Bats and Spiders Oh My!

Wow!  What a great past two weeks it has been in here!  We have been busy learning about bats and spiders.  The kids have been working hard at writing stories and including facts about bats or spiders in their stories.  We have read several books on this topic as well.  

We are moving right along with our letter recognition skills and sound recognition skills.  Right now we are focusing in on recognizing the beginning and ending sounds in words.  For example, if I would say the word ham, I ask the children to tell me the sound they hear at the beginning of the word or the end of the word.  As the children become faster with this skill, I will use more difficult words and even go into listening for middle sounds.  I am really trying to encourage the children to use this knowledge in their writing.  If you have ever been asked the question "how do you spell this????"  My stock answer is "what do you think" to help encourage the children to become more independent with this skill.  After the child gives it a try on their own, I will then help out as needed.  We have talked about stretching out words during writing workshop this week and listening for the different sounds in words that we may want to spell.  

We have also worked on using labels in our pictures for writing workshop.  Labeling will help us include details when it is time to write some sentences about a story.  I have started to encourage the children to try and write at least two sentences about their story now instead of just one.  Here are some hard workers trying to include details in their stories!

I hope everyone enjoys their Fall Break!