the Polar Express

We had so much fun with the Polar Express today! We started the day working on puzzles this morning.  The kids worked really well together putting all the pieces where they go.  We had a great time reading the story out loud and then watching the audio book video that reads the story aloud with visual clips from the movie.  We narrated the story and completed a sequencing chart about it.  I was so impressed with the cutting in this class.  It appears that some great strides in ability have happened lately.  We also drew pictures of what we would like to ask for from Santa.  

 Our math was tons of fun as we worked together to graph images from the Polar Express.  I think we've got the basic concept of graphing down!

 In the afternoon we used a bunch of large boxes to make our own Polar Express in the classroom.  After reading the story they climbed into their train cars and watched the audio book video.  We worked on the sorting sheet while sitting in our train cars, how fun!

 We continued our day with regular reading lessons followed by art.  We drew what we would ask Santa for just like the morning class.  This afternoon though, I challenged the kids to write what it was that they drew.  It was the first time I've asked them to sound it out and figure out what letters to write down and they all did a fantastic job.  I'm impressed with their writing and we'll be doing lots more of it in the future.  The important part of this stage of writing is to accept anything that they write down as correct.  They will not hear many vowel sounds in words and are unable to utilize advanced phonics at this point.  However, they are successful writers.  Great work!