This One's a Dolphin! No, It's a Whale!

The change in schedule went really well today. I'm loving the morning message. I chose our youngest to be the leader today, and she loved writing her story. She wrote about a trip to a bookstore with her mom. After we wrote the story, we read it about four times. By the end, all of the kids basically knew what it said. I'm hoping this is a good connection to show that writing has meaning. After we read the message, we looked for our mystery letter. Today it was the letter E, since her name starts with E. It went so smoothly - I honestly don't know why I haven't been doing this in the past. It's wonderful!

I also think my new Reader's and Math Workshops are going well. The kids really liked the math games I planned for today. I'm noticing some improvement in the youngest's counting skills too. Her biggest struggle seems to be to start over once she stops. For example, if she rolls a five on her dice and only counts to four I'll ask her to start over again, when she starts counting she'll start at 7 every time. It's the weirdest thing. Hopefully the one-on-one attention I'll be giving her during math time will help correct this. Bizarre.

Also - a little funny for ya' - we had Lucky Charms for snack today. It took the kids 20 minutes to eat them because of the intense debate over what shapes the marshmallows are. I don't know how many times I said, "Let's make sure we're eating while we're talking. Otherwise we'll be at the snack table until it's time to go home." It was cute though.

Preschool was great today! First grade...on the other hand...was frustrating. I'm curious to know when it became okay again to make a child read a book that is about seven levels too hard for him. I hurt for this little guy, because I know how much better he could be doing if he was in the right situation.