Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Fun Letter Writing from a Cat's Point of View

I had my kids at school write a letter to my daughter pretending they were my daughter's cat, Muffassa.  I showed them the video she made about her cat, some pictures of him dressed up in her baby clothes & told them a few stories about Muffassa.  I call him Maximus because he's so huge! 
We also read a bunch of picture books that had letter writing included & discussed how letters could be used to tell a story.  These are some of the books we read:
I Wanna Iguana
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Yours Truly Goldilocks
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Dear Mr. Blueberry
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Dear Mrs. LaRue:  Letters from Obedience School
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Dear Juno
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and With Love, Little Red Hen
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Dear Peter Rabbit
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They loved pretending that they were such a bad kitty & loved making demands on my daughter to do this & to do that for them.  It was a great introduction to letter writing for them.  They used wonderful 'show me sentences' and let my daughter really know how they felt about her not cleaning their litterboxes on time & what they thought about her food choices and the like.
It was a great lesson & I just thought I'd share.
What was your favorite lesson of all time - either by you or from a favorite teacher you had?

Here's the youtube link that I showed my kids of Muffassa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0yVBaF6eC0&feature=related

My Favorite Book of All Time

I love the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, but not just any version of it - it's got to be the 1977 illustrated version that my grade 6 teacher, Mr. Jayceko, read to us with great expression and fluency.  It brought you right there with the goblins, dwarves & Smaug oh my...  I loved this book so much that it lead me to a quest - to search for this book high and low until I found it - on Ebay - at a price I'd rather not discuss.  Anyway, I have it and I love it.  I brings me back to far & away & I keep it close by to peruse whenever I feel the need.