Books, books, books! Look at that sweet pile of books donated to our school! There are some great titles in there, and the kids were super pumped to get started reading them...you JUST have to LOVE that!
Okay ~ who is ready to hear my broken record? It has been FOREVER since I have spent a quiet Sunday blogging away. Today, I finished the third book in the series that I have been rereading (if you are like my husband, go ahead and look confused and laugh at me here - yes, I said REreading) and it was all that I could do not to pick up the fourth, again. But I pulled myself away from the Scottish highlands to join the land of the living again, sniff sniff. Josh would probably be quite pleased, but he is not even here to enjoy my return. LOL
At times I feel as if I could spend my entire day curled up in my bed reading my favorite books. Maybe a sad, nerdy thing to admit, but I think by now most of you know this of me. The sadder part is that when I am not reading them, lately, I am listening to them. I have found Audiobooks.com and let's just say that at this point, it is a pretty good thing that I have unlimited data on my plan. Jeesshhh....
Any~whoooo...I digress, as usual. Although it feels as if I have not been in the world of the living for a bit, LOL, I promise that our class is still working our little hearts out, and I have enjoyed some great time with family and friends.
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| Such fun cabin time with my wonderful teacher friends :) ~ super way to get re-energized and ready to conquer the world ~ I could not ask for a better group of friends or mentors! |
Katie and I hit up our first 5K of the year. It was slow going, and can you just say SORE! Holy Cow...if you don't use it, you sure do lose it! And not in a good way...I don't understand some of the places that hurt when I move... I am so ready to get back in the swing of walking/jogging, and even more ready to lose this weight, AGAIN! :( I just have to stay motivated and get moving! (One of the reasons I found Audiobooks.com :) great listening when walking and nevermind that it feeds my book addiction hehe.)
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| Some of our Read Like a Scientist anchors. Such interesting reading! |
Did I mention we have been doing a lot of work in our class? My sweet kiddos have loved our focus of "Reading like a Scientist." Who knew how cool Mars is? What I have really enjoyed is watching my kiddos pick up their own nonfiction reading, and pointing out the text structures and features we have talked about!
Just a little of the grammar we have focused on. That tricky apostrophe is giving my group a run for their money, but I have faith...we will become apostrophe experts! And yes, I know you have seen this anchor before, but we are still working hard on sentence structures. Sometimes, not only is the apostrophe a sly and tricky punctuation mark, but the faithful, familiar period eludes my kiddos as well. Practice makes perfect though, so we will keep chugging along until we are perfectly punctuated ~ even if it kills me! It very likely will!
I have a couple of super sweet picture books to share with you tonight! I will start with the amazing Berkeley Breathed. I still love his beautifully illustrated stories as much as ever. Pete & Pickles is at the top of my just-absolutely-precious list. Such a wonderful story of kindness, friendship, empathy, and I could go on and on! I love looking at this one slowly with the kiddos and really sharing the illustrations carefully, so that they can make boundless inferences. This is a perfect example of how illustrations can really add rich detail to a story.
Since I am sharing all things cute and precious, I just have to share Cynthia Rylant's The Old Woman Who Named Things. Again, Rylant makes teaching common themes in literature a piece of cake! Kindness and courage to open your heart fill the pages so beautifully illustrated by Kathryn Brown. I have always had a soft spot for old people LOL, and this little old woman is no different. Conversations of why? and I wonder? abound as we try to decide what it would mean for her to give in and name her sweet little visitor.
Speaking of Cynthia Rylant, here is one more great read for you. Snow illustrated by Lauren Stringer is simply lyrical and seasonally fun. Packed full of figurative language, simile and personification, you cannot go wrong with this one. I just love Rylant books, and much like Bunting she has so many different illustrators that they are all so different.
Just a few more cute things for fun! It has been a while since I have posted...
We could all use a pep talk right? I hope you love this as much as my kiddos did! We had lots of conversation about the path less traveled ~ I want to be on the road that leads to awesome!
Now again, for those of you that know me well, I cannot miss a chance to share a little Jason Mraz. With all of our reading like scientists, I was excited to share with my kiddos a fun little song that just happened to have some very scientific facts in it; a moving message didn't hurt so much either.
I will let Jason say goodnight :)
Happy Reading!
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