Trying to Keep Up!

Our Version of Hour of Code!

This week, since several of the Tech classes have been exploring coding this year, I decided to match the experienced coders up with their younger reading buddies for some one-on-0ne coding instruction! SO fun and we will definitely do it again later in the year…

Arthur Meets the President

While the Kindergarten teacher was making her way to Washington, we talked about what Inauguration Day was about. I read the Kindergarteners Arthur Meets the President. Arthur wins an essay contest in the book by writing about how he believes people can make America great by helping each other – although he is extremely nervous about delivering his essay as a speech to the President himself.

I assigned a Google Slide to each of the Fourth Graders so that they could respond to the prompt, “What I Want the President to Know.” I showed them how to search for images and the children were very thoughtful as they typed their thoughts on the slides. We will finish up the presentation on Friday. I brought the draft of the slide show up to show their Eighth Grade buddies, who were suitably impressed with the Fourth Graders’ work!

Snow Is My Favorite and My Best

After an overnight snowfall, the Kindergarteners read Snow Is My Favorite and My Best. Lauren Child, the author/illustrator combined drawings with photographs of real things to create the pictures, so we did the same thing!

The Thanksgiving Door

When Ann burns their dinner, she and Ed go down the street to a new cafe to have Thanksgiving dinner. The cafe owners welcome them into their family celebration which incorporates traditions carried from their home country. Ann and Ed find themselves thankful that their own dinner was burned – as they so appreciate their newly-found friends.

The children loved this story. I gave each child a simple piece of folded paper with a small door cut out to use for their own drawings…

 

Red Week!

Since we had Blue Week a couple of weeks ago, I pulled out some red-themed stories to read to the Kindergarteners this week. We started with an old favorite – The Red Hen with pictures by Rebecca Emberly.  Then we read The Red String, a wordless book in the spirit of Harold and the Purple Crayon. 

Eveyone got red markers, glue andd their own red string to creat a picture after we read together…