We talked briefly about what subjects and predicates were, and then mixed the subjects and predicates up, and put them face down into piles:

Daegan then made “silly sentences”, learning that subjects and predicates can be mixed and matched. This activity was met with lots of smiles and giggles, and even rolling on the floor at one point:

Here’s some of the silly sentences he made:

And I’d like it noted, for the record, that not one of these sentences was about dinosaurs! We’ll build on this activity in future, changing out nouns and verbs a la Mad Libs, adding in adjectives and adverbs, etc.

Gareth was keen to have a go, so he chose his topic (woolly mammoths) and grabbed the die:

He rolled a 2, and started his poem, rolling a 6 and a 4 and dictating each line to me as he went along. It was a bit tricky getting the exact number of words correct, but by telling me what he wanted to say, we were able to paraphase without loss of meaning. (e.g., his final line he wanted to say “The dinosaurs were already extinct, and then the mammoths went extinct too” so we played around with various phrases until he found a 4-word phrase he liked.)

Gareth then wanted to add a picture to his poem, so while he worked on that, Daegan and I created another dice poem. His topic? Dinosaurs—what else? Daegan’s rolls were surprisingly non-random: a whole lot of 1s and 5s.

Daegan then copied his poem (he needed no help from me with his dice poem other than transcribing what he said) and drew pictures to accompany it:

Here’s the boys’ finished work. This was a great activity! Thanks, Alicia!

The Hippo Runs Wild by Gareth

Once upon a time there was a hippo that lived in a zoo. His name was Rhino. This zoo had penguins that wore underwear, and elephants that wore baskets on their heads, and giraffes that danced with blue ballet shoes. This zoo used to be at the North Pole, but is now in Canada.

One day, the hippo used its teeth to bite a hole big enough to get out of its enclosure. He wanted some fresh air. The hippo ran wild! The silly penguins took off their underwear, and chased the hippo, but couldn’t catch him. The elephants used their trunks to take their baskets off, and followed the hippo, and setted up a trap for the hippo. But it didn’t work. The giraffes took off their blue ballet shoes and tried to catch the hippo, but that didn’t work.

Then a man came, a zookeeper. And he knew what hippos ate. Plants, and lots of them, like lettuce. He got some plants and put them into a new hippo enclosure. The hippo came over because he was getting hungry, and the man opened the door and the hippo went into his new home. The man threw more food at the hippo to keep him happy in his new enclosure.

They took the old enclosure to the North Pole to Santa’s elves and the elves fixed it. And they got it back for Christmas, a Christmas present for the zoo. And they put some small mongooses in it, and it was just the right size for the mongooses.

The end.

Gareth later drew this picture to go along with his story; he told me it is of a penguin wearing underwear!

My friend Alicia, who writes an online homeschooling column, offered some new pictoral story starters for February, and Daegan wrote a story about an evil magician and a man with a giant purple ear. It’s been published in Alicia’s column, just as Gareth’s polar bear story was last month. Here is the text of Daegan’s story, along with a picture he drew:

The Man with the Giant Purple Ear

Once upon a time there was a man with a giant purple ear. There was a magician who pressed a magic button that grows ears big and purple. He was an evil magician, who was grumpy all the time. He was lonely and had no friends because everyone was scared of him.

But the man with the giant purple ear was not scared of him. He didn’t see him often and didn’t know much about the evil magician. The man was always smiley, because he had wonderful adventures, like going to planet Bee-Bop where everything makes music. Then he went to planet Jungle where there are amazing jungle creatures like the ammonia lizard. The ammonia lizard has a big head but it has very small legs, and a long tail. The evil magician followed the man to the planet Jungle. The man with the giant ear sees other creatures like the alamonia lizard. It has a skinny head.

The evil magician saw the man always smiling. On Bee-Bop he could hear the music better, and on Jungle he was able to hear the lizards talking to one another. This made the man happy, so he kept smiling.

The evil magician pushed the reverse button because his plan didn’t work. He wanted to make the man not smile, and be grumpy like him. Then the man told jokes to the evil magician and they were VERY funny. The evil magician smiled and he laughed. He wasn’t grumpy anymore. He and the man became friends. He wasn’t so evil after all.

The End.

Here’s one the lizards from planet Jungle:

The polar bear was lying down sleeping and when he woke up beside him was a present and Santa gave it to the polar bear. And the polar bear wondered what was inside. The polar bear thought that a fish was inside. But the polar bear knew of Santa and he found the present and it was actually the thing that attached Santa’s reindeer to his sled.

And the polar bear thought, "Huh? Santa wants me to pull his sled? What does Santa think I am? A reindeer?"

And then he says. Wow! Look! Santa!" But the man says, "No, I’m just a polar bear policeman."

And then the polar bear found a deep cave that actually went back to the time of the dinosaurs. And then he heard a tuba and it was actually a T rex roaring. And then he turned into a T rex and then he got back to his own time and back to being a polar bear.

The end. 

Here’s his most recent work, the Little Red Hen:

I hope you noticed the scattered books and toys in the background—we are most definitely NOT your picture-perfect, have-it-all-together homechooling family! We have clutter and cranky days like anyone else.

I think this is mighty fine writing work from a grade 2 boy—he’s put a lot of effort in to getting the drawing and letters just so. Great effort, son!