Sentence Building and Recycling Bottle Caps

Have you collected any of those colorful plastic bottle caps yet? Today was one of those days when my kids just needed a break from the usual. So, we pulled out our bottle cap bin and began writing sentences using nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This is not a new thing...but if you haven't tried this with kids yet, you are missing out on the fun of watching them make some silly and wonderful sentences. I only had three colors, so I just used nouns (blue), verbs (yellow) and adjectives (purple). 

We made it a grab bag game. They randomly picked out three different parts of speech (colors) and used those words for their "core" words. They had to add articles, pronouns, and prepositions (as needed) in order to have their sentences be grammatically correct. It did not matter whether the sentences were silly or totally ridiculous.

This is really and truly ONE MORE way to get kids to write! They were very surprised to see how well they did.  The pictures below are of my small group of third graders who liked making this into a "grab bag" game. Some sentences came out quite silly! But that's the fun of it.

What's especially great about bottle caps, is that they are versatile enough do so many different activities. If your kids are just learning the alphabet, use these for matching upper and lower case letters. As "letter caps" instead of word caps, you can scramble and unscramble words. 

Origami Stars

I love origami and stars-- so this is the perfect website to check out: bloomize.com. I found this pin and figured I'd put it here on my blog to share. Great tutorials to go with each design. This will be one of my summer projects!

If you love this collage of stars, please click on the pinterest link below if you are interested in passing this along,  http://pinterest.com/pin/561894490978378266/  or go directly to the 
 website: http://www.bloomize.com/galaxy-of-origami-stars/. It's a cool site to visit!

Love the New England Aquarium!

I can't get enough of the tranquility and fantastic world of sea creatures. The aquarium is always an inspiration whenever I visit. 

It's no wonder that the sea is a perfect springboard for writing and making arts and crafts. The colors and all the strange creatures are mesmerizing for all ages. 

Recently, we made coral reef books (Who Lives in the Coral Reef?) as a K-2 primary collaborative unit of study on habitats.  The kids were so excited to read, write and draw in their books. We had an open house to show off all their work. You can see my coral reef shape book in my TPT store. 

Before you leave my blog, click on the short video of the lovely and graceful jellyfish (below).

                    

Jellyfish at the New England Aquarium, Boston, MA

www.neaq.org

Readworks.org

Have you checked out this amazing website yet? It's a resource you will want to visit, bookmark, and revisit over and over.  Are you looking for common core skills focusing on reading comprehension across the content areas? If so, check it out right away! 

I have taken advantage of their scores of leveled nonfiction passages. You can choose to do a unit, or just do the short reading passages. Questions and answer keys accompany each passage. You will love how you can save pdfs in a binder for the future, too. And here's the really good part... It's FREE!!!! Honest. 

Click on the right sidebar or go to READWORKS

(Please note: I am not a salesperson or rep for readworks.org. I just love 'em.)

First graders practice words with silent e.

Funny, they happen to wear the same shirt on this day. 

Reading "A Curve in the River" and Recycling

       My kids read from our Houghton-Mifflin Anthology, "The Curve in the River", an excerpt from The Stories Julian Tells, by Ann Cameron. We wrote messages for our message in the bottle activity yesterday. We recycled bottles by decorating them with stickers and flags, and rolling up our carefully written notes to place inside the bottles. The kids thought this was pretty special. But we did decide we weren't throwing them in the river! (No, we're not going to recycle and then pollute a river!  A wonderful idea to send it in a real river, but we just could not do that.) 

    So, we came up with an alternative plan to use our message bottles. Then they had to pick a friend or relative to give their message to. I do this every year with my kids, and it never gets old!

Strategies for Improving Fluency

Having trouble getting your kids to read fluently? 

Here are 5 easy steps that can be taken. Some activities can be done every day, even for a few minutes. Fluency is when we read with expression and meaning, and at a "speaking" rate.

Below, you'll also see a couple of my favorite poets' website links. April (just around the corner) is poetry month, which makes it a perfect excuse to use poems for practicing fluency with your children.They really won't think you are making them work when they read a funny poem!! 

Choral reading and readers' theater are my favorite activities for developing prosody.Try choral reading regularly, as part of your daily routine in literacy block.

You can download "Strategies for Improving Fluency" for free if you save it to your desktop.

See the following links to some really great, all-time, favorite, tried and true, never-outdated, kid-friendly poems--

www.JackPrelutsky.com  www.ShelSilverstein.com

  You are free to print and share the above document, but please do not alter it as it is copyrighted. Thank you for observing copyrights.

Signs of Spring!

I can't wait to visit the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory this spring. Hope spring is coming your way soon. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that snow is going to be around where I live for awhile longer. 

Handful of Caterpillars

                    

Spring is Almost Here!