Mrs. Wishy Washy and
the other books are going to be included in our Old
MacDonald's Farm unit. The children are sure to
enjoy all the antics of Mrs. Wishy Washy and all her farm
I'm going to begin by
reading Mrs. Wishy Washy to them and then we're going to
make a large mud puddle for the pigs that we made
previously. They've just been hanging out in the hall
waiting on their mud. :) The pigs and the mud
puddle will become part of our Old MacDonald's Farm hallway
To make the mud puddle,
we're going to fingerpaint a large piece or two of butcher
paper using chocolate pudding. Of course, we'll save
some to eat after lunch for a snack as well. Once the
paper is dry, I'll piece it together if necessary and cut it
into a mud puddle shape. Then we'll just add the pigs.
They'll love it!
This is the
finished product ... the mud puddle.
"Oh, lovely mud!"
You could also carry
this lesson a step further by having the students
compare/contrast our "lovely mud" to what we know about real
mud. This could easily be done using a Venn diagram
(two overlapping circles). Comparing and contrasting
is also another one of our benchmark objectives.
This is our finished
Then you could have
your students do a writing activity centered around the mud.
They could use the information collected in the Venn diagram
above, or they could brainstorm words first that describe
and are related to mud. These words should be recorded
on a piece of chart paper or the board to use during the
writing process. I also have a portable Word Wall (a
pocketchart) with farm words and pictures that my students
use for writing. By providing them (young writers ...
if not necessarily by age, then by skill) the farm
vocabulary words, they can center more of their energy on
getting their ideas on paper and spelling their sight
words. I've found that this often gives them the
confidence they need to put pencil to paper. And, I
will add that many of our sight words can be found on our
Word Wall for those who are developmentally ready to use
that resource. I've also found that my students have
to get to a certain point in their development before
they're ready to use the resources provided to help them in
their writing. And those students who don't need these
resources will not rely on them when they have enough
confidence to write on their own.
This is a close-up shot
of part of our
Farm Vocabulary Word
Back to the actual
writing activity ... you could have them do a free write
about mud, or have them write "x" number of facts about mud,
or have them pretend they're a pig and write about why they
like/dislike mud. They could also approach the writing
aspect from another angle by writing about why they would
like/dislike rolling in the mud. (Regarding
facts about mud ... the first day I read Mrs. Wishy Washy
to the students, and during our discussion of the book
afterwards, my youngest student brought out the fact that
pigs get in the mud to stay cool! So we discussed this
and the fact that pigs can't sweat because they have no
sweat glands. This lead to a quick discussion of the
saying ... Sweating like a pig! )
My less capable
students will do alternate writing assignments such as
copying the words: mud, Mrs. Wishy Washy, pig, cow, duck,
and drawing a picture to go with each. (copying words
and illustrating writing/stories are also benchmark objs)
They're actually able to choose the animal pictures from the
pocketchart and copy the words onto their paper. Then
for those that need it, I do a quick drawing lesson to help
them draw their pictures. We did this activity on Fri.
and I had a student that needed help with drawing a dog (one
of the words that he'd chosen to copy from the pocketchart).
So I did a quick step-by-step drawing of a dog with BIG
floppy ears. He drew along with me through each step.
When we were finished he was ecstatic that he'd drawn a dog
and he LOVED it!
writing activity that some of my students will do is to
write simple sentences using 1 or 2 chosen words from the
words "mud", "Mrs. Wishy Washy", "pig", "cow", and "duck".
They'll write sentences like: I like Mrs. Wishy Washy.
I like pigs. The duck is yellow. I like the
_____ (favorite character from book). Again, a couple
of sentences like these are modeled with the students and
then they're to write on their own. They usually pick
one of the sentences that we used in the lesson to write.
I don't have a problem with this because they're
concentrating heavily on getting the appropriate words onto
the paper and spelling them correctly (as best they can).
Of course they have the portable Farm Word Wall, the real
Word Wall with the basic sight words, and the color words
charts to pull from if they choose to. Sometimes they
utilize these and sometimes they don't. After
they've completed their writing, then we go back over it and
The next day we will
reread the story and hopefully on these subsequent readings
the students will begin to chime in with the predictable
text, as that's one of our state mandated benchmark
objectives. After rereading the story, we'll work
together to complete the following sentence frames in the
"Oh, lovely mud," said
the ____ and she ______ in it. (cow/jumped)
"Oh, lovely mud," said
the ____ and he ______ in it. (pig/rolled)
"Oh, lovely mud," said
the _____ and she ______ in it. (duck/paddled)
We will complete the
sentence frames using color coded word cards. I wrote
the words "cow" and "jumped" on blue sentence strip pieces.
I wrote "pig/rolled" on pink, and "duck/paddled" on yellow.
