Story Writing

Dear Parents,

This week we focused on writing stories about the ocean and its creatures. The children took turns dictating each sentence and adding to the stories. 

When taking dictation and rereading the stories, children begin to see the marks on the page come alive as they represent not only words, such as their names, but sentences, and whole thoughts, culminating in a story. It is empowering to control the story and bend it to their own liking. We read each story, sometimes rewriting, or come up with an entirely new story each day. 

This week’s stories included our giant squid, a shark, some tuna fish, and death. Some children realize there is a conflict that needs resolving, while others are satisfied to leave it alone. 

Next week we will choose our favorite story and make costumes to go with the characters. 

It was a hot week,

Therese

Big Sea Creatures

Dear Parents,

We began our week brainstorming big sea creatures. The list was decent: blue whale, whale shark, octopus, eel, giant squid, and colossal squid. We crossed octopus and eel off when we read how much bigger the other creatures were. Everyone voted, and the giant squid won by more than half the class. 

We looked at pictures of the giant squid and drew one on mural paper. The children said, “They're orange.” They did indeed look orange in some of the illustrations. We read that their eyes are the size of dinner plates and that they live in oceans all over the world, unlike the colossal squid who live only in freezing waters near Antarctica. 

On Tuesday we took all of our dictated sheets off the wall, scrunched them up, and fed them to our giant squid. First we read every sheet which was reminiscent of the entire year. We recalled how we use our hands and feet, how we're different from babies, what kind of apples we ate when we made our family tree, what games we've played, how long it took us to make butter, how we sat when we petted the baby chicks, and what we thought about yoga. We also fed our family tree branches to the squid. We stapled him shut and mixed two colors to get a burnt orange. The children painted him gently and thoroughly. We laid him to dry and went to play in the yard. 

Children are continuing to discover the tiniest creatures in our yard: the world’s smallest snail and a smidgen of a worm who was barely visible. We also found many regular sized ladybugs, bees, and flies. 

On Wednesday we cut long felt tentacles to add to our giant squid. We measured out forty three feet in the big room to see how long a real squid would be. All the children lay on the floor head to feet to see how many of us would measure forty three feet. It was thirteen children long. 

We read a book about how fish breathe out of their gills and another that showed the food chain. We talked about being a part of the food chain and that we are at the top. Who eats us? "No one." someone said. 

It was a good week,

Therese