Nursery Rhymes

I love nursery rhymes!!!  Below are just a few activities my students did while learning about nursery rhymes.  I added pictures from my students' books to show you their actual work!

Jack Be Nimble:  Of course we used our gross motor skills and jumped over the candle stick!!! The students also wrote their name, cut them out, and pasted them over the word Jack.  They also crossed out Jack's name and wrote their name and drew a picture of themselves jumping over the candlestick.

 

My students also circled sight words or letters in the nursery rhyme depending where they are academically. 

1,2 Buckle My Shoe: During alone group, students traced and tried to write on their own the numbers.  Alone group is a group where I explain the rules to the students as a whole group what they are supposed to do.  Then, we it is their turn to be at the alone group, they try to remember the directions and work on their own without any help from the teacher or assistant. If they need help, they may ask the group leader and then "Three before me." 

The students also read this story from a sight word book where they are beginning to learn the basic knowledge of books.  We are learning author, illustrator, front and back of book, and reading left to right. 

The Itsy Bitsy Spider:  This was probably my students' favorite nursery rhyme.  For this one, the students made the house look like their own house.  They then were asked to go home and share this story with a family member. We have been using Daily Five in our classroom, therefore, the students are learning how to retell a story and picture read.  I encouraged them to read in one of these ways; however, some could actually read the words from memory. 

There was an Old Lady: The students were asked to make this simple shoe into a house.  Many students chose to draw a 'bunch' of kids on their shoe to remind them of the story.  As you can see, the students have had handwriting practice with all of these activities by tracing the title of each rhyme,  While learning this rhyme, they also 'spied' certain letters or sight words with a magnifying glass depending on where they are academically. 

Humpty Dumpty: The students drew a face on Humpty.  They also continued to search for sight words and/or letters. The students would have to read the sight words or say the letter before they could circle the letters/sight words. 

 Little Miss Muffet:  The students made curds and whey.  They cut long pieces of yarn for cutting practice and glues the string on the bowl...perfect for fine motor skills!

Hickory Dickory dock:  We learned the difference between second and minute hands on the clock as well as wrote or traced numbers depending again on what they are working on in their group. 

There you have it in a nutshell what my students have been working on the past few weeks with nursery rhymes.  They have also acted out most of these rhymes, read sight word books, retold the rhymes with a puppet or during buddy reading, and sang songs about each of these rhymes.  Jack Hartman has a CD with several nursery rhymes on it.  To end our nursery rhyme theme, my students participated in a Nursery Rhyme Olympics.  Check out Hubbard Cupboard's sight for ideas to use for your own Nursery Rhyme Olympics! 

Pumpkin Fun!

This week was Red Ribbon Rally week! We had so many activities planned for this week planned for that, I decided to use this week as a review week and an end to our P/Pumpkin week! Therefore, we decided to have a fun day with pumpkins! My students loved every minute of it! We mixed science, math, sensory, fine motors and literature into our pumpkin activities.

One group observed the pumpkins by using their five senses: (used an observation sheet from http://www.2teachingmommies.com/)
 *We looked at the outside and the inside of our pumpkin and drew a picture of each.
 *We smelled the inside!  Some students thought it smelled like wonderful flowers while others thought it smelled more like a skunk!
 *We touched the pumpkin and had to decide if it was bumpy or smooth or soft or hard.
 *We tasted baked seeds and had to decide if it was salty, sour, or sweet.
 *We even listened to our pumpkin to see if it made noise!

Another group measured our pumpkin!  First, they estimated how many cubes tall they thought our class pumpkin was.  Then they measured the pumpkin with their cubes to see who's guess was the closest.  Our pumpkin was 18 cubes tall!!!! Wow! What a big pumpkin!  During this group, they also estimated how many seeds they thought our pumpkin had in it.

They reached inside the pumpkin and pulled out as many seeds as they could! The facial expressions were priceless! You would have thought these students have never carved a pumpkin before!

My last group was my alone group.  The students colored, cut out, and put in order a book about a pumpkin's lifestyle!

To end our pumpkin unit, we sorted small pumpkins by the height of their stem. (The students received these pumpkins from a local pumpkin patch during a field trip.)  They have talked me into letting them paint these pumpkins now, so I plan on having some pumpkin face painting next week!

We added to this theme this year by allowing the students to pick pumpkin seeds out to count.  We had a competition on how many each student could scoop out until they were all gone.  Most students loved getting the guts out! They then took the guts to the table to sort out the seeds from the guts.  They put their seeds into a baggie with their name on it.  The next day we sat in a circle and took turns counting  our seeds.  (We used two days for this with our short attention spans.)  We then used technology and had our students type in their amount on a calculator!