Blending, friending

Table time: We started the day off with worksheets about stories' titles and sequencing. The kids had to look at a storyboard, come up with a title and then describe the action in the story in three sentences (beginning, middle and end). No problemo!

I let them craft/spell their words entirely on their own. (I do believe it being called 'whole word' back when Rick and Ken were kgarteners in the early 90s - yikes!) While I'm a big fan of this approach for emerging writers, I also think it's better if they learn correct spelling sooner rather than later, so to help build that skill, after a quick recess we worked on consonant blends.

I found a Web site with a perfect PowerPoint to work on consonant blends. To make it more fun, for each blend I assigned CJ and Annabelle a letter (for instance, for "bl" CJ was the "b" and Annabelle was the "l", so they made their sounds faster and closer together until they had the perfect blend. They thought that was tons o' fun. Then I asked them to generate words that started with a particular blend before revealing the .PPT's list of words. This is an exercise we'll revisit often, I'm sure.

As usual, they watched Spanish educational programming during lunch, and 1 p.m. brought Zula Patrol. As always, presented a fantastic science lesson in a fun format.

We decided that our Monday field trip will be going to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in IMAX 3-D at the Pacific Science Center. It's based on a children's book. I promptly hopped to the Seattle Public Library Web site hoping to score a copy to read to the kids before the show. Looks like I wasn' the only one with that idea. However, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I was able to find a video of someone reading the book page by page (and picture by picture). So the kids read along with that and then we hopped to the movie's official Web site and watched the trailer/preview. Next, we spent several minutes comparing and contrasting the story line in the book with the one in the movie, noting similarities and differences. (CJ and Annabelle had some astute observations.) We discussed movie adaptations of books and how sometimes things change in the process.

This afternoon we headed out to CJ's Befriended class. We were early, so the kids got to have PE in expansive Meridian Park. One corner has a giant stone construct. Complete with an arch and seats, fit for a king (CeeJ) and queen (Bee), it was great for playing castle.

Back home, the I decided tonight would be a perfect time to get the kids into the act cooking dinner. CJ and Annabelle helped make the sauce, shred the cheese, shape the dough, and spread on sauce and toppings. It was pretty darn good, and they were awfully proud.