Scarecrows

Everyone loves scarecrows, and I'm no exception. They are supposed to be scary, but somehow they never seem that way (maybe you need to be a crow). They are the perfect link between fall and Halloween, because they fit so perfectly into both times.

Main Book for this unit : The Little Old Lady Who Wasnt' Afraid of Anything.

Activities


Book Experience

  • We read the story The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything together to start off our unit(this is a GREAT book!). I read the book once, emphasizing the sounds, then I read it a second time inviting the students to help me.
  • The students work in cooperative groups to assemble a class scarecrow - one team get the pants, another the shirt, ect. We then put the scarecrow together.
  • We reread the book, and add the sound words to the scarecrow.
  • We use the scarecrow to label colour and clothing words.

  • I scanned the images from the book, printed them out, and attached velcro to the back to make a flannel board game.
  • Using the photocopied pictures from the book, I made a sequencing sheet for the kids to cut out and re-order.

    So many scarecrows...
  • The students made scarecrows out of pattern blocks, fabric, colouring sheets...

    I am a Scarecrow
  • "I am a Scarecrow" book - reproduced book with a scarecrow pictures, at the bottom of each page there is a sentence "My hat is brown, my shirt is red....", colour specific item. Last page "I am a scarecrow", kids colour the entire scarecrow.

    Journal
  • Sequence sheet for the Little Old Lady
  • Journal what happened when we made our class scarecrow.

    Letters
  • C for Crow
  • B for Book

    Ongoing centers
  • I put clothing from the Little Old Lady, and scarecrow clothing, into the house center.
  • I put scarecrow floral picks into the sand center, and add little farm toys and birds.
  • Each student gets their own baggie of playdough. They need to choose what colour they want it to be, and predict how many drops of what colour of food colouring I should add to get that colour (I set a limit of 5 drops of each colour at a time). We then talk about whether or not their guess was close, if we need to add more of a colour, or did we add too much? Surprisingly enough, only one student added too much colour to get a grey yucky colour, and one one wanted a primary colour. The colours turned out great!

    Songs and Poems

    How Scary?
    Scarecrow, scarecrow
    How scary can you be?
    You scared ____________,
    But you didn't scare me!

    I put this poem into the pocket chart, and have extra name strips for the students to change the name of who the scarecrow scared.

    Scarecrow, Turn Around
    Scarecrow, scarecrow turn around
    Scarecrow, scarecrow touch the ground
    Stand up tall and blink your eyes
    Raise your hands up to the sky
    Clap your hands, then tap your knees
    Turn around and touch your feet
    Scarecrow, scarecrow touch your toes
    Scarecrow, scarecrow tap your noes
    Swing your arms so very slow
    Now real fast to scare the crows
    Touch you head, jump up and down
    Now sit down without a sound.

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