Today we had choice time to begin, as always. After we had our morning meeting, we went immediately into Writer's Workshop. today the mini-lesson was about what writers do when we are 'stuck' -- the kids went back to 'old' writing in their writing folders to see if they needed revisions oe additions, or if they could get inspiration for a new story from one of the old ones. We looked at the author Don Freeman's work (he wrote Corduroy, among many others) as an example -- when he was stuck, he re-read Corduroy and then wrote another book about the same bear. Many of the kids chose to do the same.

After we wrote, the kids each read their most recent writing to a friend, so everyone got to share today. then we had a phonics lesson, in which we made another "magic book" -- see if your child can tell you how to fold it (here's a link to a webpage that shows how: http://www.makingbooks.com/hotdog.shtml). It's still pretty confusing to many of them. In the books, which the kids took home today, we glued words that began with our focus letter, /p/. The kids had to choose the words that began with the /p/ sound from a page that had many words on it, then cut and glue the words on their books. If they had time, I also asked them to write the word that they made on the same page in their books.

Finally, we went outside to choose our "class tree." We picked a nice one, I think -- we'll go back to it, throughout the year, and write about and draw it in the different seasons to see how it changes. (We put a sign on it, so if you are ever out back behind the school, you can see which one we picked.)

Finally, we got packed up for home, and read a little bit more of Esio Trot- it's getting to the main part of the story, and the kids are getting into it.