The reading and science room is designed to share good children's literature and to help the children learn to communicate in a group setting. We work on sharing and cooperation in all aspects of our school, but especially in this structured time. The amount of time we spend dealing with a story lengthens as the year progresses, and depending on the interest of the children. In the beginning of the year, it may be 10 minutes with a story and 20 minutes of free choice. By May, we usually spend the entire 30 minutes with a story related to our weekly theme, Pledge of Allegiance, calendar, weather, etc.

Follow-ups to stories include:

• Games
• Retelling stories (flannel-board, puppets, or props)
• Stringing a story
• Fingerplays
• Puppetry
• Discussion
• Making observations as a group
• Visiting pets (turtles, frogs, polliwogs, insects, dogs, hamsters, cats, fish, etc.)
• Changes in butterflies (we raised from eggs)
• Graphing choices
• Dictated experience charts

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