Finger Puppets & Jan Brett Stories

In first grade we explored setting and characters with Jan Brett's The Umbrella and The Mitten by creating similar finger puppet stories.  In The Umbrella, a boy drops his umbrella and one by one rainforest animals pile inside. When it gets full, the umbrella tips over and the animals fall out. In The Mitten, a boy loses his mitten and northern animals climb inside. When the mitten is full, a bear sneezes and all of the animals fly out. First graders were given a template of a story and had to fill in the main character, the object that animals would climb into, the setting, and create an ending. For the animals, each group was given random finger puppets. Students filled in their story, created an ending, and presented it to the class, puppet show-style. View an example below. To see all of the Jan Brett Stories, go to our School Tube page and browse or search for "Jan Brett Stories & your teacher's name."

GeoCards: Around the World with Atlas', Google Street View, & National Geographic

For the past few weeks, fourth graders have been making GeoCard trading cards about some region in the world. We are doing this as part of a collaborative year-long theme on continents at Myron J. Francis. Students were given a region to study in groups. We started with exploring in an atlas and globe. Next, they explored their region on Google Street View and chose a scene that best represents their area. Using National Geographic Kids country section (and Fact Monster for Antarctica) students chose a few fun facts about their areas. Finally, using Google Presentation (Google's version of PowerPoint), they created GeoCards to gather their information in a visually pleasing way. At the end of the unit, students were given two color-printed cards to trade with their classmates. There was a frenzy of excitement as trading began. The most popular cards were Rajadamnern Road, Thailand & Paris, France. During this unit, students learned to use a print atlas, globe, online mapping tools, and explored trusted websites for their research. During the creation of the cards, they learned how to copy and paste images, add information to an existing template, and the importance of citing their sources. The trading piece was just plain fun but also got students to interact with each other and talk about different regions of the world.

View a sampling of our GeoCards here >>

Hank Finds an Egg & Book Scramble

The month is only half over, but already I have a favorite book of the month. I fell in love with Hank Finds an Egg as soon as I saw the cover, and the story and illustrations measure up to the cuteness and intrigue that the cover displays. I am planning on reading this to my extra kindergarten class this week as part of our "Book Scramble" class.  Book Scramble days have 3 parts. First, I read a story to the students and they share their favorite part. Second, students go back to their seats where there is a book waiting for them to read. We put on a timer and they read their book for 3 minutes. At the end of the 3 minutes, each student passes their book to the right and we repeat this process. Toward the end of class, I think of a letter A-Z and whoever guesses the letter, gets to have their favorite book from the Book Scramble read aloud. The books I choose for the scramble are all early readers or books with illustrations so that emerging readers won't get frustrated. There is an equal amount of both fiction and nonfiction. Students enjoy the scramble and I love the ideas of kindergarteners getting to listen to/read four books in one session. Sharing our favorite part and having students pick their favorite book help students in forming opinions with literature and show how sharing opinions of books is an enjoyable life long activity.

If you want to read more about Hank Finds an Egg, read my review on Goodreads.