Don't Let the Pigeon Mess With Our Blog!

This is a wrap-up of the last two weeks. My home computer is touch and go, so last week the blog wasn't happenin'. But I figured since it was Mother's Day, you'd probably be pre-occupied with other things to even know that it was missing.

 

Last week we did an author study of Mo Willems. One of his most famous books is "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." It has several "spin-offs" and we read nearly all of them. They are very funny and the kids loved them. We read other books of his (that had nothing to do with pigeons) and we made a list of the techniques he likes to use.  

Then we went through a few stages of the writing process to create our own "Don't Let the Pigeon..." books. The students were encouraged to use the same techniques Willems uses in his books. The kids couldn't wait to make their own books and had a blast doing it.  We have lots of budding authors and illustrators! Here's just a few excerpts from a handful of them.



First we practiced drawing the pigeon.









We also made Mother's Day cards last week - hope you got them!

 

And these were a few of our centers last week.

 

Students added blue and green beads to the kite strings to show all the different
ways to make ten.



And lastly, we had cupcakes to celebrate Miss Hisel's last day. 



Now onto this week. We learned about compound words: "A compound word is two words squished together to make one new word."

The students made word baskets of compound words (one of the working memory games we've been incorporating into the classroom).

 

On Thursday, the students were each given a half of a compound word and had to search through among their classmates to find their match. (Picture to come).

 

 

And today, the students went on a hallway hunt to find and record lots more compound words. 

 

Then the AM class made their own stack of compound words like the ones we made together on the anchor chart. (The PM class went to a play and didn't get the chance to make one. They will make theirs next week).

And here are a few of our centers this week. In the math games center, the students rolled two dice that had numerals on them (not dots) so that they had to "smash" and count up, rather than add by counting the dots. Then they graphed their sums.  

And the students played Sight Word Baseball in the word work center. This is just like Sight Word Parking Lot, except the students put a baseball in the glove once they spell a word.