EVERYTHING SPRING
The hand/footprint butterflies
make
a wonderful gift for Mothers Day with
the following poem attached:
From my hands a butterfly
a part of me for you
I made it just for Mothers Day
to say that I love you.
We have been doing an
author
study on Beatrix Potter. In addition to reading
many of her wonderful
stories,
we have done numerous activities using the Peter Rabbit theme.
We have studied plants,
fruits, vegetables, graphed our favorite fruits/vegetables, language
experience charts using
various fruits and vegetables, we studied
friendly letters and
wrote
a letter to Peter Rabbit after reading the book Dear Peter Rabbit,
wrote a story using the
following story starter "...what if Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had
gone
to the garden with
Peter?",
made TLC Peter Rabbits which are shown in the above picture.
Beatrix
Potter actually wrote
these
stories as letters to a sick child, so this was a really good tie-in
with letters. We
also read Jolly Postman books and are getting ready to read Flat
Stanley.
We will make Stanleys
and a journal for the kids to take home over spring break. Then
Stanley will
return.
WOW! Torn paper
flower
gardens. This is a wonderful follow-up activity
to do after reading
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Elhert.
Take construction paper
scraps
and tear them into stems and flower shapes.
Glue to large sheets of
white
construction paper.
Pocket Chart
Planting a Rainbow
Mom and _________ will plant a rainbow,
It will soon be spring, you know.
They will plant ______ seeds
And watch the rainbow grow!
use word cards for the blanks spaces: kids names; names of
flowers, fruit, vegetables
(source: Thematic Units for Kindergarten by Kristin Schlosser)
We also make class books using the following writing frame:
Cover: Planting a Rainbow
One _________ flower.
Two _________flowers.
Three _________flowers.
Four __________flowers.
Five green plants.
The frame is at the bottom of the page. The kids write in
the color word after stamping/drawing on the
correct number of flowers on each page. Then I glue each page
to the same
color of construction paper (ie The page Two purple flowers would
be glued to purple construction paper)
I will post pictures when when we finish ours.
Absolutelty AWESOME! We were inspired by the
Monet
series of paintings "Haystacks".
The COS for visual arts requires kinders to be
introduced
to 3 different types of subject
matter: landscape, portrait, and still
life.
This painting is a landscape. We viewed and discussed
several of the paintings by Monet. Then we
used
the following materials to make our own landscape paintings:
light blue construction paper; orange, purple,
yellow,
green paint. I divided the paper into thirds with a light
pencil line. The bottom third was painted
orange
by DABBING the paint on thickly with a brush.
The middle part was purple (mountains) using the
same
technique; and the top was done with yellow leaving some of the blue
paper showing through for the sky. Let it dry for
a day. Then add details and the haystacks. We added some
orange
at the top of the purple mountains, and some green
around the base of the haystacks. The haystacks
were drawn on using a black crayon and then filled
in with yellow paint.
TLC Iris from the Spring and Summer book.
Our beautiful still
life
paintings. For these we used white paper, watercolor paint,
tempra
paint,
foam flower stamps.
We used a black crayon to draw a table line and vase shape. Then
we used
watercolors to paint the
vase, table, background. After they dried, we stamped on the
flowers
using
tempra. Finally,
we added green leaves and stems.
Spring Trees.
This
idea is from a great art teacher named debio.
We were inspired by the
Van
Gough painting "The Almond Tree". We drew the trees with black
crayon.
Then, paint the trunk and
branches brown and the grass green. Use light blue chalk for the
sky.
Add leaves and pink
blooms
using a q-tip.
Spring has been the
topic
of discussion in Social Studies this month. We have read many
books
about spring. We used our
productive thinking talent and made a chart of
many, varied, and unusual
things that happen in spring, made a language experience
chart with the title
"Spring
is....", and we also used this as a story starter for some
wonderful spring stories.
