Chicka Chicka Boom Boom...

“Chicka chicka boom boom, will there be enough room?”  The kids listened to Bill Martin Jr.’s popular story, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and completed many literacy, math, and art activities based on the book.  They studied the pattern of the text, learned more about adjectives, and connected letter sounds to letters.  The K-kids created their own chicka chicka trees using similar techniques to the illustrator, Lois Ehlert.  They cut and glued construction paper to create the trees and wrote about their favorite parts of the story.  These are on display in the hallway!  The K-kids also used the story as a starting point for sorting the alphabet into consonants and vowels.  After identifying the vowels and consonants, the K-kids completed an activity that encouraged them to count the number of letters in their names and then count the number of vowels and consonants in their names.

We have been feeding money to "Petunia the Pig" during morning meeting, and during this time the kids are being exposed to the names of coins, coin values, adding coins, and exchanging coins (5 pennies for a nickel, etc).  The amount of money in Petunia represents how many days we have been in school.  We just exchanged 10 pennies for a dime and added a penny, so Petunia has eleven cents for the eleven completed school days.  During a math lesson this week, each K-kid had an individual baggie of play money and practiced sorting, counting, and trading coins.  We will continue to teach and reinforce coin names and values as the year progresses.

The Kindergarten class added another step to Writer’s Workshop this week.  After listening and participating in the mini-lesson, the kids write in their own journals often incorporating many of the ideas from the mini-lessons.  I then choose three kids to sit in the "share chair" and share their written work and picture.  Research shows that when children write for an audience, they tend to take their time and work even harder on the final product.  I include time for QCC – questions, comments, and connections which encourages the “audience” to participate and connect to the story, compliment the story, or help extend the writer’s thinking about the journal piece.  The kids have been so excited for their turns in the share chair and the audience has done a great job with QCCs!