What Makes Me Grouchy

Today we started our pre-writes for our next round of friendly letters. We are writing about what makes us grouchy. We read the story The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (love love love!!!). 

And then we started to brainstorm things that make us grouchy. 

Of course, (of course) one of the kids mentioned that picking up his dog's poop makes him grouchy. Sooooooo, we decided to think of a synonym for "poop", because we definitely wouldn't feel comfortable saying that word in front of the principal or the kindergartners! And we always really want try our hardest to be school-appropriate! One of my sweet little friends wanted to help out, and chimed in, "My dad told me a synonym for poop! Crap!!!" Wonderful. Now I have a classroom full of four seven year old (boys) who are laughing hysterically, ten who want to laugh but know it's wrong (girls), and six who have no idea what's going on (boys). 

After much discussion, we decided an appropriate word would be do-do (see below). (I'm glad my principal didn't pop on for a visit at that exact moment....!)

"When I have to pick up my dog's stinky do-do." (Love the picture :)

This was my favorite:

"It makes me grouchy when somebody tells me what to do, something that makes me grouchy is when my friend be's mean to me, and something that makes me really grouchy is when we all don't get along." Very sweet. 

I have my kiddos draw their three points before they even get to the prewrite. There's also lots of discussion, lots of talking, lots of oral language development. 

What do you do to get your kids ready to write??? :)

Tomorrow is Friday! Yipeee!!!