinegar was pored into the bottle with the blue food coloring in order to see the process better.
Test 2
Test 3
..saved the best reaction for last
He finished up on day 2 by repeating the written PREDICTION, STEPS TO THE TESTS, and WHAT HAPPENED in our snow experiment.
Is it snowing at your house?? What kind of fantastic exploring will your kids have in the snow? Comment below. We’d love to know!
This Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the first ever observed by my son. Up until this year, he wasn’t able to grasp the complexity of ideas like equality, segregation based on skin color, or advocacy.
Pjs understanding of the world around him, compassion towards others, and ability to voice right from wrong has improved tremendously in first grade. I’m quite proud of the gentlemen he is growing into!!!
In short, I felt he was ready to absorb why Martin Luther King Day was celebrated over our four day break from school.
I always start new learning with a book on the subject rather than a discussion.
I chose “The Crayon Box that Talked” to help him understand problems of diversity. The crayons do not get along but eventually are able to appreciate qualities in one another.
He illustrated and wrote about the book. We flipped through the book again to look for sentences that described what the crayons were thinking and feeling about one another.
After writing and sitting, I thought it a good idea to do some hands-on learning about diversity. I already had the idea to use scented Playdough to represent skin colors. Apparently it is a great idea because skin tone playdough colors are all over the net!
Here is the most popular picture from Spoonful via www.racheous.com
SPOONFUL
Beautiful isn’t it?! But I couldn’t seem to link to the direct source no matter where it was shared.
I eventually searched for each skin color from various sites. He loved that these all have a scent or special texture!!
He made various people over a two day period. He even gave each person a good quality while we talked about how people were different.
It was suppose to be black colored Playdough.
We didn’t use any sort of pattern but I found these PLAYDOUGH MATS from Picklebums to use next time.
On day two through four, I thought we would watch a few readings of books for facts about Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a holiday so the library was closed. These are the two readings we watched on you tube.
I helped my son pause and rewind to write down facts from the books.
The BEST visual resource for this topic was definitely another You Tube video. PJ was listening and watching intently to this creative children’s biography. The characters time travel!!
Next, I drew an outline of Dr. King and PJ colored it in…
I wasn’t sure if he would be interested in watching the famous “I Have a Dream” speech so I saved it for last. Don’t know why I was worried? He listened and watched the entire speech!! Not only that, he asked questions “What’s that?” and “What’s he say?” when he didn’t know the meaning of a word. It was the perfect opportunity to use the dictionary so I wrote a few words down to look up.
Informational Text Features: Make A Penguin Labeling Activity…..
I’ve extended our informational text feature study with maps (or should I say penguins) another week. My little guy is intrigued with the maps we are using for locating penguins on a world map.
We’ve read a number of books with maps now. Here is his ultimate favorite…
We’ve read it a dozen times or more.
This book has a few maps in it. It has visuals in the GLOSSARY that include additional maps.
The best text feature was this 4 page CHART of all 17 types of penguins from smallest to largest. PJ looked at the pictures of penguins for a good hour in total.
I knew we had to go over each type of penguin rather than penguins as a group of Antarctic animals.
I started by trying out a few homemade black Playdough recipes because black is a hard color to find if not ordered on line.
Here are a few dependable sites if you would like to try your hand at it:
My dough turned out more a brownish color but I’m not one to waste. The cans I FINALLY found at Walmart were less than 1.00 dollar a piece. I kept my brown dough for PJ to use in a tropical penguin habitat.
What you need:
5 cans of black playdough
14 plastic eggs (we didn’t use eggs for the 3 smallest species of penguins just dough)
2 cans of white playdough
Small amount of orange and yellow playdough
Using the book for reference he formed black dough completely around an egg. The Emperor Penguin is the tallest and should have more dough than any other egg.
He labeled body parts of this penguin without my asking…
webbed feet and flippers head and bill Eyes and tail
He chose to use googley eyes instead of dough.
He righty put the emperor in an ocean of tissue paper and used the left over Christmas snow I had to decorate the surrounding area! How creative!!
He made 7 species of Penguins naming and labeling each according to the text in the book.
It was a wonderful way to support finding information within his reading and using key text features….Not to mention stir his imagination!
Learning Important Features of Informational Text with Reindeer…..
Most of the time moving from Narrative text to Informational text is easy. My son read story books about the tooth fairy and was naturally interested in teeth. An adventure of seeking information about his teeth compared to animal teeth began.
Our teeth look like this.
Reindeer teeth look like this.
JUST LIKE THAT…We were off to find out all about Arctic mammals!
He had never watched this classic before learning about reindeer so I was excited to watch this with him!
I wanted PJ to become familiar with all the features of Informational text. I quickly found some printable lists for my visual learner…..
Nonfiction Text Features Bullentin Board Poster Set
After I jotted down a hand written list of a few nonfiction text features, we headed to the library to practice using features. ( I ended up making my own visual board for nonfiction text features after the fact.)
Next, we looked up the books I found from above. He began to fill in his Just The Facts worksheet also from Teacher Files.
