Illustrator Visit from James Ransome

We were lucky enough to receive a visit from illustrator James Ransome last Monday. He was in town for the Young Writers Conference in Irmo last Saturday and stuck around so that he could visit us all here at CFI and talk about his books. The kids were amazed by his many beautiful illustrations. In the video below he is explaining a bit of the process of taking a story and creating the illustrations for it.

A Great Gift

Roman came in on Thursday telling me he had written a song for his dad to sing for him on his birthday. He asked if I could put some chords to it and teach him how to play them. I had forgotten until about noon today when I looked over and saw his guitar propped up against the wall. Panicked,we grabbed our guitars and spent about ten or fifteen minutes finding something that matched the beautiful lyrics and melody he had created. Since he is just learning to play guitar it would be a lot to ask him to learn new chords and a new rhythm in just one day. So I am going to post a video of him singing his special song for his dad while I accompany on guitar. I hope you all enjoy it. I know his dad sure will!

Read Aloud

One of the greatest parts of our day happens just before dismissal. Once the kids get their things put together to go home they all head over to the floor for read aloud. This is an important structure for our learning because it allows the kids to access books that they may not be ready to read on their own just yet. Reading these books to them allows them to hear more complex sentence structures and vocabulary. Of course, it's also a great bonding experience. In this video, Mrs. Vice is reading our newest book, There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom.

Guitar Notes from March 2nd and 3rd

Be sure to work on that new G-chord and the new strum pattern. The strum pattern is counted 1 -and- 2- and- 3 -and- 4 -and-a- 1 -and- 2... It is all downstrokes except for the "a" after four. That one is an upstroke.