Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

We had such a fun week with this book. It is a darling story about a Grandpa telling his grandchildren a bedtime story about the town of Chewandswallow. In the town of ChewandSwallow there are no stores for food- because the weather provides all the food they need. Everything from pancakes and syrup, to hamburgers and spagetti- the townspeople of ChewandSwallow have it made. . . that is until the weather takes a turn for the worse!

So this week, our "words of the day" were Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Each day we pulled out our pretend food and discussed what we eat for each meal. We also did word/picture matching as well as sequencing (ie which meal do we eat first, second, third. . .)

The girls each wrote stories of their own town of ChewandSwallow- each day picking 3 things for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Then they each got to pick their own ending for their story (I just wrote the paraphrased version on their storybooks).

In the end, we had two darling versions of the story and we celebrated by having our own "popcorn rainstorm"! I used our air popper without the lid to pop the popcorn. The kids had a blast and it was fun to imagine what life would be like if it really did rain chocolate milk or if hamburgers really blew in from the west. It was a fun week!

Abigail's Story. . . you could tell her favorite foods by what she picked each day. . . hot chocolate for breakfast, PB&J for lunch, and of course "chicken on the bone" for dinner!


Breanna's Story. . . of course my little sweet-tooth ended her story with a stormy dessert. . . ice cream, chocolate syrup, and M&M's gave her story a very sweet ending!


And our Popcorn Rainstorm. . . so much fun!

The Mitten

This weeks story was The Mitten, told by Jan Brett. Jan Brett is one of my favorite authors to use with children. Her illustrations are beautiful, and she hides clues in the borders of her pages as to what is coming next and what just happened in the story- great for teaching predictions and sequencing. Anyway, we had a fun week with this story. The kids each made their own mitten and a set of animals to go inside. The Mitten is a Ukranian folktale- so the real author is not known. At the end of the week, I had the girls tell the story as if they were the authors- it was so fun! So here is "The Mitten" as told by Breanna and Abigail Raven.

Our First Week Back. . . a review

Story of the Week: Stone Soup
I love this story, and the kids did too! The first day we read the story, did our story map, and then made stone soup! While I cut up all the ingredients for the soup, Peter and the kids went outside to find stones. I boiled the stones in one pot, and made the soup in the other (using the stone after boiling it probably would have been fine, but, oh well). Each child got to put in or "share" their ingredient (ie potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.) It was so fun and so yummy! Especially for a warm lunch on a cold winter day!
For the rest of the week, we had fun acting out the story and retelling it with the felt board figures. We even made up a song! We sang the song all week and just had a blast with this story!

Lyrics:
We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it around,
We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it aroud,

You grab some carrots and some onions too,
You chop them up, you know what to do,
Get the potatoe, and the celery,
Put em in the pot, you know what we've got,

We're makin' Stone Soup, We're makin' Stone Soup,
Ya mix it up, ya mix it up, and stir it around. . . .


Mirror, Mirror
What do I see?
Beautiful, wonderful, fabulous. . . ME!


Tracing ourselves on paper!






Our Finished Product. . .


Other topics of the week. . .
Polar Bears (did you know that polar bears eat mainly seals? there is some fun video of baby polar bears on the national geographic kids website- so cute!)

Snowmen (we talked about shapes, then cut out shapes to make our own snowmen. . . we finished the morning with a lunch of snowmen bagals, yum!)

Our New Schoolroom

Calendar Time. . .


Bin Work. . .

School is Back in Session!

After a long and unexpected break (due to a sick, pregnant mama and an across town move. . .) WE ARE BACK!

The past couple of days have been so fun! We are back to our couple hours each morning of learning together and I am so happy! Pictures and more activities will follow, but for now, just know that we are glad to be back in session!