The Scarecrow's Hat

We read The Scarecrow's Hat by Ken Brown.  Such a cute story!  The chicken needs scarecrow's hat and he finds out that scarecrow really wants a walking stick to prop his arms on and that he would trade his hat for a stick.  So, chicken sets out to find a walking stick.  He meets up with lots of animals who all need something and would trade what they have.  Eventually chicken gets everybody everything they want in order to trade a walking stick for scarecrow's hat.  Why does chicken 'need' a hat?  You'll have to read it to find out!  We completed a story map and then talked about what we would wish for.  Later, we drew and water colored our wishes.  We also wrote our wish on our paper after they dried.  The kids had some great wishes!  See below.

this student wished for a chocolate popsicle

Five Crows All Shiny Black

Fall lends itself to some of our most fun units!  I love scarecrows and it's one of my favorite weeks.  We use the poem Five Crows for our focus poem and below are some pictures of a couple of fun activities.  A teacher friend, Mrs. Estes shared both ideas with me a few years ago.  First, I act our the poem by wearing the shirt and hat and crows.  I teach the students the poem while I act it out.  This year, I put the scarecrow clothes in our storytelling center and let them retell the story all week.  They had a blast!  We also made a flip book where first we drew a scarecrow then glued on 5 crows.  We retold the poem while "scaring" away the crows as we flipped the flaps. 

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

We read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. Such a cute story. I found this idea of making a pocket chart puzzle on overallsuccess.net a couple of
years ago and I just had to do it. We put the puzzle together and then retold what each part of the scarecrow did. During centers the kids worked together to put it together and label the parts. Fun! We also made a scarecrow with die-cuts.

Symmetry

We have been learning about symmetry.  During math this week, we folded shapes to see if they were symmetrical.  We learned that for something to be symmetrical it has to look the same on both sides.  Some of us had symmetrical shapes and some of us did not.  

For Teachers-Halloween

Teachers...Deanna Jump has a GREAT halloween and fall unit on teacherspayteachers  This is just one of the ideas that I have worked on and will be implementing into my classroom during the week of Halloween.  She has some great things on this site.  Please visit the link to find this unit.  The unit comes with other ideas as well as recording sheets.  It's only $5.00.  I plan on doing several other things.  I will post more pictures as I do the activities.

Pumpkins

We had a fun week this week...busy, but fun!  We had a great trip to the pumpkin patch!  Thanks to all my parents for your help!  We also learned all about pumpkins...the life cycle of a pumpkin, what they need to grow,  what are they good for, and much more.  We investigated our class pumpkin that we got at the pumpkin patch.  Most students "thought" it would sink, but we found out that pumpkins float whether they are big or small.  We started estimation this month, and we had some great estimations about how tall our pumpkin would be and the circumference of our pumpkin.  A few actually had perfect estimations.  

10 cubes tall

it floated

If you have never read Too Many Pumpkins, it's a must read.  So cute!  One of my favorites.  It's great to teach making predictions because most of the pages end with "until...".  We filled in our story map after reading the story.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin...the cards go inside the paper plate pumpkin

we labeled pepperoni pizza

Pass the PIzza!

 We played a fun game this week while learning the letter Pp.  We sang Pass the pizza, pepperoni pizza, pass the pizza, pass it to your friend.  When Mrs. Lee said stop, students holding a slice of pizza had to name the letter on the back of the pizza and read the sight word.  Fun, Fun!!

Pajama Party

Friday was pajama day.  We read Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and The Napping House by Audrey Wood...2 of my favorite bedtime stories.  We curled up on the rug and turned out the lights and pretended it was bedtime.  After reading Goodnight Moon we discussed rhyming words from the book.  We remember all of the rhyming words.  Next, we pretended to go to sleep.  When Mrs. Lee called out a rhyming word, we woke up!  If rhyming words were not called, we slept.  I got this idea from the little giraffes website several years ago and my students always love it!  We also measured a friend with pancakes during center time.  And, we got to retell The Napping House using a felt story from Lakeshore.  Later we had a pajama party with Mrs. Ray's class and ate popcorn, and watched Charlie Brown and The Great Pumpkin.  This week was full of fun "Pp" activities.