Y is for Yoko: A Book About Accepting Differences

What would you like for lunch today, my little cherry blossom?" 

asked Yoko's mother. All my favorite things, please," answered Yoko. 

Yoko, a children's book written by Rosemary Wells, is about a Japanese kitten who gets teased for bringing sushi and other cultural foods to school for lunch.

My daughter, Alyssa (Age 8), recently read and enjoyed Yoko. She learned a lot about accepting others and their differences. She also learned about bullying and the feelings of those who are teased.

Alyssa used the book as an inspiration for her next Here to Help Learning Unit 3 "Good Books Make Me Hungry" writing project. This project took much longer than the other two units, but it was definitely worth it. She took her writing piece through all of the writing process steps. She also practiced writing opening attention-getter and closing sentences for each section. She worked on changing "dead" words to more interesting words. She improved her writing by adding transition and descriptive words.

This particular unit provided Alyssa with a sandwich writing template as seen below. Each part of the sandwich represents a different story element.

• Title and Illustration - Bread
• Plot - Mayonnaise 
• Main Character - Tomato
• Setting - Lettuce
• Conflict - Swiss Cheese
• Main Idea - Meat

I wanted to share Alyssa's story with you today.  I'm sure she would love to read your comments. She worked very hard on this project! Although just so you know . . . to keep writing fun and to focus on specific improvements we didn't correct every single error. Thank you for leaving kind comments. I know Alyssa will appreciate them.

My daughter is currently using Here to Help Learning Flight 1 Paragraph Writing as her core writing curriculum. You can read my Here to Help Learning review for the online membership by clicking on the link provided. It is an outstanding writing curriculum.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to A Learning Journey! Come back soon.

I will link this post up at Through the Calm and Through the Storm's Blogging Through the Alphabet Linky. I will also link this post up at Year Round Homeschooling's Hearts for Home Blog Hop.