Venn Diagrams

We have been reading Stellaluna all week.  In order to increase Catherine's speed in reading, we are just reading a few books a week.  We read them every day so that she can become familiar with them and increase her speed.  It is a cute story about a bat who loses track of his family and ends up living with an owl family.  There are a lot of comparisons made between bats and owls, so I taught her what a Venn diagram was and we made one comparing bats to owls. 

We made a few other Venn diagrams comparing different princesses.  Then we made one comparing her and Sabrina.  In her circle she included "lots of surgeries, red bellybutton, six years old."  In Sabrina's circle she included "silly, cheer leading, talks a lot."  I was so thrilled that Catherine got the concept and was able to think critically.

But the next day I was even more thrilled when Catherine asked if she could make more Venn diagrams.  How could I say no?  This time I drew the circles and wrote the titles and made her write in the facts.  It was wonderful to see what she came up with!  Dorothy has ruby slippers, but Cinderella has glass slippers.  But, they both have slippers (love the fashion angle!):

 The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Man wants a heart, but they are both "Dorothy's friends":

 Mommy is my teacher, Daddy goes to work, both "are sweet:"

Sabrina wanted to participate too, so I created several for her with different colors in the circles:

It took her a few tries, but she did figure out the concept of the overlapping middle section.  I then had her do a few with letters in each circle:

The girls each did at least ten Venn diagrams each.  After awhile I had Catherine switch to do some "graphic organizers."  We just got her portfolio assignments for her virtual school, which requires a graphic organizer, rough draft, and essay.  We have over a month before the first portfolio is due, but I thought we should start learning how to use graphic organizers.  So this one just shows three facts about a topic:

 This one shows three parts of a story (or in this case, the steps to washing your hands):

I love how her first step is "step onto the stool."  Being petite myself, I can relate to the need for stools!  We had a discussion about the word "end" and that I wanted her to use a final step in the "end" section. But, this was her first attempt.