Little Red Hen

I see I have fallen behind once again. Grrrr....one day I will get organized, I promise. Maybe next semester when I have a student teacher...

So this past week we focused on the Little Red Hen. I love this story,  mostly because I get to bake bread at the end of the unit :)

The main focus of this unit was the retelling of the story. I wanted the kiddos to learn the language in the story, "who will help?" "Not I!"

To kick off the unit, I put the pictures from the story in my large pockets (it so much more exciting to hide stuff in pockets than to just hand it to the kiddos! I can't tell you how much I use those simple pockets!!) Each kiddo pulled out a picture from the story and we brainstormed what it could be from. My story had a hen, a cat, a dog and a goose. We called it a duck though. Each of these picture had magnets attached to the back. I put the pictures on the side of my desk for the kiddos to retell the story. The kiddos had fun retelling the story to each other. I LOVED hearing the words from the story!

I found my printables from sparkelbox, the link can be found here.



Kizclub.com has some great pictures, the link can be found here. The pictures can be printed in either black or white. 

After reading through the story a few times, I had the kiddos act it out. Each kiddo was given a mask to pretend to be a character from the story. I was the storyteller and the kiddos just needed to say the famous lines! They had such fun. The mask were printed from sparklebox at the above link.  I also gave each kiddo a mask to make and take home with the hopes of each kiddo acting out the story at home!

Then everyone made a red hen puppet, as you can see, not all the hens were red!

Of course, last but not least was baking bread! This is my favorite day. I love bread, mmmm...with lots of butter! I have a no yeast, no knead recipe that works pretty well with the kiddos. We did knead the dough a bit, just because the little red hen did! The link to the recipe can be found here. I will say, we added 1 tsp. of salt to the recipe and it made a big difference. It needs to bake for 40 mins so plan accordingly.

Mmmmm...everyone ate it too!! Love the smell of bread baking. 

Verb drink

Milk tasting! Yum. We first talked about where milk comes from. We looked at pictures in a book and talked about milking cows. Then on to tasting. We tasted white milk, chocolate milk and strawberry milk.

Language Goals
Expressive language: verb drink (will drink, drinking, drank), he/she pronoun review and spontaneous language
Receptive Language: Who questions

To make each kind of milk, I had the students give me the directions and I did EXACTLY what they told me to do!! What fun. If they told me to turn the milk, I turned the whole jug!! At one point, one of the students said "Just open!" What a great use of the word "just!

After each kind of milk was made everyone drank the milk.
T: Who drank the white milk?
S: Everyone drank the white milk.
Can do each student individually
T: Andrew, what did Hamoody drink?
S: He drank the white milk.

Make a chart, have the students come up after each milk and write if they liked it or didn't like it.

We made rainbow milk in the afternoon. We discussed what we thought would happen once we added the food coloring to the milk. Will the color stay together, spread out or get smaller? Nothing really happened! Now, what will happen if I did my cotton swab in dish soap? Will the color stay together, spread out or get smaller??? Watch the fun happen! I did on first to demonstrate for the students. Then I gave each student their own plate of milk. I found this activity on Pinterest. Step by step directions can be found here The milk MUST be 2% or higher. You only need a small drop of dish soap. If you dip the cotton swab again in the soap, it will spread again.

Preposition Review

The kiddos kept calling a barn a farm, so off on another lesson we went! Today we focused on the word "barn." We did a listening activity to review prepositions next to, bottom, top and middle.
First, my favorite aide cut the barns out for us and cut the pictures out as well. Each kiddo got an envelope and a barn. Most of the kiddos loved digging in their envelope for the picture I called out. For the ones that were struggling, I spread out their pictures on the table for easier success!

This was a listening activity to review animal names and prepositions. It could easily be make into expressive language as well by having the kiddos answer questions either during or after the activity.

Language Goals
Expressive language: prepositions, animal names, everyone
Receptive language: following directions

T: What is this? (hold up the barn)
S: It's a barn!
T: Right, who needs a barn?
S: Everyone needs a barn!
T: First we need to draw doors on the barn. (model for the students. We also drew a window at the top for hay). Pass out the animals.
T: Find the pigs. Who has pigs?
S: Everyone has pigs!
T: Glue the pigs on the bottom of the barn.
T: Where did everyone glue the pigs?
S: On the bottom of the barn.
Repeat with all the animals, place the animals wherever you like. We glued the farmer and his wife on the front next to the doors and put the tractor on the back.

The pictures are from a scholastic e-book about farms. Directions for the barn can be found here  as well as other fun farm printables!! The barn is quite easy. Take a large piece of red construction paper, fold the sides so they meet in the middle. Trim the corners off with a rounded cut to make the barn!

