[Display letter F card.]

What is the name of this letter?

[Point to the uppercase letter F on the letter card.]

Am I pointing to the uppercase or to the lowercase letter F?

Now let’s spend some time with our book.

[See Week 3, Day 3 of Language/Literacy for a description and examples of how to approach today’s book reading. Key aspects are summarized below:

• Display book cover and say book title. Engage children in describing what they remember about the book:
  • What is our book about?
  • Who were the main characters in our book?
  • What happened first? What happened next?
• Remind children that reading a book is a good way to learn new words. Point to and say words introduced on Day 1 that are listed on the Words We Understand chart. Invite children to talk about what they recall about each of the words. Remind children of the meaning of each novel word.
• Point to where to begin to read on the first text page of the book. Pause during reading to briefly define words identified for today’s session. Use the following approach:
  • Read the sentence with the novel word. Repeat the novel word.
  • Repeat the sentence in which the word is used.
  • Define the novel word and connect the definition to the book.
• After the book reading, engage children in a discussion of each novel word targeted for today with one or more of the following strategies (plus writing the word on the chart):
  • Ask children to describe a picture related to the word.
  • Define a word without naming it and ask children to identify the word.
  • Encourage children to think about a novel word in another context.
• Encourage children to connect the book information to their own experiences. Below are some examples:
  • “Our book today was about worms. Have you ever seen or touched a worm? What was it like?”
  • “Our book today talked about roots. Roots are part of a plant that grow into the dirt. Have you ever seen the root of a plant? What was it like?”
  • “Today we talked about the word squeeze. We squeeze something by pressing things very close together. What kinds of things have you squeezed? How about a tube of toothpaste? How about a package or bottle of ketchup? Show us how you squeeze something.”]

Today we will play a game called Momma Frog Says! (or Papa Frog Says!). You will be the baby frogs and I will be the Momma (or Papa) Frog! We will use the number line that is on our floor for this game.

I will invite each of you to hop a certain number of times on our number line on the floor. When I invite you to hop, you will hop on each number until you get to the number I’ve said. I will show you first.

[Demonstrate how to hop from numeral to numeral as you explain the game.]

If I say, “Momma Frog says hop two times,” you will hop on number one and then hop on number two.

[Hop twice.]

What number am I on? (two)

Now I will say, “Momma Frog says hop one more time.” Then you would hop one more time.

[Hop once.]

What number am I on now?

I am on number three! Three is one more than two.

[Invite children to take turns. Invite each child to hop a specific number of times and then hop “one more time.” Then ask what numeral the child is on. Continue until all children have had a turn. If you have a large group, form two groups of children with two number lines on the floor. Alternate groups in taking a turn so children in one group can watch children in the other group add one more hop.]

Today we played a game called Momma Frog Says! Each of us jumped the number of times that Momma Frog said and then jumped one more time. Let’s pretend we are frogs again and jump in place 10 times as we count to 10!

Today we are going to talk about an emotion that is a lot like feeling sad. What might our face look like when we feel sad? (we may cry, we may have a frown on our face)

We can feel sad for many reasons. Sometimes we feel sad because we are lonely. When we feel lonely, we are sad because we feel like we are all by ourselves, or alone.

It’s okay to feel lonely. We might feel lonely because we have no one to play with. We might feel lonely because a family member has gone away for a while. We might feel lonely when we move to a new place where we do not know anyone. I felt lonely when _____.

Have you ever felt lonely? What happened?

It is good for us to talk to an adult when we are feeling lonely. We can also do some of the things that make us feel better when we are sad. Remember, we have a poster with pictures of things to do to help us feel better. Let’s look at our poster.

[Display Things That Make Us Feel Better poster.]

Look at all of the things our friendly fox is doing to feel better.

[Point to and ask questions for each picture you think would be of special interest to children in your classroom:]

• What is the fox doing in this picture?
• How might this activity help us feel better when we feel lonely?
• Have you ever done what the fox is doing in the picture to help you feel better when you were lonely? Tell us about it.

Today we learned about feeling lonely. Each of us can feel lonely sometimes. There are many reasons we might feel lonely. The friendly fox on our poster showed us some things we can do to help us feel better when we feel lonely. We also might feel better if we talked with an adult about feeling lonely.

We are learning about the life cycle of a butterfly.

[Display four pictures of the butterfly life cycle. As you describe each stage with the following riddles, point to the pertinent picture.]

We are going to use riddles to help us remember the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle. A riddle is a fun way to ask a question. I will ask a question using a riddle, and we will try to figure out the answer to the riddle!

• I am small and sit on a leaf until something inside of me hatches. What am I? (egg)
• I hatch from a butterfly egg and crawl around eating leaves. What am I? (caterpillar)
• I am a hard outer part. A caterpillar goes through many changes (a metamorphosis) inside me. What am I? (chrysalis)
• I have hatched from the chrysalis and have wings and fly through the sky. What am I? (butterfly)

Let’s act out the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle!

• [In an area near a wall, invite children to crouch down and form a ball with their heads down and hands wrapped around their legs, pretending they are a butterfly egg.
• Then invite children to “hatch from the egg” by raising their heads and slowly stretching out.
• Next encourage children to crawl slowly on the floor pretending to eat leaves as a caterpillar.
• Invite children to “crawl up the stem of the plant” (wall) with hands and elbows close to their bodies. Encourage children to pretend to build a chrysalis around themselves.
• Count to 14 as children hold very still, telling them that this is about how many days they will stay in their chrysalis.
• Now invite children to slowly lower their arms to their sides and shake them free into “wings.”
• Invite children to fly like a butterfly!

If time permits:]

On Day 1 we thought about what hatches from a butterfly egg.

[Pass out science journals and help children to turn to the correct page.]

• Who would like to tell us about what they drew?
• Were you surprised to learn that a caterpillar hatches from a butterfly egg?

Today we solved riddles about the life cycle of a butterfly and acted out the life cycle of a butterfly. We are learning a lot about the life cycle of a butterfly!