First Grade, Reading, Set Seven

We are finishing off the BJU reading book. Now we are reading Story Train, published by The L.W. Singer Company, Inc. in 1960.

From Reading Corner we are learning about Details:

• We talked about Who, What, Why, When, and How in a variety of stories this week.
• I read K. a story, leaving out details to show that details are important.
• Details are important in recipes, games, etc.
• We each made a lantern, following the instructions given.
• We talked about some details being more important than others.
• If this story took place in the city instead of the forest would it be the same?
• If it was a mouse instead of a beaver would it change the story?
• If the girl had a blue dress instead of a red dress would it matter?
• We wrote a telegram for a story we read. Telegrams must be short, so you have to eliminate everything except the main idea.
• Another day we decided on the main idea and the important details of a story. Then we made a mobile, writing these things on card stock cutouts of the animals in the story.
• I copied a descriptive paragraph; each day we took a few sentences and crossed out everything that was descriptive.
• I read The Peterkins' Thanksgiving and then we wrote the Who, What, Why, When, and How inside large W's and an H.
• We each took a basic sentence and added description to it. The sentence "The boy ran." could turn into "The tall, freckled boy in blue pants and red shirt ran around the block, over the bridge, and under the tree to meet his father." We made it a contest to see who could add the most words. We did this a few days, and on the last day K. beat me.
• Details are important in word problems. I had about six problems. Some had extra information, some didn't have enough information, and some had just what was needed to solve the problem.

From Games for Reading:

• Matches and Opposites, pg 144
• Dictionary Reading, pg 146 -- K. loves to look through our BJU Student Dictionary. It always takes us a while to look up words in the dictionary because K. wants to keep stopping to find out about the things that are pictured.
• See It - Name It, pg 138 -- K. picked the bathroom and we set out goal at fifty words.
• Go-Togethers, pg 140 -- we played this game twice and used "Thanksgiving" and "Winter" for our subjects. It would be a great game for in the car.