Owl Moon

I personally LOVE the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. I used it all the time in the classroom when I was teaching Readers' and Writers' Workshop. It has beautiful, rich language that greatly demonstrates wonderful writing. In addition, it tells a beautiful story of a little girl's simple adventure with her Pa (almost every kiddo has a simple adventure story to tell!) While I know the twinkies are too young to understand some of the poetic devices found in this book, I'm a big believer in exposure to great literature leads to great readers and writers! So I read the story aloud and we talked about the season and what the little girl was doing. We also talked about what sound an owl makes and where animals are hiding in the book (this will lead to another activity later). After we were done with the book, we made a shape owl with handprints (I'm a sucker for a handprint craft) and talked about all the shapes in the owl (we know all of these already, but reviewing is VERY important!)Here is a cute little picture of our owls!













And the finished product...













A little later, we worked on sight words by playing a fine-motor clothes pin matching game.












And finally we continued to work on our alphabet border for our "classroom."
This idea is from Totally Tots, which has amazingly cute ideas to do for all kinds of ages! My goal is to put Upper and Lower cases all the way around our "classroom." We have a ways to go, but I think it looks really cute already. When we are reviewing these letters we play the usual guessing games (What sound does it make? What are words that start with this letter? etc. We also practice writing that letter as well). Here we are working on the letters...




...and here it is up on the wall!



We also worked on some other crafty things around the house. I'm hosting a crafty night tomorrow night with my girls, so I wanted to get a jump start on my crafty list! (Don't worry girls, I didn't do anything we are going to do tomorrow!) I also managed to do three loads of laundry, made pork tenderloin and sweet potatoes for dinner, and read a few chapters in my book! All in all a very successful day!