Scarecrows, Prairie Dogs, and a Freebie

I am now getting to enjoy my Fall Break! It actually started on Monday, but I taught intersession. I had 7 of my students. We had a good time reading pumpkin and scarecrow stories.

The focus story was the favorite "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything". Making Learning Fun had their own version of the story for me to print for the kids. You can find it here: http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/LittleOldLadyEmergentReader.htm
 They also had a version of the "The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves" that went perfectly with my scarecrow theme, here's the link. http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/ThereWasanOldLadyLeaves-EmergentReader.htm. If you aren't familiar with this sight, check it out, most of it is geared towards kindergarten, but there are things on there for first grade.

They also have the finger play "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate" to color, cut and paste. As we were working on it, I decided to have the kids each take a part to put on a little performance for the principal. So we quickly made some pumpkins to hold in front of their face and then we trimmed the 5 little pumpkin page and glued it to the back side of the pumpkin so they could read it.

I was just going to have the kids stand and do the finger play, but then as they were practicing, I had the thought to have them use their chairs as the fence. So they were on their knees holding the pumpkins up to the back of the chair. My creative daughter, who had to tag along with me to intersession, started singing the finger play to the tune of 5 little monkeys sitting in a tree, the words worked perfectly. We ended up reading the finger play with my daughter and one student as narrators and then all of them singing it. Here is a picture of the pumpkins waiting for the principal (they were hiding). lol

Here is a video of the kids singing the song, sorry, it's not very good quality. Yes there are more than 5 pumpkins, my daughter had to get in on the act. haha

Last week in Treasures we were reading "A Prairie Dog Home". I had found to use a styrofoam cup to make a hole for a groundhog to pop out of it so I decided it would also work for prairie dogs. I found a picture of some prairie dogs and then cut it down so only one with a baby was showing. I put four on a page. Here's the link for the puppet pattern.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4viYvUGzTgqdVdGc1VhN1JOYW8

The kids colored them , cut them out and glued them on a large tongue depressor. I then gave then a 16 oz styrofoam cup with a slit cut in the bottom. They used some green tissue paper that some pears had been wrapped in to cover the cup. Here is what it looked like.

 

I also had collected a couple of boxes. I turned them on their sides and cut some circles in them just a little smaller than the top of the cup. The kids took turns dropping their prairie dog burrows into the holes and they put their hand in the box opening at the back and they could raise and lower the prairie dogs. Then one of them used a fox puppet and tried to catch a prairie dog. They had a great time. This was kind of spur of the moment, I did cover the front with some green paper, next year, I'll have it ready and try to make it look a little more realistic.

 

I really enjoyed my first full day of Fall Break and I didn't even leave the house. I filed a bunch of papers that had been piling up into the right units. I also did some laundry doesn't that sound like fun??? Next week, we are going to Texas to see my new nephew. I hope to get caught up on grading and ahead on lesson plans....a girl can have her dreams can't she?

 

Kelly