What a week!

Wow it's only the end of Wednesday and its been a full week so far. I'm exhausted! We've been busy busy busy.
I sent home a pumpkin book report a few weeks ago and slowly pumpkins are trickling in. Seriously how cute are these??

I did NOT take a picture of the one that was so obviously purchased at a grocery store, already painted. Oh well.

Last week we studied bats, bats and more bats. I took some ideas from The Inspired Apple and we focused on pulling facts from the book. That was really, really hard for them as they could not separate what they already knew from what was in the book. When I asked them about something on a page, they'd tell me what they already knew. Sigh. Towards the end of the week they started to get a more solid understanding of what I was asking them to do, and they could all tell me the meaning of the word "nocturnal." I love one girls definition: "They go to sleep during wake up time and wake up when it's good night time!"

This week we started out with learning about the tools writers use. We talked about capitalization and punctuation. Tomorrow we are going to write Halloween Super Sentences from Sailing Through First. I can't wait to do that - I really think they are going to get it because of the way its presented.

Lastly, we hammered home short vowels last week. It was short vowel mania! I found some really cute short vowel word family sheets that were "color by the word family". Unfortunately I can't remember where I got them, I've been downloading so much lately! I sent it home as homework, and I got a note from a mom about the homework:

How often does THAT happen?!?!?!? :) The next day, one of the kids wrote on his sheet, "This homework is so much fun!" Wow! I have to find the creator and tell them the great response I've gotten.

Coming up - I quit the Daily 5. Not because I don't love it, but because it wasn't working with my schedule and the kids weren't doing enough. My next post will be all about my new reading structure. Stay tuned!