CENTERS
Roll to  make a barn. Directions and printables can be found here

Milk Carton barn. This craft turned out super cute! We glued washed out milk cartons to a cardboard square (I cut the flaps off a box and cut those in half). The kiddos painted the milk cartons red and painted empty toilet paper tubes red. Then painted the cardboard green for grass. After the paint had dried, I hot glued the toilet paper tube to the cardboard and hot glued a mini muffin wrapper on top. This made the silo! Had a bit of trouble getting the paint to stick. Might want to use paper and glue instead.

Pronoun: Everyone

The main focus of the farm unit was animal names. We focused on the adult animals and the baby animals as well as the sounds each one made. It was a fun, noisy time in my classroom!! Each of the following crafts was made using the same lesson plan (geared toward each animal). But the overall concept was the same. So, I am only typing the lesson plan once! We focused on one animal a day.


Language Goals
Expressive language: pronoun everyone, adjectives big, medium and small. Color review
Receptive language: Who questions


To start off each lesson, I showed the students a picture of the animals we would be making. We talked about the animal. What color, which one is big, small, etc. Then holding up the items we would be using to make the craft (for the pig, big paper plates and circles and small ones).
T: What will we use to  make the mommy pig? The big paper plate or the small paper plate?
S: the big paper plate!
T: Who needs a paper plate?
S: Everyone needs a paper plate!
T:What color is the pig?
S: The pig is pink.
T: What do we need to do to our paper plate?
S: Paint it pink!
T: Who will paint the plate pink?
S: Everyone!
T: Will we use the big circle or the small circle for the mommy pig?
S: The big circle! 
T: Who needs a pink circle?
S: Everyone needs a pink circle! (draw the face on first then put right on when paint is wet. we also added ears)
Repeat process for piglet.


Pig

Piglet





For Centers and morning work we laced and stuffed a pig. Super cute! The printout is from Scholastic Biggie Patterns Favorite Themes

The kiddos also painted pigs in mud! Using the same pattern, the kiddos cut it out and glued it on brown paper. Then finger painted mud on the piggy!

Cow day was next.

We used corks to make the spots. Super cute!
For centers, the kiddos played a dice game and colored in the dots on the cow and used the dabbers to make silly cows, again the pattern came from Scholastic Biggie Pattern Favorite Themes.
Great cow activities can be found here

Next up, hen, rooster and chick.
I found the patterns at Making Learning Fun I did enlarge the biggest one a bit to make the contrast bigger between the rooster and the hen. I copied the patterns on sturdy white paper. Then We painted. I started with the chick, yellow. Then we painted the hen brown and the rooster black. The colors blended quite nice because we used the same brush for all three!! After they chickens dried, the kiddos added faces and yarn to the rooster.

More chicken activities can be found here

Sheep and lamb, I think turned out to be my favorite!! We made paper plate sheet and toilet paper tube lambs. You will need lots of cotton balls and glue!!!

The templates for the sheep heads can be found here

For centers the kiddos painted sheep with Q-tips. I copied sheep on black paper and the kiddos used white paper to dot paint the sheep.

Last animal we focused on was horse and foal. The template can be found here
I used craft sticks instead of clothes pins.

For centers, the kiddos made shoe print horses and sponge painted horses. The directions can be found here

I used the same template for the sponge painted as the language lesson.

 

Introduction to the Farm Unit

Moo! Oink! Cluck! Neigh! The farm is here!

I love this unit. It is so much fun to talk about farm animals, their babies, what grows on a farm and of course a visit to the farm! Today was a simple introduction to the farm unit.

Language Goals
Expressive Language: spontaneous language
Receptive language: to learn new vocab.

To introduce the farm unit, I read a story called "Down on the Farm" by Merrily Kutner. This is a cute story that has a pattern. It is also a good way to introduce the animals on the farm.


We started off by discussing what is on the cover of the book. What do you see? We also looked at the back of the book because there are more animals on the back (and animal butts too. That is ALWAYS funny to little kiddos!).  Then of course we read the book and acted out the animals and the sounds they make.

CIRCLE TIME
We made farm animals using a leapfrog toy. The kiddos can make a matching animal or mixed up animals! First,  everyone pressed Farmer Tad at the top and we danced to banjo music the we made matching animals and listened to the songs. Then after everyone had a turn we made mixed up animals! They thought this was hilarious!!

I bought mine at Target (it belonged to my daughters. They of course have no idea I "borrowed" it for the classroom!) but here is the link to Amazon.