PBS Writers Workshop

Last weekend Holly attended the PBS Writers Workshop for the second year. It is held at our local TV studio in conjunction with their children's writers contest. She really enjoyed it last year and once again, she had a great time!

The host is a gal from Live Paint, who is amazingly talented! She does a wonderful story telling selection that is very interactive with the kids. As she works her way through the story telling she brings it back to writing your own story and inspires the kids to include so much more creativity than they might have before.

For Holly this was a great kick off to writing. She has officially started her story this week and it is coming along nicely. Her story is due at the end of the month - she is looking forward to finishing it up and entering the contest. I am excited for her!

Halloween Poetry

Holly has been doing a great job on her poetry work. We have started a notebook like she did mid-year last year and she is now beginning to do more with that. Each day we do at least one poem and discuss it, sometimes we listen to one online or from a book with illustrations. Often I have her lay with eyes closed and listen and then draw what how she hears the poem. She has written about poems and done some copy work on poems. We have discussed basic parts of a poem and and look at various styles.

Now it was time to write her first poem of the year. Her theme was something related to Halloween. She chose ghosts as her theme. She worked through brainstorming several key words she associates with ghosts. She described where she might find ghosts and how the setting might look. Then she did a run through or first version and to be honest... it was great from the start! She did hardly any editing or major changes. We sat down to look it over and she discussed with me where she would break up the poetry and why she chose those portions. Then it was time for a final copy with illustrations. It turned out lovely!

Her final poem reads (first grade writing, no spelling modifications - her art) :

Gosts Town

the gosts are awake

in the gost town

they sing

ooo ooooo oooo

they say

Boo! Boo! Boo!

By Holly P.

First Language Lessons

One piece of curriculum we have decided to add into our school year is First Language Lessons: For The Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise. I have heard really good things about this approach and a couple of years back attended a small class on teaching with this book. When originally beginning our planning I was leaning towards including this in next years plan or later in our First Grade year. However, I keep finding Holly gravitates towards parts of speech and we play a game that has started a basic introduction to it... so here we are - adding this into this years plan now. Which is probably best as the book is designed for both 1st and 2nd grade.

The lessons are super easy!!! It is based on a dialogue she and I have with a lot of review, a very slow approach. Taking time to really review and expose her.  But the lessons take minutes, a very short period of time.There is some basic writing work eventually - but very little. Personally I appreciate that portion of it and I know she is too.

Right now she is learning about Nouns and working over to Common Nouns. As well, this book has an approach to basic memorization to poetry. Her first poem she is beginning to memorize is called The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rossetti. She loves this poem! Today was day four of learning it and I decided to tie in a small craft of making a mini caterpillar out of an egg carton... while this has been done by Holly numerous times throughout the years - this time was a tad different as it went with her poem she is learning. I think it has a bit more meaning to her now.

Anyhow, so far we are really enjoying this book!