Spookley!

The Legend of Spookley The Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano is definitely a favorite read in the fall!  It is a great book to use when teaching about tolerance and kindness!

This year I decided to have the kiddos create their own little Spookleys!

The students began by gluing the orange squares onto the big white square of construction paper.  First time using white glue this year, and they did GREAT!!!

I had them draw their own eyes and mouth (I cut them out), and then they glued them onto the pumpkin.  Then they finished Spookley with a rectangle of brown paper and a green leaf.

I absolutely love them!  Each one is unique!

Even More Sunflowers!

Each year we read Sunflower House by Eve Bunting as part of our reading curriculum.

This year I supplemented the reading with a fun sunflower craft and writing.

We started the sunflowers by painting the outside portion of a paper plate yellow.

Then the inside area was painted brown.

After the paint dried (the next day) we cut straight lines into the yellow portion of the plate. 

With a brown or black crayon we drew a hashtag pattern in the middle of the sunflower.  And then glued on a few real sunflower seeds.

Every year we create a bubble map to describe a sunflower - using the vocabulary from the book. Here is an example from last year.

Then we created sentences descibing the sunflowers using the sentence frame "Sunflowers are..."

Here are some of the finished products.

Dinosaurs!

Hi everyone!  Today I'm linking up with Allie at The Gypsy Teacher for her weekly Rewind and Retell linky!

I am rewinding to May.  May was such a crazy month in my classroom and I didn't get a chance to share a little a fun art project that we did while reading the book If The Dinosaurs Came Back by Bernard Most.

I found the idea on Pinterest and it comes from Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists.  I knew that it would be perfect for my Kinders!

We started by drawing a city scene with pencil and then tracing it with a thin black marker.  Then we drew different types of dinosaurs onto colored construction paper.  The kids traced them with black marker, carefully cut them out, and glued them onto their city.

I photocopied the last page in the book If the Dinosaurs Came Back, which has a lot of small black line drawings of different types of dinosaurs.  This was a great reference for the students when they were drawing their dinosaurs! 

My Kinders LOVED this project!  And they came out fantastic!!!

We also did some writing about dinosaurs.

We started by describing dinosaurs and put the answers into a Bubble map.  Then we go to our writing!

They made such great progess over the year!

If you are looking for more learning activities to use with this book, you might enjoy:

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Hope you all had a great St. Patrick's Day!

I made plans to do this cute directed draw of a leprechaun during the last hour of the day.  I found the directions from First Grade Blue Skies and you can grab it {HERE}

The little lions sat on the rug and watched me give the step by step directions to create this little leprechaun.  Here are a few of the drawings.

Love, love, love!  They are now hanging up in the classroom, all ready for Open House!

And everyone got to take home a little treat from me!  You can get the printable topper from A Cupcake for the Teacher {HERE}

Martin's BIG Words

Head over to Who's Who and Who's New for my latest blog post.  It's all about decorating my classroom door for Black History Month!

Turkey Carle-ages!

I am blogging over at Who's Who and Who's New today!

Head over and give it a read!

CRANKENSTEIN!

We have been reading this book a lot!  * Crankenstein by Samantha Berger*

My class enjoys listening to all the things that get the boy upset.  And when he gets upset, he turns into Crankenstein!  

So I thought it would be fun to have the students create a collage as themselves as Crankenstein, and then write about what turns them into the cranky monster.

After reading the book a few times, I had the students do a Think-Pair-Share about what makes them Crankenstein.  

We created this circle map with some of the results.

Then they got started on their collages!  I copied the head shape onto green paper, because otherwise most of the heads would be the size of a quarter!!! But I let them create the rest of the monster head on their own.

I showed them how to cut and curl hair.

When the head was done, they wrote about what turns them into Crankenstein.

Here are some of the finished creations!

I am CRANKENSTEIN when...

...mom tells me to take a shower.

...my sister spills water on my Legos.

...mom tells me to clean my room.

...I do my homework.

...I stay up too late

I can relate to that last one!

I did a similar feelings lesson last year with the book Sometimes I'm Bombaloo by Rachel Vail.  You can read that blog post {HERE}.