Recently in Literature Category

Today Megan did the story sequence for the story.  On strips with sentences written in which an animal is missing, Megan read the sentences and had to try and remember the animal in question. The only one she truly forgot was flea danced a jig.

We discussed the definition of canal and basement. Megan understood basement well. I was surprised. I asked her if we have a basement. I am not sure she has ever saw a basement.

We are studying steam with respect to Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel and so we read this cute little book to go along with it. Its about a little steamboat that goes down the Mississippi looking for magnificent steamships just to find them parked in a bayou and they recalled how they used to be great and how they would pull up and pick up or let off people from Mansions.  But now we are useless. But the flood of the Mississippi strands a lot of animals and against the tremendous force of the Mississippi, the steamboats make there way and save the animals. After this, they retire again to the Bayou.

Today, we started Mike Mulligan and the steam shovel. I probably shouldn't have with Frog and Toad still in the works, but Megan wanted to draw trees and I knew that Five in a Row discusses trees.  Basically, for aerial trees, they are like a ball and stick figure, but when they are close up you see the branches coming out from the main trunk. So, then we , using HomeArt Kindergarden, listened to the teacher talk about how to make trees. 

Megan and I read Rosie's walk , a book about a fox chasing a hen.  In this story,there is a lot of prepositions and cause and effect.  Megan chose the fox bumping into a set of bee hives.  This caused the bees to chase the fox,while the hen walks quietly away under the bee hives.  We also discussed the characteristics of the fox and the hen.  

We read kate and the beanstalk and jack in the beanstalk and , using a Venn diagram , compared them .   Kate and the beanstalk had several differences , but the same underlying similarities, that is they both had starving families, sold their cow and received beans in return, supposedly magic beans.  In both cases, the mother threw them out the window and a giant beanstalk grew. 

We read this book and then analyzed it to see how we could change the bad events in the story to good points.   Megan now has to write five tips on how Alexander could have a better day.  She did writes couple sentences.  I will get her to write a couple more. 

This is a story about a boy and his grandfather, where the boy obviously lives with his grandfather.   This book talks about heightened senses when one of your five is lessened.  In this story, the boy is unable to see as the electric goes out during the storm, he can hear better. So, he listens intently to the sounds both inside and out of his house. This leads to a discussion about Onomatopoeia, in which a word makes the sound of the object when you say it, like bong, bong, bong, or ribbit , ribbit, ribbit, clonk clonk , or ticktock, ticktock, etc.  We discussed this before in another story and again now. 

Fear:

This book brings up to the topic to a child that fear is normal and that fear can be overcome..  This comes about because the grandfather was once afraid of the lightning and thunder of storms, but one day he had to face his fear when he left his dog Marvin out in a storm.  He had to be brave to leave underneath his bed to go to the door and let his dog in.

It also brought up a lesson discussed in a very first, last time, where , when you are afraid , it can make you forget about everything else.  Sometimes when I have to drive at night, I get soooo afraid, I forget to think about the roads and how to get back.  Once I gain control, I am able to do this better.


Language: Contrast

We also talked about the descriptive language and contrasting language in the beginning and end of the book, like in the beginning there was "Thunder like mountains blowing up initially , to mutterings of thunder in the end of the story.

Language : Italics

We discussed Italics and how they add emphasis to the words. I also discussed how , to do this in writing, you underline the words you want to emphasize.  Megan, when she sentences tomorrow, is going to apply some of these techniques. 

Science:

We discussed the clouds and thunder some. We are going to read books on these topics as well this week.