“Pairs, Sharks, and Mrs. Muddle What?” Week 6 First Grade

Mrs. Muddle Mud Puddle (Fiction, Level A-J, Stage 2) by Joy Cowley

Shark in a Sack (Fiction, Level D) by Joy Cowley

Our Street (Fiction, Level D) by Joy Cowley

What Comes in Twos (Non-fiction, Level D) by Margie Burton

This week we met the most interesting, funny, remarkable lady – Mrs. Muddle Mud Puddle! Upon his first look through the book, my first grader said, “I think she’s sewing! She has a pet dragon! She’s petting a lion?! She has a big, huge bat and a ghost! And why is she sharing cupcakes with a live skeleton?” Needless to say, the illustrations in this book are outstanding, and the storyline is as cute as pie. We had so much fun with this Shared Reading activity that we actually made a recording and sent it to the grandmothers! Another one of our favorites this week was Shark in a Sack, which made everyone laugh because after reading through Step 5. Silent Reading, Malachi shouted out, “You couldn’t put that shark all the way in that sack! That’s just weird!” I love it when he gets tickled about reading!

The activity I want to highlight this week is Step 3. Sight Words and Meaning Words. In this step for every single book we have a chance to review words that we already know (sight words) and learn new words (meaning words). I can’t even tell you how many times we talk about the words on the meaning word list and I find out for the first time that Malachi doesn’t really know what something means yet. This week for Shark in a Sack, the new meaning words were shark, sack, horse, car, bear, box, possum, jar, hen, hat, pig, pan, lollipop, and mouth. These are pretty common words for us, but the surprise for me was that while Malachi knew what a possum was, he couldn’t describe it until we talked about it. We love learning vocabulary this way!

For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.