Don't let the Pigeon...

How much do little kids love the Pigeon?!  My grade one class cheers when I pull out one of Mo Willems' Pigeon books.  I was inspired by this Art Dish with MJ activity and used it during our safety unit.

We did a directed draw of the Pigeon.  Black oil pastel was used to trace over our pencil lines and yellow was used to colour in the beaks.  Then we painted our pigeons.  When dry we did a few touch ups where the paint may have blurred out some of our drawing.  Then students had to cut out their pigeon "in a bubble".  I do that occasionally due to the lack of cutting skills of many 5 and 6 year olds.  This way I can ensure that we won't lose half the pigeon in the process of cutting him out!

After brainstorming safety rules, each student chose one rule to print in a speech bubble.  Some examples were:
"Don't let the Pigeon talk to strangers."
"Don't let the Pigeon play with fire."
"Don't let the Pigeon stand on the chair"

Halloween Arts and Crafts

Okay, I know I have not been very good about posting regularly lately.  My life seems to have been caught in a bit of a whirlwind the last couple of months and I feel like I have so much on my plate.  But I promise to be better!!!  It only took a fellow co-worker to post a Halloween activity I did on her blog before I put it on mine to get me in gear!  Thanks Sandra!  Go ahead and check out her Savvy Teaching Tips blog for some amazing teacher units.

Here are a few of the activities we have been working on:

Pumpkins:

I got this pumpkin art lesson from Barista Kids.  You can get a detailed lesson plan if you click on the link.  I substituted the oil pastels for chalk pastels.  I love using chalk pastels as they are so forgiving.  I can get the kids to start their first shape and tell them, "make it bigger" without negatively affecting their piece of work.  We did however use orange and green oil pastel to outline our drawings and add swirly vines.

Frankensteins:

Here is a really cute and easy craft I did on Halloween day.  Our primary wing usually does Halloween stations where classes will rotate through each of the four in our wing.  We only have about 20 minutes for each station so I can't plan anything too detailed.  This is what I came up with:

The colour is not the greatest in this iPhone photo

These Frankenstein faces were done on a 4 1/2 X 6 inch piece of green construction paper.  We did a directed draw in pencil, starting with the hair, straight line across for the eyebrows, nose, then eyes and mouth.  They used white chalk to colour in the eyes then used black oil pastel to trace over their drawing and colour in their hair.  The final step was gluing one inch squares of grey construction paper to the back of the head.  These were easily done in the 20 minute time slot and I think there was only one student who did not completely finish!  I wish I had more to show you as they turned out amazingly well, but the students got to take them once they left my classroom.

Mummies:

I got this adorable activity idea from Edventures With Kids, where you can get the full instructions.  The only things I changed was we used a gingerbread man template and didn't make it into a garland.  We also cut our paper eyes instead of googlies.