Camping Read-In

Friday was SUCH a fun day in our class! We finished off our two week unit on camping by having a camping read-in. Each of the students was allowed to bring a flashlight and a special book or two from home. I moved all the desks and set up two tents (one big and one small), as well as a camp fire made from tissue paper. We spent the entire morning sharing our books with our friends. I divided the class in half and they took turns reading inside the big tent. When you were not reading in the big tent it was your turn to do campfire reading and "read under the stars". Everyone LOVED it! We turned off one of the classroom lights to dim the room a bit (but still leave plenty of light for reading). However, every 15 minutes the kids had to get with someone who had a flashlight and we turned off both lights for 5 minutes of "flashlight reading". What a super fun day!

I took a bunch of pictures of everyone during our read-in, but unfortunately I cannot share them on the blog. You'll just have to settle for a picture of our set up and imagine it with 19 giggling faces poking out from inside of the tent:

Stinky Skunk Facts

Yesterday we had a blast reading about an animal you might see while camping, but definitely would not want to: the skunk!

As soon as I showed the book to the class the room was filled with "eewwwwww" and "gross! They stink!". The kids couldn't wait to learn about this smelly animal.

After reading our nonfiction text on skunks we took a few minutes to retell facts we learned from the book. Then each student had to choose one fact to record as their "stinky skunk fact". I told them that they were not allowed to write "skunks smell bad", that they had to choose something NEW they learned. They were able to remember a lot of really interesting facts!

After I approved the stinky skunk fact, they got to work creating a skunk to go with it. How cute are these?!?

I just love how they turned out and the students just loved that the fact was in the skunks puff of stinky spray (or musk as we learned yesterday).

Table of Contents and Owls

This week we are continuing with our camping theme but moving into a nonfiction unit. Each day we will be reading a nonfiction text about a different animal you might see if you went camping. Yesterday we read about owls. After reading, we went around the class and took turns sharing one fact we learned about owls. Then, we created these cute little owls and used them to record 3 different facts we learned.  Here is what it looks like all closed up:

And here it is opened to the facts:

We talked about the difference between fiction and nonfiction and noted that one major difference is something called a table of contents. I taught the kids that the table of contents tells you what information you will find in the book and on what page, because in a nonfiction book you do not have to read from cover to cover like in a fiction story.  A little bit later, during daily 5, one of the students came up to me with one of our Draw, Write, Now books from the work on writing station. She was super excited to show me that she found a table of contents in the front of it.

"Look Ms. McCormack! This book has a table of contents! It shows you all the things you can learn to draw and shows you what page to go to. That way you don't have to look through every page to find what you need"

(forgot to take a picture so I pulled this one off google images)

I love it when they listen and learn something new. Makes my heart smile! :)