[chocaholic]

We have reading buddies in kindergarten.
What do you do with your reading buddies, besides read with them (of course!)...
I'm looking for ideas for the new year...

[Phyllis]

I'm retired now; when I taught fourth grade, we had first grade buddies. My students met with them and interviewed their buddy. They asked question such as :
How do you get home from school? Who lives at your house? What snack do you like after school? Who do you play with after school? What do you play? Can you ride a bicycle? What is your favorite TV show? AND lots of questions like that. They also wrote down hair color and any other thing they might want to include in their drawings.

Back in class, they wrote a story:an afterschool adventure starring their buddy. The story included many of the details from their interview but might also include fantasy. We made books (on half size sheets of white paper) with one sentence carefully printed (using guide lines behind the page) at the bottom of each page. Then they drew a picture for each page and using blank sheets between the pages to prevent a mess, they colored in the pages. I laminated the construction paper covers and stitched the books together on the sewing machine.

On our second visit, my students read the book their their buddy. One really neat thing about this activity occurred years later when I got some of kids in my class and asked them about their book. I never had a kid who didn't still have the book; they always knew just where it was, and were eager to bring it to school to share.

[peif]

We actually "helped" with their Halloween party. I think, no I know, my fifth graders had just as much fun with the activities even though they were more applicable to the reading buddies' second grade level. We take turns reading to them and they read to us. I ask my fifth graders to choose a Christmas story (for example) and read with prosody and fluency. We practice over and over so that when we read we sound like a teacher. We try very hard to make it interesting. We are also doing some second grade readers' theaters and reading in groups. We have a lot of fun.

We do reader's theatre, as others have mentioned; the little kids act the story out and we provide the dialogue.

One project we just did which was loads of fun was to write acrostic name poems together. Then our little buddies took the squares with their names and created kind of a paper "quilt" with them that included their pictures. They did the same thing with the name-poems of my students.

The quilt with their names hangs on my wall; the quilt with our names hangs on theirs. It's a lovely reminder of our relationship.

[chocaholic]

thanks to all the suggestions! You got my creative juices flowing!
Thanks you...I love PT!

[megsy1182]

What great ideas! I'm going to use them with my reading buddies as well! Happy Holidays

Hi, My name is Kennedy. I'm not actualy a teacher, but I'm a 5th grade student and I have a reading buddy! Her name is Hannah, and I draw a wheel that has different colors on it and have her tell me the color. But if you do, do this then be sure to mix some colors to make purple or somrthing and see if they can tell you what colors you might have mixed and just to let you know my reading buddy is in kidnergarten! Well hope you can find this usefull.

Hi, My name is Kennedy. I'm not actualy a teacher, but I'm a 5th grade student and I have a reading buddy! Her name is Hannah, and I draw a wheel that has different colors on it and have her tell me the color. But if you do, do this then be sure to mix some colors to make purple or something and see if they can tell you what colors you might have mixed and just to let you know my reading buddy is in kidnergarten! Well hope you can find this usefull.