Fall Feature from Primary Graffiti

Hey y'all, it's fall and my kiddos are having a HOOOOT learning about owls.  We've begun our two week thematic unit exploring the raptors of the night.  Our senses are heightened as we black out our classroom windows with black bulletin board paper, poked perfectly for the stars to shine through.  The room is lighted by lanterns as we immerse ourselves into the authentic, hands-on learning.

Our learning begins with background knowledge provided with vocabulary words and a journal.  I preselected a collection of owl books in both fiction and non-fiction.  These books are marked with each vocabulary words to ensure we feature a few each day.  The kids are thrilled when they hear one our words featured in the journal.  Parents are amazed by strong vocabulary.  ...Until the child happens to explain (during dinner) how the 'bird of prey' regurgitates its food.  Oh.the.memories!!!   

A few books included in our study...

Gail Gibbons: Owls (Non Fiction)

Martin Waddle: Owl Babies

Jane Yolen: Owl Moon (Descriptive Language)

Divya Srinivasan: Little Owl's Night (Verbs)

Pat Hutchins: Good Night, Owl!

Jill Tomlinson: The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.

Mary Rose Dunn: Owls (Non Fiction)

Tony Johnston: The Barn Owls

Hope Irvin Marston: My Little Book of Burrowing Owls

Nicholas Harris: Owlbert (Comparisons to Stellaluna)

Shawnda Blake: The Awkward Owl (Phonics and Character Lessons)

Donna Trueman: Owls! Fun Facts for Kids (Kindle Book)

Elan Ezra: Paul the Owl (Kindle Book)  

{Sidebar}With the Kindle books, I purchased an adapter for my iPad more than a year ago.  It cost $25 dollars and worth every penny.  I actually buy lots of 'out of print' books through Barnes and Nobles for under $4.  The Kindle books are purchased and downloaded through the app on my iPad.  This app has saved me multiple times on a Sunday evening. 

Back to owls...With Stellaluna read previously, I started my week with Owlbert.  This book provides a great way to compare the characters actions and feelings.  Without even knowing, the kids are picking up on details about owls.  This little bit of schema provides a bit more interaction with the KWL which will  proceed.  

This past year, I picked up a precious book entitled Little Owl's Night. Within this book, I'm teaching verbs, sequence of events, and compare and contrast!  This story allows a glimpse at the nocturnal animals through the little owl's night adventures!  Check the book out here...

The first of my fall products is a book companion for this precious story!

While we will dive further into text features, work on 'ow' phonics lessons, gather facts and form opinions, I love that we were able to integrate owls with math.  In our math block, we are working to understand Fact Families.  Today we worked with my newest file, Whooo is in the Family? The kids created an owl fact family before playing our class variation of scoot!  The kids had a blast!  I had some young men who thought they'd strategically hit all their friends' fact family owls but when the adrenaline kicked in during the process of scooting, the desire to find the next available open seat outweighed all previous strategies!  LOL.

Each of the themes, in my class, end with a culminating event.  Today arrived our class owl pellets for dissection.  I managed to drag four ladies on my grade level and two from my kinder team in on the owl pellets.  The order was placed on Friday and have already arrived.  EEK!!!!  If you are interested in dissecting owl pellets, check out OBDK.com.  There is lots of informative literature available.  

I sure hope you see something useful!  I love sweet comments!  

Please stop by and say hi!