A World of Learning

 I often play Bingo with my students, using words that they have been learning or letters to identify or say the sounds the letters make when they find the letters on their boards. Today I was playing Bingo with an almost-4-yr-old boy, with the spaces on the boards depicting letters of the alphabet and a word that started with the letter shown on each individual space, the boy having to say what sound the letter made. He was pretty good at it. He knew almost every sound the letters made. In order to play, I had him pulling plastic letters out of an old tissue box that I turned into a cat face, making it into our "alphabet box." We placed little wooden blocks on our spaces when we found the letter on our boards that he pulled out of the box. We'd been playing for about ten minutes and he was close to getting a Bingo. All he needed was an S. So instead of reaching into the opening of the box without looking to find out what letter he got, he was looking into the box and pus...

 When I was tutoring on Monday, the sun was out after a long period of rainy days! This was great, but it seemed to be making the kids I tutored act silly!  The third-grade girl kept reading the wrong word in her storybook intentionally and laughing.  The five-year-old boy was playing the "toss the ball" game with me to say the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, and he kept tossing the ball to me and spinning around instead of standing still so I could toss the ball back.  The preschooler was also playing the toss the ball game, and she would hold out her hands when it was her turn to catch the ball, then letting it fall right to the floor. She would laugh and fall to the floor in a heap to get the ball back.  It got to be a little annoying, all three of them, but hey, they're kids, and I had to cut them some slack. 

 I was just working with the second-grader that I tutor, and her task was to figure out which words fit into five given sentences. We are using a workbook that I don't let any of the kids write in, because they need to share. So I told her just to read the sentences and point to and say the words that go in the blanks. But she asked me for a piece of paper, so I gave her one. She started out by writing the words that would go in the blanks. Then she started writing the sentences, blanks included. I told her that she didn't need to do all of that, all she needed to do was to read. But she told me that she was in second grade and never got any homework, only with her mom and me. So she wanted to write the sentences out.  I thought it was cute of her to say that. I noticed that she was crowding the lines as she wrote, though, and leaving letters out of words. So I found myself thinking that she does need practice writing sentences. It's good to see what areas she needs practic...

 I've been working with a three-year-old girl and a dry erase book, in which she is learning to trace lines, shapes, and the letters of the alphabet. The most recent page was an alphabet maze that threw a trick into it. The point was to follow the maze from A to Z in alphabetical order, but here and there were places where they put two of the same letter, one leading to a dead end and the other allowing her to continue following the letters of the alphabet. I helped her out quite a bit with this, so I think I will have her do it again, with less help, to see if she notices whether or not she's going in alphabetical order and not following the wrong path! 

 Well, I don't remember if I already posted that I recently gained two new tutoring students or not, but prior to that, I had five resuable grocery bags full of learning activities, books, and notebooks, one for each student. Now I have seven, and they're all piled in my bedroom! I think I'm going to need to start keeping them in the back of my car again, as I did previously. But I need to remember to take all of the bags of reward candy out of each student's bag, otherwise it might melt or freeze, both of which have happened in the past! It's a good thing each candy bag has the students' names on them!  There is one reason I prefer to keep the learning bags in my room rather than in the car: the students need to share some of the items depending on what learning game they are going to play. If I get the bag for the next student that I need to plan for, and discover that I need a certain item, if the other bags are in my room, it's easy to go and get the ite...

 The Hooked on Phonics program that I've been using for the different age levels has short stories with fun illustrations that go along with specific lessons. One, for example, is called "Pop! Pop! Pop!" and is for the beginning readers. I read the story to them, but when I point to the words of the title in the story, they look at them and say them aloud.  Another book that goes along with a lesson for a third grader that I tutor is called "This Book is Broken." Some of the pages are intentionally out of order or upside down, funny things like that. Some of the page numbers are mixed up, or there might be two page numbers on one page. The learning factor of this story is using the "th" sounds that the lesson focused on. But the girl I read this story with loves the book!  Hooked on Phonics has sent me many of these little books, and I'm looking forward to seeing the kids interact with them as they acquire more reading skills.