Author: Beth

San Jose 5/3/18 & Cupertino 5/7/18 This week we made Mother’s Day cards for our fine motor activity.  We also learned the numbers 4, 5, and 6.  On the last day, we will learn 7, 8, and 9 to finish all the numbers. They have worked so hard to finish the whole book! Students get…

Announcement for San Jose and Cupertino (posted 5-4-18) The San Jose classes have one final meeting this coming week on 5-8-18.  The Cupertino classes meet this Monday and their final class is on 5-14-18.  On the last day, all students will share the books they have made and we will play games and do fun…

San Jose 4/26/18. Cupertino 4/30/18 For fine motor today we made Earth Day Books.  Some of the children can read the text!  It has been so exciting to watch them grow this year.  A few of them also had time to do an Earth Day word search. Since we finished all the letters, we are…

San Jose 4/18/18, Cupertino 4/23/18 This week for our fine motor task we made Hair Cutting Stick Puppets.  These were so fun!  The kids had up to 6 puppets they could make from silly faces with lots of hair.  They chose which ones to color and cut out, then they could give them any kind of…

San Jose 4/11/18, Cupertino 4/16/18 This week’s fine motor activity was “Copy the Caterpillar.”  It was a bit tricky for some of the kids.  They had to look at a cartoon caterpillar made of circles, with some of the circles shaded in, and copy the same pattern on their blank caterpillar.  If it was too…

Week 10 (San Jose 4/11/18, Cupertino 4/16/18) This week we discussed the main parts of a story and how to fit them together.  Last semester we did a “Story Map,” but this time I gave them one that was a little more complex.  It includes the characters, setting, the problem the characters have in the…

San Jose 3/22/18 Opening fine motor activity: Spring theme mazes and color by word picture Letters: lowercase h & b Other activities: tracing letters with our fingers in the workbooks, writing/drawing on magnadoodle, using magnetic letter tracer, building words with letter magnets. We have finished the “Diver Letters”!!!  I have attached a worksheet below for…

San Jose 3/21/18 Author’s Workshop Jr. Free Journaling Lesson on Character Development: we talked about how characters have personality traits and emotional traits.  Personality generally stays the same, but emotions change depending on the situation.  We looked at lists of possible emotional and personality characteristics and made up pairs of characters.  The students acted out…

San Jose 3/14/18 & Cupertino 3/19/18 This week we made a “Letter M Mouse” for our fine motor craft.  This involved coloring, cutting, and gluing. Our letters this week were n and m, and we also did some words and a sentence. Students love our new magnetic letter tracing board and magnadoodle.  They have so much…

San Jose 3/14, Cupertino, 3/19 This week I read the classes a book called “If You were a Writer,” by Joan Lowery Nixon.  In this story, Melia is a little girl whose mother is a writer.  Throughout the book, her mother teaches her different things that she would do if she were a writer, and…