President's Day Writing

       In honor of President's Day, we have been learning about our country, it's symbols, and a few of the presidents. I love the pretty flags they made for the hall bulletin board!
     It's also the time of year that things are starting to come together for the children -- they can read books, spell words, and actually write sentences that you can read!  Woo-hoo!!  I have started assigning a writing activity for homework every week, and I have been so pleased with some of their work.  I taught them about "5 star writing" -- \

• Starts with a capital
•  spaces between words
• ends with punctuation
• makes sense
• neat

They can get a 6th star for a good picture.
Here are a few samples from this month -- remember, they are only 5 years old!

   These are from a homework assignment -- I wish I had enough assistants to guide each child with their writing at school, but the parents are doing a great job with them at home.

 

Here's one from our bird study week.

And here are a few that were written in the classroom independently.

I love how she sounded out "our" as "ewur"

               "He read books to make him smart" -- just the message I hoped would get across!

      I am always amazed when we get to this part of the year -- they really have learned, even with all the difficulties of large class size, discipline issues, interruptions, wet pants, broken arm, tears and everything else -- THEY ARE LEARNING!!  THIS IS WHY I LOVE MY JOB!