Hey, Friends!
Well, we made it to school a whole ONE DAY last week! Not even a full day either...we were on a two hour delay due to bus routes needing rerouting from still a bit of a mess from Florence. My sweeties were so ready to be back at school, and to be honest I was too. Being cooped up in my house for an entire week was not doing me any favors in the productivity department.
We FINALLY were able to get our house back in order after moving everything inside from both our front and back porches, along with a whole mess of other things we brought from the outside in. We didn't suffer any real damage, thank goodness, so I could barely handle the hot mess that was going on inside my house for a few days.
Isn't my sweet Benson adorable?! He was all too excited to get back to the outside air, too!
Anywho, last week and the ONE DAY we had this week, we read all sorts of books about kindness.
1. Nerdy Birdie-oh my lord, I love this book! We used Stories by Storie's Book Companion Set. We practiced all sorts of skills with this book. Reading comprehension, character mapping, comparing and contrasting characters, and or course, we had to do the cutest writing craft to go with it! Of course, I forgot to take pictures of these, but I do have some of them hanging up, so I'll be sure to add some photos when I get back to school next week!
2. Be Kind- Ok. This book just about made me cry when I read it. Such a sweet, sweet, story about how kindness can affect others. We discussed all the different ways we could be kind to one another (big and small). We completed these, "Be Kind Like Sunshine," cuties and wrote all the different ways we can show kindness, both at school and at home.
3. The Friend Ship-I knew this was going to be a keeper when I saw Disney was involved! This book is so stinkin cute. It's about a little porcupine who is very lonely and overhears some other forest creatures talking about friendship. Well, little porcupine mistakes it for an ACTUAL Friend Ship and goes off in search of it! My kids were so in love with this book and honestly, so was I. The illustrations are adorable and it made for a great discussion with how characters change throughout a story.
We determined some unknown vocabulary words while we read and used context clues during our reading to figure out the meaning. Such an important reading skill for our kiddos!
We then of course had to make our very own Friend Ships!
We brainstormed a list of character traits we look for in a friend. Each student then completed the sails with a trait they wanted a friend to have and why. Brainstorming first helps those kiddos who have difficulty coming up with their own ideas. I once read it's better for students to COPY your work than to do nothing or to complete an assignment incorrectly.
Not only are these totally adorable, BUT they are perfect in helping students understand character traits and how to compose their own idea when looking at characters in different book genres.
You can find all these Friend Ship goodies HERE!
4. Eraser- Oh. My. Word. Can I just say this is seriously one of the cutest books EVER! It reminds me a lot of, "The Day the Crayons Quit," books, but maybe even cuter! I purchased mine through Amazon.
I wish you could have seen my second graders as I was reading this book aloud. Every. Single. Kid. had their eyes GLUED to this book! It's all about Eraser and how she is tired of cleaning up everyone else's mistakes. She wants to be something more! This tied perfectly into our discussion of how characters change throughout a story while still teaching about kindness. SPOILER ALERT: Pencil is not very nice to Eraser...
We activated our prior knowledge by brainstorming the job(s) of different school supplies. I had my students help me come up with a list for Scotch Tape.
I then gave each pair of students a random school supply on a sheet of paper and they worked together to come up with a list of jobs for that item.
How cute is, "blongs?!" 😜😭
We then read the story together and they were totally engrossed in the adorable pictures, the facial expressions, and loads of detail that were found in each and every page. You can check out the book trailer video here. 😊
After reading, we completed a timeline of Eraser's emotions from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
Then of course we had to make a craftivity to go along with this story!
Each student chose a school supply and wrote from that character's point of view. (We also talked about point of view when we read, "School's First Day of School). They then made their school supply come alive through the magic of cutting and gluing some eye balls, mouths, and glasses (if they wished), onto their supply. I love seeing their creativity in both their art and writing ideas.
You can grab this Eraser set by visiting my TPT store HERE.
This next week is everything Johnny Appleseed! 🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎 We will be completing our first lap book of the year and the kids always get so excited to add to it each day. I secretly love Johnny Appleseed week...don't really know why? I think it's because it's the start of the fall season, which means it's sweater season! 🙌
I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead! I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, even though I really enjoyed getting caught up with all of the Netflix shows I've been wanting to watch. Next week starts all things HALLOWEEN!!! 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 CANNOT WAIT!!
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