State and Model the Objective
Tell the children that they will play with Mr. Bones, a skeleton, and read and write words with a long o, such as bone, cone, stone, throne, and phone.
 
Literacy Activities
Show bones

• Show a bone or picture of a bone (found below).
• Have the children quickly draw a bone and label it bone.
• Introduce Mr. Bones’ skull (found below) and explain that Mr. Bones wishes to have more bones.
• Read the Mr. Bones Wishes for Bones target text (found below) with the children and make a list of the bones Mr. Bones needs.
• Show the children a picture of a wishbone and comment on the tradition of pulling apart a wishbone to make a wish.
• Have two children pull the paper wishbone (found below) apart so Mr. Bones can get his wish.
• Match the small circles on the bones to their corresponding parts to build Mr. Bones’ skeleton then connect them with brads or string.
• Read the text again as you point to the matching bones on the skeleton.

Manipulate sounds
With word-building cards (found below), have the children make new words by changing either of the consonants or the vowel:

• Change the beginning consonant(s): bone→ tone, stone→ phone, stone→ tone, pole→ hole
• Change the ending consonant: cone→ code, hope→ hole, note→ nose, home→ hope, cane→ came
• Change the vowel: cone→ cane, lone→ lane, lone→ line, pole→ pile

Read target words and patterns introduced in the activity 

• Read Mr. Bones Wants Bones (found below) with the children.
• Read the text again, fading support.
• Have the children underline the words with the long-o-silent-e pattern.

Write about the activity using target words

• Have the children fill in incomplete sentences by picking from options:
  • “If I had a wishbone, I would wish for . . .” (a phone, a throne, a snow cone).
  • “If I had a wishbone, I would not wish . . .” (to be alone, for a stone, to drop my phone).