Apples Apples Apples
Can you believe how big and wonderful these acorns are ? Wow ! Brynlee’s mom brought them in this morning and this is the first time in my life I have seen them this large. If anyone has a tree that is bearing acorns this large and your children enjoy harvesting I would love to have more.
While away at conference I pick up little pieces of wisdom. Sometimes it is something I learn from an actual workshop I attend and sometimes it is from a conversation with a colleague. This time I got a few pieces of inspiration and hit the floor running. I have always known there are stages in a child’s writing but what I didn’t know is the motor progression behind that. I have ordered three books that will help me better understand this development but for today I simply wanted to watch the children and find out when they are writing or drawing is it shoulder activity, elbow movement, wrist movement or are they already at the pincher grip with their fingers when writing. Collecting this data helps me scaffold their learning to the next step and saves me some time offering activities that they arent ready for yet. In each child’s cubby today is a tiny book they made about apples. I watched them twice . I watched on a large piece of paper and then a small sheet to see if it made a difference .
More exploring those huge acorns .
When starting a unit is is important first to find out what the children already know.
I dictated what the children told me and then we talked about how apple starts with the letter A. We circled the letter A on our dictation and then counted how many A’s there were. How do you write 18 ? Gage successfully told me to write a 1 and an 8 ! Way to go Gage !
Today we started an unit on apples. We had apples everywhere to sort and count.
This shiny red material has disappeared since this morning . Imagine that . It was placed in a basket for cutting practice. For some reason the kids felt the need to throw it in the air and watch it fall to the ground. Sometimes you learn as you go. 🙂 