This is Cindy from Kinderkay products! Just as many of my Blog Hoppin' friends have stated in previous posts, I love Fall! The colors, the crisp air, and the Fall holidays! Fall is full of family fun and it is also fun to enjoy this lovely season with my students!
One unit that I LOVE to teach is Nocturnal Animals! For those of you who cannot teach Halloween in your school, this is such a perfect way to enjoy some of the thrill of spooky nighttime without ghouls or ghosts!
In my classroom, I teach my students to create illustrations for our science/social studies using step by step procedures for drawing and/or cutting. By this time of year, my students have a good handle on how to look at pictures and find shapes and lines to reproduce. We have a discussion of each animal, compare and contrast their features with other animals, and then they illustrate their pages. The words on each page are kept simple so that when they take their book home, they are able to share what they have learned with their parents.
Here are some pictures of their book illustrations. You can see that some of them were created from paper and some were drawn. Whether we create from paper or draw is dependent upon time. It does take a bit more time to cut from paper, so if our time is limited, I tell my kiddos to draw and color. These were all done by kindergarten kids.
If you are short on time, but still want to do the mini unit, I have also included coloring pages of the book!
We make 3D bats and owls which is a fun way to compare 2D and 3D shapes! We use TP rolls and Styrofoam balls for the bat and a brown cup turned upside down with a styrofoam ball head for the owl. Click HERE for directions on how to create the owl. Click HERE for directions on how to create the bat. These are a couple of years old and I have revised them a bit, but the basics are still the same!
We do a Venn diagram to compare and contrast bats and owls - which I am sure MANY of you do with your little ones! If you do not have your own compare/ contrast activity, click the image below to grab your copy!
As a final evaluation of their understanding of nocturnal animals, my kiddos create a NOCTURNAL/DIURNAL poster. Such a fun way to assess!
And lastly, for those of you who CAN do Halloween, my Halloween Draw, Cut, Create Packet has been revised - just in time for Halloween! If you purchased it, make sure you go to Your Purchases tab and re-download it!
Happy Fall, Everybody!!
Blessings,
LOVE the examples of your kiddos work!!
ReplyDeleteKaren :o)
Mrs. Stamp's Kindergarten