Brown Bear, Brown Bear Unit

I have been working on incorporating more literature into my curriculum this year as part of my school's new LAMP (literature, art, music, and poetry) initiative. This month we have been studying Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The kids and I have had a lot of fun doing activities that correlate to the standards.

We made these brown bears using a fork, wiggle eyes, black markers and pink adhesive foam.

The students made AB patterns using fingerprint animals. This pattern is purple cat, green frog, purple cat, green frog.

This pattern is goldfish, green frog, goldfish, green frog. The pattern below it is yellow duck, green frog, yellow duck, green frog.

We learned about frogs and did this frog research report.

This student is sequencing the animals from Brown Bear according to where they were in the book.

These students are retelling the Brown Bear story with our flannel board set.

This is a pocket chart story that the kids can manipulate on their own.

The students made patterns with goldfish and teddy grams.

We made brown bear treats for cooking on Friday.

Brown Beetle, Brown Beetle, What Do You See Book

My class has been studying Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? in literature this month. The students made a class book called Brown Beetle, Brown Beetle, What Do You See? The students made a list of bugs that they wanted to include in our story. We used the text format from Brown Bear, Brown Bear as a guide for our book. I have six reading groups, so each group illustrated one or two pages of our book. Here is the finished product.

Art Masters: Vincent Van Gogh

I do a program with my students that I call Art Masters. We study twenty artists throughout the year. We learn about the artists' life and about the art that he made. We also do our own version of one of the artists' most famous works of art. This month we learned about Vincent Van Gogh. Each child made their own The Starry Night picture. First, the kids drew stars, the moon and any design they wanted to with crayon. Next, the kids used water colors to paint over their crayon drawing. Finally they cut out a silhouette from black paper and glued it to the bottom of their picture.  

This year I am having the whole class work on a group project for each artist that we study. Each child helps paint a little bit of a picture. This is our version of Wheat Field by Vincent Van Gogh. It turned out beautifully. 

Apples

We have been learning about apples this month. We did apple patterns with cut outs.

We got to taste different apple snacks and then we made a graph of our favorite apple snack.

We learned a song about Johnny Appleseed. I made up this song three years ago to the tune of "The Lord's Been Good To Me" from the Disney American Legends cartoon. You can search the video on YouTube to hear the tune of the song.

We did apple labeling.

We also made a Johnny Appleseed craft created by A Cupcake For the Teacher.

We had a lot of fun learning about apples. 

Kindergarten Mass

Apparently, the end of last school year was so busy that I did not publish this entry either. This was at the end of last May. 

Two weeks ago was the Kindergarten Mass. That means that the students read the welcome, first reading, responsorial psalm, petitions, and are the gift bearers. They did an awesome job!

Welcome

First Reading

Responsorial Psalm

Petitions

Gift Bearers

Where the Wild Things Are Play 2015

I just realized that I did not publish this last May. 


Each spring my Kindergarten class presents the story Where The Wild Things are as a play. This year, I changed the backdrop. For the first two years I created a paper back drop for the play, but I had so many problems with the back drop falling off the wall if the hall doors were left open that I decided to purchase a backdrop. I layered two  back drops on top of each other and taped them together. Then, all I had to do was staple the backdrop to the cork at the top of the wall. I can reuse the backdrop each year (which will cut down on a lot of prep work for me). You can see the backdrop behind my students. I made the students' costumes out of fleece so I can wash them and use them each year. I made this costumes three years ago and they still look great!

This year I decided to decorate the entrance to the school with chain vines and a Max cardboard cut out.

In addition, I decorated the doors to the hall with Wild Things. I also made giant footprints and taped them to the floor leading to the stage.

Here is a better picture of the Max cardboard cut out.