Building Skills
Phonics
Have children think up as many words as they can that have a long e sound. Then have the children practice their classification skills and spelling skills by classifying each word according to how the long e sound is produced. One list of words would include only vowel diagraphs (such as three, sea, and manatee), while another list would include only words with a silent e (such as scene and complete) and a third list would include words that end in a y (such as candy and hurry).
Word Work
Grammar: Adjectives
Explain to the children that adjectives are descriptive words. They are words used to describe something or somebody. Ask the children to describe manatees and then write down on the board all of the adjectives they generate. For example, they may say that manatees are gentle, ugly, heavy, slow, and kind. For more practice with adjectives, have each child pick an animal and write down five adjectives that describe it.
Word Structure: Multiple syllable words
Have the children reread three or four pages of the book and have them keep track of all of the multi-syllable words that they find. Challenge them to find two or more words that share a syllable. For example, in the first three pages of the book, they can find several words with the syllable be, such as believe, belong, belief, and because. In the same three pages, they can find several words with the syllable ny, such as any, many, and funny.
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