Week 22- First Grade

Week 22 First Grade

My Wonderful Aunt: Story One (Fiction, Level J, Stage 2) by Margaret Mahy

Space Race (Fiction, Level J, Stage 2) by Joy Cowley

Ocean Animals (Non-fiction, Level J, Stage 2) by Margie Burton

Where is My Continent? (Non-fiction, Level J, Stage 2) by Robin Nelson

Europe (Non-fiction, Level J, Stage 2) by Leila Merrell Foster

Can you tell from the list above that this week’s kit is packed with books from a variety of types and content areas? We had so much fun with these books! My Wonderful Aunt is a story about the aunt any kid would be lucky to have, with heaps of funny animal encounters. Space Race is, you guessed it, a race in space, and it teaches counting backwards, as every space book should. Ocean Animals, our favorite book this week, featured more than 8 different animals that call the ocean or its shore their home – a perfect first grade science experience. And Where is My Continent? and Europe were both chock-full of geography terms and social studies content, appropriate for first grade learners, of course.

The activities I want to highlight this week are the word analysis/phonics activity in Step 2 and the science activity on the back of the lesson plan for Ocean Animals. Step 2 in the Read With Sarah model is meant to develop word recognition and phonics skills, and it definitely did that for us this week. For Ocean Animals, the eep and atch word families were featured, where Malachi was able to show off how well he knows the words deep, keep, beep, seep, jeep, catch, batch, hatch, match, latch, and patch. We always use the letter tiles that come with the kit to spell each word, which not only helps Malachi learn the phonics skill for each word family, but also helps him develop good spelling skills as well. Additionally, the science activity added another level of knowledge for this resource. By talking through the items listed before and after reading the book, we were able to discover whether all ocean animals must live in deep water, whether fins and tails help fish move, whether birds might be in a book about oceans, which animal lives in water so deep that it is dark, and more.

I love how the folks at AlphaSkills develop such a well-rounded curriculum with books that my little guy loves! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.