Julie Horn, U-46 teacher,

discusses her “Pencil Box” lesson

The following are some other activities that I did with the children to extend the project:

I took a photo of each child with their pencil box, and we did a "shared writing" activity. That's when I write with a child and they do as much of the writing as possible. They "stretch-out" words and they write the letters in that word that they hear. They also are developing a nice writing vocabulary, so they can write many of the sight words.

We also did a writing project. The children traced a tool box (they actually thought of their pencil boxes as tool boxes) on a big piece of paper.

I have tool stamps that they used to stamp in their tool box. Then they drew a picture of what they would like to build if they could build anything. The bottom quarter of the paper was folded under to save a space for them to write. Using a sentence starter, they wrote, "I built a ______." This was an independent project.

We also made a Home Depot book from the photos. I prepped the photos into book form, and the children helped me write the text.

They were also encouraged during their independent writing time to write thank-you notes to the Home Depot people.

The students also wore hard hats to "construct" the first letters of their names using wooden blocks. The children then used a sentence starter to write, " (name) made the letter (1st letter of their name).

Another activity was a word building activity. They once again wore hard hats and using magnetic letters, they "built" words. I copied all of the words on our word wall onto an index card, and those were the words that they built.

The activities discussed in these lessons tie to the goals described in the District Curriculum Roadmap at the kindergarten level. This lesson relates to Roadmap goals k04, k05, k10 and k11.