Tornados and Snow

Spring like storms and tornados last week, and then cold and snow this week... what's up with that??? Tennessee is a weird place.

So I'm at home today on a self-declared Snow Day (most local schools have a Snow Day today too)!! Woohoo! The way I schedule Literacy Launchpad makes it pretty easy most months to reschedule class if necessary. It felt necessary today. Local schools are closed today, so our normal classroom would have been occupied by school-agers. That means we would have been forced to have class in the hallway. That's always difficult. Plus, I was told that many children are absent today due to the weather, and I would hate for so many kiddos to miss our lesson this week (or any week). ... And although I am from the Chicago area originally, I still hate getting out in any kind of snow (even if it's just a dusting). Especially with some of these crazy Tennessee drivers.

Now that I have justified my Snow Day to everyone, I want to tell you how much fun I've been having with our lesson this week. I'm surprised, because I wasn't sure this lesson would go over the best. But the kids have been loving it, and it seems like the content of the lesson is really sticking with them (at least all the way back to their classrooms).

We read The Z Was Zapped: A Play in Twenty-Six Acts, and they have been fascinated with this book! All eyes are glued to each page, as they eagerly await what will happen to the next letter in the alphabet. It's awesome!

Our activity this week was acting out the parts of the letters. Each child was assigned a letter of the alphabet (not all the letters were represented in each class). They decorated headbands with their assigned letter on it. Then we read through our story a second time. When they heard their letter, they stood up and acted out what was happening to the letter on that page.

These kids are very dramatic actors!! They had a ball doing this activity. They wanted to read the story again and again. And they were interested not only in their own letter, but in what letter everyone else had. They loved seeing everyone else act out their part too! And on the way back to class they were all talking about what had happened to each letter in the story. I was amazed at how much was sticking with them.

So no class today, and no class tomorrow since everyone will be having Valentine's Day parties. We'll move on to a new lesson next week, and then I'll come back to this lesson for the ones who missed it this week.

Big Monster! Big Hit!

This week's story, Go Away, Big Green Monster!by Ed Emberley, was a big hit! In this book, we slowly see a monster face appear as we turn each page. And then once we see the monster's complete face, we make him disappear!

Upon finishing this read-aloud I always hear "Read it again! Read it again!" Ah! Music to my ears! And so we did read it again. During our second reading, I had the children help me create the monsters face in the middle of our circle. I passed out pieces of the monsters face (teeth, hair, eyes) and they had to listen for their piece to be mentioned in the story, and then add it to the monster's face.

Then we played Monster Stomp! We took turns pulling words from our story from the "monster box," and reading the words aloud. Each word the box was a part of the monster's face, and there was a picture to accompany to word, which helped with the "reading."

There was one piece in the box that I told them NOT to pull out - the piece with the monster's entire face on it!! Yikes! This piece scares me! But of course, the children all tried their best to pull that monster face out of the box on their turn. Every time somebody pulled out that piece we yelled "MONSTER!" and stomped our feet to get him to go back in the box.

This lesson is SO much fun, not only for the children, but for me too! It allows me to use my amazing acting skills (O.K., maybe not so amazing...) and really ham up our activities. That's the best!

Toward the end of the week, while were playing Monster Stomp, somebody pulled the monster from the box. So we all yelled and stomped, and when the monster went back in the box, I asked the children (using those amazing acting skills) to please not pull him out again because "my heart couldn't take it." Well, one of the little girls was really listening when I said this, and wanted to mimic my dramatics. So the next time the monster was pulled from the box she put her hands to her chest and said, "Oh! Don't take my heart!" to the monster! And she continued to say it every time the monster was pulled from the box. It made me giggle!

Go Away, Big Green Monster!Is definitely another book they're going to be talking about for a while! I think next week's lesson is going to be great fun as well!