the little white dove

Nestled in her nest in the highest nook,

The Little White Dove hides.

Needle in her neck, she sings sweet notes

To call the King by night.

-from "The Little White Dove", a Panamanian Fairy Tale (adapted by Enki Education)

"The Little White Dove" was our story for the second half of the week. The consonant "N" was featured, and can be seen in one of the branches of the tree (the trunk makes the first vertical line, then a branch veers downwards and eventually turns up again to make the rest of the "N"). This week I've been just emphasizing the letter sound being featured while reading the verse, and the kids have easily identified the featured letter and found it in the drawings.

The kids really took off with the embellishments of their led drawings in this story set! The first is J's picture. Not only did he actually draw the needle in the dove's neck, but he also turned his tree into an oak tree, complete with acorns, and drew a variety of flowers in the garden around the tree, including, as he put it, "pollinators", a butterfly and a bee. He even got creative with the title, adding a "(coo-coo)" at the end of it!

Zoo Boy also got tremendously creative with his drawing (and very little of this drawing was with help from me). He told me that he was drawing a sycamore tree, and even added sycamore seeds, including one that fell to the ground. He too added a vast array of flowers to his garden, and even put a line in the 'sky' and told me it was a fast falcon flying by. His title is difficult to read in this photo, but it says "The Coo", playing off of J's creativity with the title. He's put a lot of effort and time into both of his drawings this week, and is extremely proud of his work.

And then came the writing of the large letters. I had re-read the directions for this activity in the guides, and realized that I wasn't taking the same approach as the recommended one. So I tried the way the guides suggested, which includes writing the letters first with a yellow stick crayon, repeating it until it's correct, then writing over the letter with a darker color, and finishing up coloring the background with a yellow block crayon to "erase" the mistakes. It didn't go over so big with my kids. They were more than happy NOT to make adjustments to their letter (despite me purposely messing mine up and fixing it as an example), and neither of them wanted to color in the background. J claimed "I didn't make any mistakes" as an explanation. Can't argue with that confidence! So I'm going back to my old method (where I have the kids color in the background first with whatever color they want, then write the letters once on the page). The kids and I were both more satisfied with that method.

By the way, the reason for writing the large letters is somewhat of a mystery to me in terms of what it does for the kids' learning process. But I like it -- it sort of solidifies the focus on that letter during the story set.

J's written verse. I was interested to see him identify his short-hand as that this time -- when he wrote "to" in the last line, he then added "(or 2)". Zoo Boy chose yet again to just scribble in all of his forest paths, claiming it to be writing. Again, as this is not even a developmentally appropriate exercise for him, I'm happy to let him approach it however he wishes, so long as it keeps him feeling satisfied, successful, and a part of what's going on.

My drawing. Not much to say, I like the kids' pictures better!

One more week in our first Language Arts block, then it's on to our first Math block! Hm. Maybe it's time for me to start looking at that math stuff....