Kindergarten, Writing, Week 17

Monday I introduced the lower case letters u and q. K. practiced one line of each letter each day.

Small Muscle Development:

• Tuesday we made a Color Collage
• K. picked the color pink.
• We looked through Oriental Trading catalogs and cut out pink things
• We glued them on a piece of paper

Story Development:

• Wednesday we played Halting Stories from Games for Writing
• The reasoning behind this game is that sometimes when you start writing a sentence you get bogged down with spelling a word or something else, and by the time you are near the end of the sentence you have forgotten what you wanted to say.
• How to Play:
• Your child starts telling a story -- any story, it can be one they make up or retelling one they know.
• A few words into the story you say "Halt", they have to stop until you say "Go". Then they have to pick the story up where they left off.
• You continue doing this throughout the story.
• Then switch roles.
• K. really likes this game and we've been playing it in the car when we pick us S. from the train.

Writing Practice:

• Friday our activity was Word by Word from Games for Writing.
• This is a fun way to encourage your child to practice writing.
• How to Play:
• You'll need a title for your story and a spinner (we used one that has the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5).
• The story title should tell what the story is going to be about. I chose "Lost in the Woods" for our story.
• Have your child flick the spinner. Whatever number they land on, is the number of words they must write, no more, no less.
• After they have written their words, then it is your turn to flick the spinner and write.
• We were able to talk about the first letter of a sentence being capitalized.
• We also talked about staying on the subject.
• Below is a picture of what one side of our page looked like. You can see that she needs practice keeping her letters where they belong.
• Here is the story. K.'s parts are italicized.

A boy was lost in the big dark scary woods. A bear came lumbering through the woods. But goods are spread all over the ground. He was hungry and thirsty. The boy had food. He had learned to share. The boy had water to drink. He shared with the bear food and water. Bear loved the food and took the boy home. The End