Mrs. Katz and Tush

Last Thursday, we read a very sweet story about friendship.
Mrs. Katz is an older Jewish lady that lives in the same apartment building as the young boy, Larnel.
Larnel befriends Mrs. Katz after giving her the runt of a cat litter.
He begins to love visiting her and they create a long lasting bond. She teaches him about Jewish traditions and invites him to share Passover dinner with him.
The book ends with Larnel, as a grown man, visiting Mrs. Katz's grave.
Very sweet!!!
In class, we discussed the characters, themes, problems and solutions, and the setting.
We then talked about the history of the Jewish Passover. We discussed the 10 plagues of Egypt and Moses' great escape with the Israelites.
Next class time we will talk about Hannukah!

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Tally marks, compound words and ships

  On Thursday, we took our last look at The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.  We worked on our math skills and learned to make tally marks.  We made a tally mark for every boat we saw in the story.  We came up with about 23 boats total. Great tally marking everyone!  Hopefully, you challenge your kiddos to go home and count with tally marks, or it would be even better if they did it on their own.

    Next, we moved on to compound words.  This was SO MUCH FUN!  We put a lot of words together to make new words.  The best part was their excitement when they thought of a compound word to share with the group!  Their words were very impressive. 

    And finally, we looked at a pretty amazing pop-up book about ships.  We learned so much about their boat experience.  Two of the kids have even driven a boat!!! (I think they both attributed this to their grandpas.)

    Next Thursday, we are going to read a wonderful book titled, Mrs. Katz and Tush.

The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge

Even though you are small you can still help! This is the theme from our story this week. And Sam quickly identified this important theme during our book discussion. We have a class full of literary geniuses!
The book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, by Hildegarde Swift, tells a sweet story of the The Little Red Lighthouse which is actually the Jeffrey's Hook Light on the Hudson River. This lighthouse feels important until a great, big bridge is built right on the top of it (George Washington Bridge.)
The lighthouse thinks that it is no longer needed now that the bridge lets off light from its tall towers. But it is definitely wrong. The lighthouse saves the day in this classic story and realizes that although it is small, it is still needed!
After the story we watched a quick video that shows the actual bridge and lighthouse from the story! Irish said that when she moves to New York she will be able to go see it! How exciting!
This story was a perfect example of personification. We saw the boats, lighthouse, bridge and fog all take on human characteristics. The fog had hands that would try to grasp the boats below. It was spooky!
We talked about the job of lighthouses and made our own lighthouse complete with eyes to demonstrate our personification skills.