Goldilocks & The Three Bears

Last week was "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" day.  We had so much fun with this fairy tale.  The children decorated porridge bowls and danced and learned the song, "Goldilocks Came Knocking."  They also helped me compose two letters to the Bear family and Goldilocks.  Here are the letters:

Dear Bears,
Always lock your doors.  Don't whine.  If there is was a stranger in my house, I'd throw him in the pond.  You should call 911 if there is an emergency.  Don't do like Goldilocks and go in stranger's houses.  


Andrew, Bennett, Jackson, & Ryan

Dear Goldilocks,
Never go in stranger's house.  Never eat their food.  Don't sleep in their beds.  Please be safe.  


Andrew, Bennett, Jackson, & Ryan

Children learn to read and write when real-life opportunities make learning fun and easy.  Activities such as the one we did last week, also play a role in social interaction, expression of emotions, as well as learning about the shapes of letters and words.  When the children dictate stories to me, they learn that printing and reading begin from left to right. 


We are still working on writing single stroke letters.  The letters that we've learned so far are lowercase letters c, i, j, i, o.  Once your child is able to write these letters, we will move on to letters e, f, k, s, t.  The complexity of the shapes of letters make some easier to write.  You might ask why focus on lowercase letters?  Marion Blank points out her book, The Reading Remedy, that less than 10 percent of words on a page appear with even one capital letter.  In other words, there is a belief that writing skills and reading skills are enhanced when children are primarily exposed to lowercase letters verses being taught that capital letters are dominate.  I've experienced this firsthand and I've seen how capital letters get mixed into words because of traditional teaching methods.  

Tomorrow, we'll be doing activities around the story, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See.
That will be our last day of the bear unit.  Winter will soon be over so it's time to move on to a new unit.  I am working on lesson plans for our study of art.  We'll incorporate shapes and colors into this study.  It really is my favorite unit, for obvious reasons, and I look forward to spending the next three months bringing out the boy's creatives sides.