Later when the students complete the chart on their
own as a Center, those that need additional help will be
able to rely somewhat on the color coding ... pink for
pig, and yellow for duck. Blue I just had to
make do with for the cow because I didn't have brown.
You can also extend this activity by having the students
brainstorm other animals that could get in the mud and what
they would do in it. Ex. Rooster ... and he
strutted in it.
During this time, I'll
also reinforce the letter W in Wishy Washy, as
well as the sound, and bring out that the verbs all have the
suffix "ed". (more state benchmark objectives)
Remember, that I teach a Special Education resource class
for K - 3. This means that I have to hit certain
benchmark objectives for 4 grade levels ... preK
through second grade, depending on what's stated on the
students' IEPs. So I have to be sure to cover a
wide range of skills and objectives.
The next day we'll
reread the story again, then complete a following directions
activity (another benchmark objective). I will
first model putting together a Mrs. Wishy Washy character.
I drew Mrs. Wishy Washy, then made a master of the the parts
that make up the character making sure to leave space for
gluing the pieces together. The students will glue the
pieces together on a large piece of construction paper to form
Mrs. Wishy Washy. I must admit that I was
surprised at how well my drawing of Mrs. Wishy Washy turned
out, but I'm also afraid that the activity might turn out to
be more difficult than I had planned. We'll just have
to wait and see how it goes.
These are some of our
finished Mrs. Wishy Washy pictures.
The activity turned out
to be easier for the children than I thought.
The next day we'll
revisit the story again, then use the flannelboard pieces
that I printed off The Mailbox Companion to retell the story.
(The patterns are no longer available) I
printed the tub onto gray construction paper and the mud
onto brown. All the other pieces I printed onto
cardstock. The aide colored them for me, then we had
them laminated. She glued small sandpaper squares to
the back of each piece so that they would adhere to the flannelboard. Then I cut slits in the top
of the tub and in the mud puddle. Next I hotglued
cotton to the top of the tub around the slit to look like
suds. The students will insert the animals into the
slits to look like they're in the mud and in the tub. The flannelboard will also be one of the
Centers for the week.
The next day we're
going to do a retelling of the story using story props.
This is going to be my favorite part. :) I
bought a small wooden tub on markdown at Cracker
Barrel. My sister had already given me a Beanie Baby
type cow (but it's really a Precious Moments cow), which is
what started this whole activity with the story props.
Then I sweet talked my daughter into giving me her knock-off
of a Beanie Baby duck. She also has the Beanie Baby
pig, Squealer, but she isn't giving him up. So now
I've got to get a pig and a small, soft brush (like a shoe
shine brush) before Friday! And last, I'll add a small
hotel sized bar of soap to complete the props. These
are the things that we'll use to retell the story.
(Retelling a story is also a benchmark objective.) If you wanted, you
could add an apron, fuzzy house shoes, and a bandana as
I still haven't found a
I found a pig!
Not exactly what I wanted, but it will do until I find
what I'm looking for.
Update: I did
find a Ty Beanie Baby pink pig! I can't remember now
where I got him. He's soooo cute!
Another activity that
we're going to do is to identify the parts of the story
(another benchmark objective). I took a piece of white
posterboard and sectioned it into the appropriate number of
sections with the appropriate amount of space. I wrote
one story part item in each section. The poster looks
The poster was then
laminated so that it can be reused with each story. We
fill in the parts of the story together and I write them on
the poster with a Vis-a-Via. In the sections for
Beginning, Middle, and End they have to decide upon one
sentence that describes each for the story. Once
the poster is finished, then we rewrite the story during
Writing Workshop using the 3 sentences that we decided upon
for the poster. I write them on the board as they
dictate and tell me how to spell the words. Then I go
back and do "book spelling". Once we've edited the
sentences, also talking about indention, etc., we read and
reread the sentences together. Then I erase them off
the board and have my students that are capable, retell the
story in writing in their Journals, skipping lines.
When they're finished, we go back and conference and
discuss book spelling, punctuation, spacing, capitalization,
whatever. We make these edits in the blank line
spaces that they skipped. I try never to actually
change or write on the students' actual writing. I
want to encourage them for trying and one way of doing that
is by not butchering their writing. The exception to
that is if I circle a letter that should have been
capitalized or shouldn't have been capitalized.
The next day, they rewrite the edited version of their story
making all the necessary corrections.
For a sequencing
activity for my students who are reading (as opposed to
those who are "reading" :) ), I wrote the main
sentences from the book on sentence strips and then
summarized some of the other pages into one line. I
tried to condense the book into 10 lines of text so that it
would fit into a pocketchart. However, somehow I ended
up with 11 lines of text, so I've got to figure out a
solution for that problem. Anyway, the students will
read the text and put the sentences in the correct order in
the pocketchart. Of course, sequencing is another
One of our Centers for
this week was to put this Mrs. Wishy Washy puzzle together.
