Five for Friday October 24

Happy Friday! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Thank you for hosting, Kacey!

 

We had so much fun reading Humbug Witch this week!  It's a sweet little book with LOTS of adjectives if you're looking for good descriptive words.  I posted a few free Listening Activities that I like to use with my class, if you'd like to use them.  Just click on the pictures! 

The kids are working on sight words like a BOSS!  We use any magnetic space we can find  to build words.

Then, they write them...

We made our own Hex-bugs to help us remember Hexagons this week. Last year, I cut out lots and lots of different size hexagons and had the kids decorate those.  This year, I made one colorful hexagon on this paper and they decorated that.  I printed them on cardstock.  The kids had so much fun.  It was handy that bugs have 6 legs and hexagons have 6 sides!   If you would like a copy of the paper, just click HERE.

Last Saturday, some of us from school went on a Wine Tour.  We had SO much fun.  About an hour from where I live, near Ithaca, NY, we have some fabulous, fun wineries. We went to six of them. My sweet, sweet husband drove us all there.  What a trooper.  He's a great one! 

(The bottom middle picture looks like we needed to be cut off, BUT we were just imitating our friend Leslie's attempts at selfie poses.  She's a riot when she tries...)

My husband heard this TED Talk the other day by Sir Ken Robinson, and showed it to me. It's old, so maybe you have seen it, but I hadn't.  I loved it.  It's titled "How Schools Kill Creativity."

                           

The talk is about 20 minutes, and worth every one of them, but if you don't have that kind of time, here are my favorite parts:

3:38- Drawing God

8:35-10 - Hierachy of subjects and the purpose of education (to produce University Professors...)

and my FAVORITE is at 15 minutes in (if you only have a couple minutes, watch this!) This is the  story of Jillian Lynne's experience in school. She went on to be the producer of the musical, Cats.   I won't give it away, because it's a story worth hearing, and one I will always remember.  But I will tell you that the line I will remember forever as a teacher is, "She's not sick.  She's a dancer."

Sometimes I am heartbroken seeing the way kids are expected to sit and do "paperwork" for so long. I can tell at five years old the children who have a real interest in mechanics and taking things apart, or art, or science.  I have a little guy this year who takes EVERYTHING apart that he can get his hands on.  He is so interested in how everything works, but I find I am spending most of the day calling him back to what we are doing (and putting back together what he's taken apart...). He has a hard time with letter recognition and writing, and gets frustrated easily, but could work with gears and little manipulatives all day long. I just wish I had more time to let him explore and foster his interests- and then, that those interests could be continued throughout the years. Instead, I'm afraid he will get so frustrated with some of the academics of school and not feel successful.   I think I like this video so much because it's just refreshing to watch someone who "gets it."  

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!



Humbug Witch and Big Green Monster!

We had a lot of fun reading Humbug Witch by Lorna Balian.

I'm linking up with Mrs. Jump's Class for Book Talk Tuesday. Thank you for hosting, Deanna! I always love seeing great book ideas.

Humbug Witch  has been around for a while, but  it's still available at Amazon. It is a sweet story about a little witch who doesn't have any luck with things witches are supposed to be able to do. The books is fabulous for descriptions.  It would be an awesome study for adjectives.  Here are some sample pages to show you:

 Finally, she gives up, and takes everything off, one thing at a time...

The first few pages of this book would be wonderful to read to the children, without having them see the pictures, having them listen and illustrate using the descriptive words from the text.  This is a great introduction for children to realize that they can picture illustrations in their own minds, without seeing pictures, just by using descriptive words that are written in the book.  

Go Away Big Green Monster is another book that lends itself very well to this.  I read this book one time without the children seeing the pictures and have them illustrate their big, green monster using the descriptive words I read.  Then, I read the story (usually over and over and over) on the rug so they can see the pictures. Finally, the children share and show the monster they drew. The great thing about this share is that there is always at least one fabulous part of each drawing- the big yellow eyes or the long bluish, greenish nose... It's a great way to have the children start noticing good things about each other's work.

Here is an animated version from Youtube:

Here is a little freebie if you'd like to do your own listening activity with these books. Just click the picture below to get a copy of the paper.

Have fun! Thanks for stopping by!