|
We are having so much fun with my second graders Language Arts curriculum this year. The last unit we did was on Norman the Doorman by Dan Freeman. It’s been awhile since I showed a bit of what she’s done this year so I thought it was time again. (See entry from the fall on Little Bear if you’re interested.)
If you are not familiar with Norman the Doorman, it is a very cute story about a mouse who is the “back” doorman for a museum. He likes to create things from materials he finds around the museum. One day he sees a sign for an art contest and enters it. Okay, I won’t give more away , but it’s very cute with lots of possibilities for learning and exploring.
In her regular work we did spelling and vocabulary words from the book as well as comprehension and thinking questions. For the grammar with Norman we worked on compound words and titles. In the phonics we worked with the silent letters in knight. All the learning sections take their material from the story. I just love doing school this way!
Each unit has some enrichment activities for her to chose. Most of the time we take those things (and sometimes things from the regular daily work) and create a folder book. She likes to draw a copy of the cover for the front of each folder that looks just like the front of the book she reads. Inside we put booklets, pictures, charts or whatever we’ve done to go with that unit.
  For Norman she chose to do some sculptures in wire just like Norman did. I thought hers turned out well. She of course titled her art, just like Norman did. We had “The Green Lady”, “Ball in a Heart” and “The Green Tree”. She just used some floral wire I had and put it in some clay. We took pictures for her folderbook.
For the enrichment reading suggestions she chose to read two more of Dan Freeman’s books. She read Earl the Squirrel, all by herself I might add, and she was so pleased that she now could! I also read to her Manuelo the Playing Mantis. Both stories were very cute. She made her own books to retell the stories for her folderbook.
One of the other suggestions was a chart on responsibilities. Norman you see takes his job as a doorman very seriously so we talked about what responsibilities she has. She’s keeping a chart for the week to check off her things she is responsible to do. If she puts forth her best effort like Norman she gets to put a star by that day.
Those of you that read my blog will know this but for anyone that doesn’t probably the reason I love the curriculum so much is that I wrote it! That’s one way to get exactly what you want! I am getting very excited about it too because it’s almost all written! It’s been a lot of hard work but so worth it! So I encourage YOU, go ahead write what works for you.
Gina | 