My students found it difficult. This was taken after
one of them finished it.
I found it online
cheap. I have no idea about this company however or
how long the product will be in stock here.
I also want to extend
the Mrs. Wishy Washy story by also reading the other
books containing her as a character. One of the ones
that I'm really looking forward to doing is Mrs. Wishy
Washy's Tub. It has very simple text and even my
earliest readers will be able to read the text because it's
repetitive and contains many of the very basic sight words
that we're working on (another benchmark objective).
The book utilizes the
sentence frame: The ____ is in the tub. On each
page of the book another animal gets into the tub so that by
the end of the book, it's quite full! And of course it
ends with Wishy - washy. Wishy - washy. :)
So this book lends
itself very well to being rewritten. You could change
the subject of the book and have zoo animals get into the
tub, or even your own students! :) What a cute class
book that would make.
Below are the pictures
of our Mrs. Wishy Washy's Tub. I used the tub
pattern from The Mailbox (shrunk it some) and Ellison
die-cuts to make the animals. The tub pattern was
actually copied onto gray construction paper, although it
looks brown in the pictures. I just quickly put this
book together for my class to do one day when I was going to
be out for a conference. So I didn't really add a lot
of details to the animals. The bubbles are made using
a blue stamp pad and a circle stamp. We slit the tub
so that we could slide the animals inside, so they'd look
like they were actually in the tub. You could also cut
the legs off the animals and get somewhat of the same
effect, but I really didn't want to do that .. I'm somewhat
squeamishy! :) Each student made their own book, and
then I bound them using plastic spirals and a book binder.
The kids really like their books bound that way. I
think it makes them seem like REAL books to them.
So if you put this much effort into making a book,
spiral binding them is worth the effort. The
black horizontal line across each page is courtesy of our
school copier. The book was not designed with THAT! :)
Here's a picture of our
pocketchart sequencing activity for Mrs. Wishy Washy's
Tub. Some of the students were required to
insert the words, others used pictures (depending on their
level). You can also use the picture and word cards
for a matching activity.
I came up with the CUTEST idea of
doing a rewrite for the book Mrs. Wishy Washy's Tub.
I'm going to do the rewrite with my students and it will be
titled Mrs. Montgomery's Tub! The sentence
for each page will say: ____ is in the tub.
I'll insert a student's name in place of the blank, then
I'll have their head sticking out of the tub on the page.
The picture will be done by using my digital camera and
adding the headshot to a construction paper gray tub.
Then on the next page, we'll add another student's name to
the sentence frame and add their headshot along with the
previous student to the tub. At the end of the book,
the whole class will be in the tub. I also want to do
a larger version of the class in the tub for the
hallway where I will have a large Mrs. Wishy Washy, but my
headshot will replace hers! I'll even do my hair up in
A math counting
activity would be to have cows, pigs, ducks, tubs, soap,
brushes, and Mrs. Wishy Washy cutouts/graphics in the
pocketchart for the students to count. They would
count how many items on the row and place a card with the
correct number on the row as well. Or, you can do it
the opposite way and place the number cards in the
pocketchart and have the students put in the correct number
A fine motor activity
would be to provide the students with brown playdough and
small pig, cow, and duck manipulatives and let them retell
the story by placing the animals into the "mud" (brown
The aide made this
activity for me today and we're waiting on them to be
laminated. I used the tub pattern and she reduced it to two smaller sizes.
Then she copied them onto gray construction paper. She
cut out the tubs and glued two tubs onto turquoise
construction paper. The tubs were glued on in a
fashion so that they made a Math addition workmat. She
made two mats for horizontal addition problems and two mats
for vertical addition problems. For the
horizontal mats, the tubs were glued side-by-side except
that they had enough room in-between them for me to put a
plus sign using a Sharpie marker. Then the same was
done for the vertical mats except the tubs were placed one
on top of the other, but with a plus sign in-between them.
Once they're laminated, we'll use them to work addition
problems using our farm counters. Ex. 3+1=
__ 3 animals in the first tub, and 1
animal in the second tub. 3+1=4
Another math activity
would be to graph the students' favorite character from the
I also had an idea for a
Mrs. Wishy Washy mobile. If you wanted, you could use
Mrs. Wishy Washy printed onto something sturdy, maybe heavy
cardstock and then have the following things hanging below
her on different lengths of yarn: a tub, soap, a cow,
a pig, a duck, and a brown patch to resemble mud.
However, and even
easier idea would be to use the tub printable as the top piece, and then have soap, cow,
pig, duck, mud, and maybe even some bubbles hanging below.
Make sure you stop by
Korner and check out the Mrs. Wishy Washy TLC style book
that Victoria did with her class. It's precious, but
looks like a lot of work! :)
In My Room - March 18,
(scroll way down the