Old Ladies

We've been reading an awful lot of stories about old ladies lately, haven't we? They've been such fun stories though!

This week we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Caldecott Honor Book). This story kicked off our new rhyming unit! And the children did SO great with this concept!

We explored the rhyming words as we read the story; then we did an activity where we stuffed the old lady's belly full of the animals from the book. The children had to complete the rhyme I gave them (I don't know why she swallowed the...) before they got to stuff that animal into her belly. I think every class got stumped on the last rhyme (the horse one). They had to think hard on some of the other rhymes too, but overall did really well.

I feel really good about this week's start to our rhyming unit. I feel it's going to ease us into the rest of the unit very nicely. Next week will be a little trickier, as we come up with our own rhymes. I'm eager to see how they do with it!


Oh! Almost forgot! I have a cute story to share!

We were re-reading the story The Teeny-Tiny Woman at the beginning of one of our classes, and I read the part about how the teeny tiny woman left her cottage to go for a teeny tiny walk...

Then, later in the story, it says something about the teeny tiny woman walking back to her home. After I read that line, one of the children said, "yeah, back to her home at college."

I stopped for a second when he said this, trying to figure out why he thought the teeny tiny woman lived at a college. Then it dawned on me that he thought I said "college" when I read the word "cottage" earlier in the story! Makes sense. I mean, "cottage" is definitely not a word we use much these days. I can understand how their brains might hear the word "college" instead.

This created a great teachable moment, and we talked about what a cottage is.

A Spooky Week!

I love October! Want to spark the interest of a child? Tell them you've got some spooky stories to tell them! We heard two spooky stories this week: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything Book and CD (Share a Story) AND The Teeny-Tiny Woman. I wish you could see the faces of my students when they heard these stories. There wasn't one wiggle or squirm the whole time!

Our first story, The Little Old Lady who Was not Afraid of Anything, I read aloud to them. I used extra dramatic pauses and inflections in my voice, and made a few of the children jump at parts of the story.

Sometimes I wish we could do spooky stories all year. It was a little sad this week, knowing that we will be starting a new unit in November, and will be saying good-bye to these extra fun October tales. That just means I need to get super creative with my lessons next month so they will be just as engaging as October's lessons. That's good though. Keeps me on my game!

After we did some activities, I finished off the lesson by telling the class the story of "The Teeny Tiny Woman." Storytelling is one of my favorite things to do in class. This was the first time I did storytelling for the year, and it always surprises the kids the first time. A few of my classes of kids asked to see the "pictures" when I was done telling the story. Now, usually when they ask this, I have to explain that the pictures are in your head when you hear storytelling. I did have a copy of the storybook version of this tale with me today though. So I went ahead and showed the children the illustrations when they asked. It offered a good opportunity for us to review the story.

I feel great about this week's lesson. Progress reports went home this week. I have to admit, I often dread progress report months because it takes so much time to fill them all out. But it's worth it if it's helpful to the parents (and kids)!

One sad note, I let one of my students take last week's story , Go Away, Big Green Monster!, back to class with her to look at for a few minutes at the beginning of this week (I told you that book was going to be a favorite!). Then I forgot to get it back from her before I left. Sooo... I didn't have the book with me to review with the rest of my classes this week. Sad day! I'm hoping to pick it up next week, and I'll bring it with me sometime in November.

No class next week. We start our Rhyming Unit the first full week of November!