Using my handwritten check list we found the most important features of Informational Text:
Table of Contents
Bold or Italicized words
Glossary
Headings
Subheadings
Maps
****There are more Features to cover but my goal is to cover them one by one in a series. Stayed tuned!****
We took turns reading but I asked him to stop me when he heard a FACT so he could write it down. There were words we looked up in the glossary along the way when he didn’t understand their meaning. I wrote down those words to later use as vocabulary and speech practice words.
He wasn’t ready to answer why he thought the words were important yet. I didn’t want to overload him so I saved those thinking questions for another day.
WHAT HE LEARNED
-By that point my son was familiar with the most important Nonfiction Text Features and could look up bold words in the Glossary.
-He was able to match and find chapter headings from the Table of Contents to within the books we read.
–He could find the map in one book and point to where Reindeer migrated.
– He also had 6 facts wrote out about Reindeer that we will use later to fill in the “What I Learned” part of his K/W/L chart.
Here is an example of a Just The Facts sheet about teeth.
While we were at the library I took advantage of the printer privileges((: and printed off pages of FREE Reindeer learning from a few of these sights…
Ive been scouting for the perfect lost tooth holder because the Tooth Fairy complained that it was to hard to find my sons tooth the last visit!!
And here I am still looking online while yet another tooth is loose..yikes, I’m cutting it really close! His tooth is hanging by a thread literally but I want to find some kind of tooth holder that he will want to pass on to his kids someday.
Even if I purchased the kit I have been eyeing online it would take at least half a week to arrive.
So, today we finished up his homework and started a new study on Informational Text (about TEETH of course!:)). Then, my son put this project together.
I couldn’t tell you how I came up with this other than I’ve found many blogs with this tooth pattern only the patterns were for sewing or croucheting…I can’t sew much and don’t know how to crochet. I decided a paper version would more than work in a pinch. It turned out to be a great way to work on hand eye coordination, fine motor skills, and articulation for speech. Besides, he was so proud of his work that he is sleeping with it:)
Tonight I will post the super easy steps to make it.
Step 1…. Draw a pattern of a large tooth to cover a standard size piece of heavy paper or cardstock.
2…. Trace your pattern on another piece of card stock and cut a small square for a tooth pocket.
3…. Let your child decorate or just draw a face on one piece of cardstock and add the tiny tooth pocket to the other piece of cardstock. We used Elmer’s glue to secure the pocket to the back. Then use a hole punch around the edges of the patterns.
4…. This is where I surprised him! I let him use the remainder of our glow in the dark yarn that was made during our SPIDER UNIT to lace the teeth together!! Let your child be creative and make some glow in the dark string too!
He is using his tongue to concentrate here. Love that!
He was so excited that he tried to goto bed early but disappointed he couldn’t. He had not taken a bath yet.:)
These are a few Tooth Fairy supplies I’m choosing from……..
My son and I continued to study Narratives and all its components this Thanksgiving break from school.
He has lost THREE teeth!! AND now he has a fourth tooth loose:). So, instead of learning about The First Thanksgiving ( we can always do that next week, RIGHT.!??), he and I read this ADORABLE firster chapter-book! It turned out to be one of our favorite books! I only wish I had found it sooner for my now grown daughter to enjoy.
This book has 13 chapters that took us all of his break from school to read. We took our time and were able to read the whole book two times from start to finish. This is a great reading comprehension strategy BTW!
If you have been following you will remember I like to use anchor charts when we cover literature at home. My son just loves the BIG visuals we draw and write out together!!
RELATING TO THE MAIN CHARACTER……
This particular book worked good with a VENN DIAGRAM to compare himself to Pearl, the main character in the book. The second most important character of course was the TOOTH FAIRY!!
He loves to draw on wrapping paper and I love that he is using his whole body to think!
How are we the SAME?
He wrote new details to compare himself to Pearl after every few chapters. We used the TABLE OF CONTENTS to label every new chapter and find the page the chapter started on.
How are we DIFFERENT?
When the diagram was all filled up we continued to talk about comparing his own tooth loss experiences to Pearls experiences.
In the book, Pearl makes a tooth collection box for herself. (She wasn’t giving that old Tooth Fairy her tooth and that was the rising conflict in the story.) My son just loved that part and made all kinds of ” Oooh Noo!!” faces:) So, we decided to make a paper tooth fairy pillow together to represent that he gave the tooth fairy his teeth. Post the finished product later…
He liked the book so much so that I even looked for TOOTH FAIRY PACKS to incorporateinto his week off from school.
*****THAT COMPLETELY CHANGED A WEEK OF HOMESCHOOL PLANS FROM THE FIRST THANKSGIVING TO A UNIT ON THE TOOTH FAIRY! Ha!:) BUT TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!*****
This book itself has many LETTERS to and from the Tooth Fairy as they two characters were in a fued over a lost tooth. I took advantage of the books content and we wrote a future letter asking the tooth fairy to keep his next tooth:)
I’m sure I will be reading more books about the tooth fairy real soon, but if you have more ideas to add to this tooth fairy unit feel free to comment!! Love to here from you!
