How to do a How To

S.O.L.   # 5 out of 31

How to do a "How To"

This is what my 5 year old kindergarten daughter wrote on my easel after school one day. 

In case you can't decipher kindergarten, she tells me it says, "How to
1. Hands behind your back
2. Voices off
3. eyes forward".

She plays "teacher" just about everyday after school in my classroom. It sounds like today she is teaching her students how to walk in the hallway with "Line Basics".

I can really tell she has been taught the structure and organization of "how to" writing.  Since then,  she has created dozens of other "How to" books and papers. ...everything from how to bake cookies. In which, she said she forgot the eggs. (I'm surprised she even knew cookie dough has eggs since I'm pretty sure the only type of cookies that she has baked around here are the "break, place and bake" kind. )

She's written a "How To" on planting tomato seeds. Only after her amazing kindergarten teacher gave the students the first-hand experience of planting their own tomato seeds. (This clever teacher even used ice cream cones as little pots since they are biodegradable and the  students can take them home and plant them in the ground.)

The newest of her how-tos is
 "How to make a cat" 
1. First draw a circle
2. First put ears on
3. First draw a nose
4. First draw a whiskers
5. First draw an eye and then draw a mouth.

In this piece, I loved the succession of illustrations that accompanied each step. On each page,  she showed the progression of the drawing as she added more cat features each time. Of course, there was a lot of inventive spelling (but she has got the beginning and ending sounds of most words) and she might need to learn a few other transition words. But I bet anyone that reads this could draw a cat now! 

I sent the first easel picture to her teacher.  I hope she enjoyed seeing the evidence of learning applied beyond school as much as I enjoyed capturing it. Thanks Mrs. S!!