Zoo, Dinosaurs, and Synonym Sally!

Our trip to the zoo was fantastic! Beautiful weather, helpful chaperones, excited students...things went really well.  Here are a couple pictures from the trip. 

Last week, we read this book:

The kids did a great job at keeping up with reading two chapters a day. 

 Each day, I assigned something to write or draw in their dinosaur-shaped reading logs. 

I don't have a picture of it, but we also pulled out specific words from the chapters every day.  We discussed their meanings, their importance to the story, and then put them all in alphabetical order. (That's a skill we've been working on a lot lately!)

Speaking of skill we've been working on, I decided to really drive home the concept of synonyms last week. So, I invited my "twin" sister Synonym Sally to be a classroom guest!

Synonym Sally owns a bakery where she bakes synonym rolls! She brought baker hats for everyone and helped us make synonym rolls for ourselves.

 I drew cinnamon roll shapes on brown paper, and then cut them into spirals.  I wrote a simple word like "big" in the middle. The students took white crayons (to resemble icing, of course!) and wrote synonyms for the simple word all around the spiral. 

 Here's everyone with their synonym rolls!

 And the obligatory silly picture...

 Synonym Sally didn't forget how fun real food can be, either.  After all those synonym rolls, it was time for some cinnamon rolls!

What a day! I will post about our week at Camp Learned-A-Lot tomorrow!