First Grade, Writing, Set One

• We practiced drawing the robin and the background on scrap paper before she drew on the nice paper. I walked away when she was drawing on the nice paper because I didn't want to be telling her how to do it. That was the purpose of the practices. She really did a good job, and it will be fun to see how she improves over the year.
• We wrote a poem (Rhyme Time from Games for Writing)
• Next time we play Halting Stories (Games for Writing) I'm going to write the names of some stories (Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, etc.) on paper for us to choose from for our story. K. did well not loosing her train of thought, but the story was all over the place and went on forever.
• We played Egg Carton Tales (Games for Writing). K. really likes this activity, and during our breaks from school asks to play it. I really need to figure out some way to close the holes in the cartons because we kept having to find the jelly bean and put it back in the carton. But I guess that maybe that adds to the fun of the game. (We used a jelly bean this time instead of a nickle.)
• I set the timer for 7 minutes when we played Silence is Golden (Games for Writing).

Here K. is copying the paragraph from the book.

• When we played That's Good, That's Bad (Games for Writing) we were laughing a lot. I had to come up with something "that's bad", so I had the boy in our story trip and break his leg. A couple sentences later K. had to come up with a "that's good" and "that's bad". She had the boy put in a car to go to the doctor, but then the car wouldn't start.
• I found a Valentine's Day picture in an old Ideals magazine for the activity Write it For Me (Games for Writing).
• We really enjoy playing How Many Words (Games for Writing pg 127). Sometimes our sentences are really silly and sometimes they are profound.
• Word by Word (Games for Writing) is an activity that grows character. Throughout kindergarten I learned that K. was not going to help write the story I had in mind, so now I only insist that it make sense. For instance, if we already have "Landing was hard, but flying" and K. adds "bumping heads!" that makes no sense. We crossed out bumping heads and instead she wrote "he bumped". This activity is still growing K.'s character because she gets upset when I don't add the words she wants me to. Our rule is: I can't tell her what to write, she can't tell me what to write, but it has to make sense -- it may not be logical, but a person reading it needs to be able to understand it.