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a-b-c- The Order of the Day 10/23/2002 | 5:21 pm a-b-c The Order of the Day Today in the nut tree we were squirrels, we were nutty, but, as a quote from one of my favorite movies says, "We've got to get organized!" During the first six weeks of school, I do an alphabet review, usung "Little Books" which are cut and past jobies that I have put together for each letter of the alphabet. They are fun for the kids, and it gets them used to taking home a book nightly, reading with a parent and returning it the next day with a signature on the book as well as in their weekly reading log. Each morning I collect the "Little Books", rubber-band them and stow them away. Over the long weekend, I went through each set and recorded everyone's books, making note of who was missing a book or two. We actually did well this year. The most that were missing was from Kassidy, my best reader, but totally unorganized. After lunch we set to work getting each book stamped with a cute little smelly stamp. If you don't know what smelly stamps are, they are colorful ink pads, saturated with a corresponding scent such as: blue- blueberry, red- cherry, pink-bubblegum, green-lime, purple-grape, brown-cinnamon, and black-licorice. I had many helpers, helping me stamp each set of books. Following this aromatic adventure, we proceeded to pass them all out to their owners. Now this is where it gets interesting. This is a great activity for emergent readers to learn the reading of their classmate's names. I tell them, as they are passing back books, that they must come and get help from me if they are not able to read the name. Many times, the child has forgotten their own name, but smart teacher that I am, I have memorized all the parent's signatures, thus solving the identity crisis. For about 30 minutes this afternoon the room was chaos as 7 or 8 students took turns returning books to their friends. Finally, all books were returned to their owners. Of course somebody kept giving Ethan's books to Eric and Katie's books to Kyle, but no harm done. Now for the FUN part. Putting everything in a-b-c- order. Oh boy! First graders don't understand that in order to do that, you must put the "A" book on the bottom of the stack. The "B" book, and so forth. It got to be recess time, so I told everyone to just "find a good stopping place", and go out to play. That little phrase, "find a good stopping place" is the best! Then, when you come back in, you can just pick up and go with the project. During recess I had a change of heart. I began looking at all the books of all the kids (26 books x 21 kids) and I lost my courage for today. Afterall, as Scarlet O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day". We put the stuff away and read stories till the bell rang. We also had a fabulous "Show&Tell". We saw some black toy heicopter, a nerf football, and heard about Katie's brother playing football tonight and how she is a cheerleader for the team Hip, hip hoorah! I must go shopping for my daughter-in-law's B-day. She is a sweet, smart, talented girl. She is going to be a Kindergarten teacher in about 6 months. She wants gift certificates, That should be easy. PS- It is now 10:00 pm AZ time. (we are not on daylight savings time) I purchased gift certificates at Teaching Tools and the local bookstore. Tomorrow is the Christopher Columbus play, and I will be staying at school till it is over. I shall then slink home and drop dead in a heap. Till then... catsnapples~ in first grade and at life ___________________________________________
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