For the last 2 weeks, my children and I have been reading and learning about The Mitten by Jan Brett.

I’ll give you a run down of what we have been doing day by day, then I’ll post separately about 100’s day tomorrow! 🙂

Monday: We took a picture walk through the book and then I read the story aloud to them.  To incorporate a little science, we read a book about the Mole (from the story) and we made a chart listing all the things we learned about moles.  The children were fascinated with the idea of a mole, so of course, I had to go back to the school libarary and find more books about them!  Our Predictable Chart for the week was called “The Mitten…” and the children each gave me ideas about the mitten from the story.  We also learned another addition/subtraction game, I’ll post that in another post as well.

Tuesday: We took a “Memory Walk” as I like to call it, through the story and the children told me about what they remembered happening on each page and then I read the story to them again.  We also learned about Snowshoe Hares/Rabbits and made a list of all the things we learned.  We also interviewed a child in my class who has a rabbit at home and she shared with us how to care for and feed a rabbit, so we added that to the chart as well.

Wednesday, I read the story once and then the children choral read it with me.  Up next, the Hedgehog!  He had a long list and we found out that another child in our class had previously had a hedgehog for a pet and he shared his feeding tips for hedgehogs!

Thursday, we told the story using the masks from Jan Brett’s website. We had to do this twice so that everyone got a chance to be an animal.  We also used sentences from the Predictable Chart that I cut up and we put them back in order.  The children loved learning about badgers and the chart about them was FULL of facts!  We had a 2 hour delay.

Friday, we made a class book from our PC sentences.  I have had the children write their sentences at the bottom of their papers instead of me copying them and printing them each week.  They are doing a great job, handwriting is improving, and so is that left to right concept.  I’m also noticing that the spacing between words is getting better by having them do this.  The book is really cute and I have to make copies of it for my National Board portfolio before binding them together. We also read about foxes and made a chart about them.  We had a 2 hour delay.

Monday: No School-MLK Jr. Day

Tuesday: We gathered to watch the inauguration as a school, so we did pretty much that all day! 🙂

Wednesday: We played catch up learning about owls and bears.  Two charts in one day!  One in the AM and one in the PM parts of the day.  I also talked with the parents of incoming Kindergarten students for next year, so I was out of the room for 45 minutes during our AM literacy time.

Thursday: We read about mice first thing and made our chart.  At 9am, I recorded my video for my National Board Certification.  Here’s the basic idea of what I did.  Using the charts that we have been making for the last 2 weeks, I made a Venn Diagram and the children helped me to sort the animals into groups by eating habits; herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore.  I then had them pick two of their favorite animals and write one thing that was the same about them and one thing that was different about them (that was my assessment).  They did a great job! 🙂

Friday: 100’s day–see my next post! 🙂

I am preparing to speak to the district Kindergarten teachers in two weeks about Literacy Work Stations as well as websites for Kindergarten students.  If you are intersted in seeing other, please leave me a comment on this post (which automatically e-mails me) and I will post them if I am able! 🙂

I’ve also been asked to speak at the ICE (Indiana Computer Educators Conference) next week about my Monarch Migration project and how I use technology in Kindergarten.  I’ll post the info for that, just as soon as I get it finished.  Again, if you would like see that, leave me a comment and I’ll try to get something posted for you.

I hope you all know that what I list each day is not all that we do in a day–we actually do MUCH, MUCH more, I just post the highlights and things that change from day to day.  I didn’t want you to think that our whole day was taken up by this! 🙂

On to 100’s day! 🙂

Kristen 🙂