A couple weeks ago, to get into the fall spirit, my class and I wrote some pumpkin concrete poems. It was a great way to talk about the fun you can have with poetry. I love concrete poetry and the various shapes it can take. When I taught third grade, I was always amazed during our poetry unit at what interesting drawings and insightful writing students would write. Then again...I love any poetry!
Here's how our poetry turned out.
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(Although there were various shapes to choose from, this one won out for most firsties.)
In third grade, I would have students draw their own pumpkins. I always have students do a "sloppy copy" first. Then my third graders would have to remake their pumpkin only much lighter. For firsties, I give them a pre-traced pumpkin template (one sloppy copy and one final copy). Before writing the final copy, I check over the sloppy copy to look for good sentence structure/ideas, conventions, good spelling, etc. Then students write their final copy and trace the words with orange marker. All pencil lines are erased at the end.
I'm sure I didn't create this activity but I have no idea who to give credit to since I have been doing it since my first year of teaching. So thank you to whomever!
I believe good teaching is modifying and tweaking activities to meet your students needs...each year, each week, each activity. Therefore, I know that whomever I got this activity from, I have modified it over the years to fit my teaching needs.
Speaking of modifying...
We started this week thinking all about bones!
Here's another activity that I've been doing since time began...or at least a while. ;) Each year I do it though I have changed the activity somehow and someway. This year I had students create their skellies on large black horizontal paper. I added a new writing component this time around. It was a mad libs of sorts for students to complete their own stories about their skeletons.
Students loved naming their skellies and were even more inspired to do some great writing when they all received one of these little treasures. I think I found them at Target in the Halloween section but I could be mistaken. #toomuchhalloweenshoppinghere
We created our own skeleton parade (picture coming soon) and did some bony writing. We also read several skeleton picture books to keep with our quick theme for the day.
In Math we have been learning about equations. I happened to find some skeleton bone candies at the Dollar Tree and knew I definitely needed those. We used them to write (and glue on) our own Bony Equations.
The kiddos wanted to eat the treats but I convinced them to glue them on their equations instead. #toomanyfoodallergies #eek
And...to be sure our day ended on a fun theme-related note, we danced to this video before heading home.
Check out Super Simple Songs on You Tube...the Skeleton Dance.
On Tuesday, we were on to Frankensteins (errr...Crankensteins).
We read this book...which is one of my faves!! It's actually NOT Halloween related but rather about a boy who appears as a Crankenstein when he is unhappy. Just so happened my little Crankenstein showed up at my house that morning and gave me lots of connections while I was reading this story to my students. #grrrr
Definitely a must read.
Since we have been focused on stomping out bullying and friendships this month, this was a great way to tie in moods and behaviors to how we react to others...even when we are Crankenstein.
We completed a Venn Diagram about Crankenstein and the boy (small packet in progress). Then we wrote a new kind of poetry...a Crankenstein Acrostic. The kids had great fun trying to come up with words to describe Cranken. Beware of the K...we went with "unKind." ;)
This really all started not only because I love this book but because we made these adorable Frankensteins last year. They are inspired from A Cupcake for the Teacher. You can get her whole activity here.
(I tweaked ours a little with the mouths and the head but otherwise, they are a match. My students are responsible for cutting their own hair, making and cutting shoes, and designing whatever kind of mouth they want. I love doing projects where they all have their own touch on them!)
After making the art, we glued our smart writing (acrostic poems) to the back. Now they are hanging in our class and I so love them!
We were asked to put together a scarecrow outside our classroom this year. Since normally I don't do scarecrows until November, I had a difficult time skipping through Halloween to do a scarecrow just for decor. I decided to add some sort of writing to it to make it a little more purposeful.
(Excuse the sad attempt at making an actual scarecrow!!)
I had my students make (color one, write on the other) crows. We talked about what it means to "crow" about something. I let students tell everyone things they wanted to "crow about first grade." They had lots of things to share!
I then hung the sign next to the scarecrow (as seen above) and the crows hanging from the ceiling. I love how they turned out!
I plan to keep them there for next month...when I actually read about scarecrows and have my kiddos color theirs and write their own scarecrow stories. For now, it's a simple but cute display.
But the best part of my day was this...
We actually found a night with no chasing or meetings or homefun to be able to carve our pumpkins.
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| Love that surprised face every year! |
He was so excited to clean out this pumpkin but had ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in getting his hands messy!! Hilarious!
And this girl and her visions......she had an idea and made it happen!
I'll have to share the final products later since the troops vacated the mess immediately and bedtime was calling. I will say that each pumpkin is a true design of each personality!
Since today we were a little BATTY with more of our Halloween themed activities, bedtime is calling this girl's name, too. Tomorrow we are wrapping up bats and digging into some pumpkin fun!! More pics on their way.
Stay tuned!
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