Unit 1, Week 5 - The Little Red Hen / The Handiest Things in the World

     This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question, "How do tools help us do things with our hands?"  We will begin with the Traditional Tale, The Little Red Hen, retold by Heather Forest, and illustrated by Susan Gaber.  In this rhyming version of the workhorse story, a black-and-white kitten, corgi pup, and shiny-eyed mouse are the reluctant friends of Little Red Hen. While cat is distracted by a yarn ball, dog wrestles with a blue blanket, and mouse surveys a sort of scrapbook of mice of many lands (complete with tags in German, Korean, Hebrew, and French, among other languages), Hen goes about her business, planting, cutting, grinding, and baking all by herself. But here, unlike most accounts, there's a twist: the lazy animals learn their lesson and are given a chance to redeem themselves: For after all is said and done, working together makes working fun.
     Our Informational Text this week will be The Handiest Things in the World, by Andrew Clements.  This fresh take on an often-overlooked appendage compares hands with everyday tools. Eating with fingers and then with chopsticks, walking a dog off a leash and then on, catching an insect with bare hands and then in a net, and digging with and without a trowel are a few of the 17 varied, engaging, and child-centered activities included. 
     Our Focus Skills this week will be Beginning Sounds, Words in Oral Sentences, Pausing for Punctuation (when reading), Identifying Cause and Effect, Questioning, Synonyms, and Action Verbs.  We will also be focusing on the letter Ss and its corresponding phoneme, /s/.  

High-Frequency Words: Review I, like, the, and

Letter: Ss

Oral Vocabulary (The Little Red Hen): admired, delicious, delight, doubt, fable, sigh

Selection Vocabulary (The Handiest Things in the World): appears, future, handy, stray



Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and story synopsis!