I sent a lengthy note to my sons teacher to ask what she had covered in my sons class thus far in the way of types of text and writing. I like to be “on the same page” when we do activities at home. Really, we have a monthly goal planner that breaks down into weekly activities to do Afterschool. And since my son has other things planned Afterschool like sports and speech it really pays to have our Afterschool hours be as productive as possible. By productive I mean learning what is grade appropriate as well as what is developmentally appropriate for my son. The task of planning is tricky if you dont keep open communication with your child’s teacher….But that is a blog for another day.
From his teacher I learned the class had already covered narrative texts. We are still covering narrative reading/writing at home and I really want him to KNOW what a narrative text consists of before we move into informational text. Plus, he is already good at pointing out facts in informational science books that we read together. This made me decide to focus more time on narratives. So, what is a narrative text in first grade??
Well, if your children are attending a public school it would be a good idea to start by becoming familiar with first grade Common Core Standards. The first grade language arts reading can found HERE.
****Remember, every state has their own adaptions to common core. Be sure and check out your states First Grade Common Core Standards, too.****
……….Back to reading narrative text.
A first grader will learn to decipher narrative text from other types of text by remembering a few key characteristics::
Narrative text TELLS A STORY.
It has a BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END.
Narratives have a CHARACTER(s) AND A SETTING.
Narrations can be FICTION or NONFICTION. (introductions will begin in Kindergarten)
A Cute visual for characteristics of a Narrative can be found at Fun In First.
TELLING A STORY….
is fairly self explanatory. You want your firster to be familiar with story telling text. In kindergarten they will be read famous classics, Fairy Tales, Poems, and all the awesome series books like “The old Lady That..” And “Clifford”. All those types of literature are considered narratives. So while you are reading to them help them become familiar with the vocabulary term “Narrative”. They will need to label types of text in first grade and be able to differentiate characteristics of those texts.
You will also want them to start writing about how they relate to the story. “What would you do if” types of questions will now be wrote out in sentences. Your firster will learn how to give supportive reasoning and examples from narratives to form opinions as well. They will draw from their own experiences as they develop character trait recognition….It is magical to hear my son beginning to compare himself to a character within a book!!
We will focus in more detail about character traits during our next break……THANKSGIVING!!! Can. Not. Wait.:)
Supportive reasons activities for the book “If I Were President”.
Sequential Order or BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END……
Emphasis is placed on pattering, story retell, using words like first, next, last because these skills are the stepping stones to ALL academics! Later, there is number order/patterning, the scientific process, writing phonetic English patterns…the list is endless. They are NOT just skills important to reading. You may want to review those kindergarten story sequencing skills but expect them to point out key details with less prompting……. More putting thoughts into correctly written words instead of using illustrated retell is what that looked like for my little guy.
The most common way to teach all about narrative reading and writing is to use story maps like these…..
There are really a lot of FREE printable story maps online at Teachers Pay Teachers if you are a FREE member!!!
At the start of first grade it’s all about using simple sentences to recall key details….
During first grade, children learn to write sentences to describe what is happening in the beginning, middle, and end of a narrative. They develop more intricate writing patterns as the year progresses. So they need to use a simple Story Map with say Beginning, Middle, End, character, and setting at the start of first grade.
Towards the ending of the year the same child may be using a story map that asks the child to describe the plot and conflict in addition to the B/M/E. For higher learning levels (as leveled by core standards) a story map may even ask them to describe the conflict, peak of conflict, and/or resolution using key details.
***** It is important to remember a story map should be appropriately challenging for each individual child. AND that it is quite alright for parents to teach with a mixed level story map even if you need to make your own for your children!! Sometimes my son uses cut and paste or hidden folding story maps for extra writing space. *****
CHARACTER AND SETTING………….
I decided to really target Characters in narratives during break from school. There is so much more to learn about characters in a story than a story map can cover here. See how we cover characters using BIG visuals this week (HIS FAVORITE READING AND WRITING TOOL!!) as we step into informational text. I will come back and post a link to this page!
When you chose to cover characters with a story map you can ask your child to write out the name of the main character with correct capitalization. If there is more than one character ask them to write each characters name in order of importance. Most times the main character is who is telling the story but the character telling the story may change at certain points. Be sure to ask “Who is telling the story?”
The setting often changes at different times during the story especially when reading firster chapter books. When this happens my son first does a chapter by chapter story retell with posty notes:)
These are some of his favorite chapter book. We take turns reading but it is still important that he read chapter books. He is learning to use features of books like Table of Contents to find chapter title and page number.
Then I help him fill out a simple book report to summarize his notes.
Your firster should already be familiar with story books that are true and not real stories. At this point they need to know what the vocabulary words Fiction and Nonfiction mean. These two categories of text will be learned about continually throughout the year and this is why………
Nonfictional and Fictional text can be found in a many types of texts not just Narratives.
Narrative text
Personal Opinion Narrative text
Informational text (is generally nonfiction unless you are reading something like ” The Three Types of Swap Monsters” 🙂
head and bill
Eyes and tail
The Afterschool House 
