1-2-3 Come Make A Multi-Purpose Scarecrow With Me

Since there are so many standards on our plates these days, there never seems to be enough time for everything, let alone a fun seasonal craft that we know our students would enjoy. That's why I spend so much time designing hands-on "craftivities" that revolve around all sorts of standards. 

Because it's so comprehensive, it took me several days to complete this Common Core scarecrow, and even more hours to make a sample of all 11 scarecrows, but it was time well spent, as they turned out so cute, are easy for your kiddos to make, and reinfore the following: 

Upper and lowercase letters, vowels, sc blend, beginning s sounds, matching words with pictures, numbers 0-30, odd and even, skip counting by 2s, 3s, 5s & 10s, shapes, telling time, colors, contractions, number words, color words, compound words, CVC words, and rhyming words.

Completed projects make a wonderful fall bulletin board, or look sweet hanging back-to-back from the ceiling.

To make this extra special, fold a sheet of white construction paper, have students trace their hand and then cut once, to get two hand prints for their scarecrow's "gloves".  I ran yellow construction paper through a shredder to make the "hair". 

Run off the scarecrow's body templates on a variety of colors of construction paper.  Students trim and glue together. 

For more fine motor practice, cut yellow rectangles with a paper cutter.  Have students snip the bottom portion and glue the "hay" to the back of the scarecrow's pant legs, then crumple.

I purposely made these patterns super simple to cut out, but if you think this is too much for PK kiddos, have a room helper trace once and then cut 3-6 shirts and pants out at a time,  leaving just the head for preschoolers to cut out.  

There's a blank head so children can draw their own scarecrow face, as well as a completed template for little ones to color.

 Students make their scarecrow and then trim and glue on the appropriate patches.  The vowel scarecrow is especially versatile, as it not only covers vowels, but shapes and colors too.

For extra practice, when everyone is done, play an "I Spy" game and give students a piece of candy corn to use as a manipulative.  Choose a student to call out a "patch". 

Children locate that letter, number, shape or whatever, cover it with the candy corn, and then raise their hand. 

This is a fun way to practice and review standards, as well as a quick and easy way to whole group assess, as you can see at a glance who is having difficulty. 

I've also included blank patches for you to fill in with whatever, plus ideas and templates to use the number, letter and shape scarecrows for matching games.

i.e. match the lowercase patches to the uppercase letters; match the number word patches to the numbers; and/or match the shapes to the shape words.

For more scarecrow-themed letter fun, click on the link for a set of scarecrow alphabet cards.

The following scarecrows are wonderful for vocabulary building and Daily 5 word work: Carl is the Compound words scarecrow; (Click on the link for an alphabetical list of over 3,000 compound words.)

Connie, is a contraction action scarecrow; (With an alphabetical list of 72 contractions)

Sam, is a scarecrow that loves 37, 3-letter words that begin with S; (CVC practice!)

Scott, is the SC blend scarecrow, with a list of 50 words. The packet also includes an entire SC blend section, with lots more activities.

Sophie, is a scarecrow with 47-picture patches, for simple words starting with the letter S. 

For a quick review, I've also included 4, Ss word, picture posters.

Rodney, is the Rhyme Time scarecrow, with 56 words that rhyme with scare and a list of 274 words that rhyme with crow.

Write the words that rhyme with scare on the front of Rodney, and have children choose some words that rhyme with crow and write them on the back.

In the sample, I chose 24-scare rhyming words and wrote them on the shirt, and then wrote an equal amount of words that rhyme with crow, on the pants.  The alphabetical lists include rhyming words that start with every letter except U & X.  I chose one of each.

Finally, the number scarecrow, has several options and serves double duty.  There are number patches from 0-30, which  I traced in a variety of colors. 

You can make Odd Todd and Even Steven scarecrows (front and back) or put the odd numbers on the top and the even numbers on the bottom.  (See photo.)

For more math number practice, I've also included skip counting patches.  Children can skip count by 2's, 3's, 5's and 10's.  There are matching worksheets in the packet as well, along with number cards, plus number puzzles in color & black and white.  

For more odd and even scarecrow number fun, click on the link to practice numbers from 1-120, in the Scarecrow's Pumpkin Patch packet.

If your kiddos are familiar with that concept, but need to work on matching numbers to their number words, use the Norman & Nancy number scarecrow patterns, with numbers 0-10, along with their matching number word patches.

Glue the numbers on the shirt and the number words on the pants.  For more practice, have students write the words above their matching number patch.

Click on the link to view/download the "craftivity" portion of the Common Core Scarecrow Packet.

This section will be FREE for an entire year!  After that, you can pick up the whopping 184-page jumbo packet in my TpT shop for just $5.95.  Click on the link for Patches, The Standard Scarecrow Craftivities packet to pop on over.

Thanks for visiting today.  I need to unclutter my brain, so we're off to a nearby fall festival.  It's a beautiful autumn-weather day, if the rain just holds out for awhile. 

 "If stars can shine with darkness, so can you." -Unknown

1-2-3 Come Do Some Bunny Activities With Me

The last week of April was sort of a catch up week for my Y5's.  I would plug in anything my kiddo's still needed to work on and simply give it a spring twist.  It was also a nice time to review and reinforce things that they should already have learned. 

As you may have discovered, just because you taught something in the first 9 weeks of school, and everyone passed those assessments, doesn't mean that they retained what they learned by the last 9 weeks of school.  Because there is so much to cover, in such a short amount of time, we seem to always be moving on to the next thing.

It's imperative though, that you continually reinforce standards throughout the year.  A quick, easy and fun way to do that is via centers, and games that students can do independently.  With that in mind, I designed the "I'm All Ears" packet. 

I think you'll enjoy the versatility of this packet, as you can program the bunny "ears" (craft sticks) with just about anything you want to continue to review. 

There's a large as well as small bunny template.  Choose one or make up a variety.  I used the large craft sticks for the bigger bunny, and the smaller Popsicle sticks, as well as spoon-shaped crafts sticks, for the smaller bunnies.  Program them with whatever and keep each set in their own Baggie. 

Think of things that you teach that can be divided up into pairs, so that you can write/draw them on the craft sticks. 

Here are some of the ideas that I came up with:

• uppercase-lowercase letters
• number-number word
• number-group/set
• contraction-words that make up the contraction
• compound word-two words that make up the compound word
• word-antonym
• word-synonym
• shape-shape word
• color-color word
• equation-answer

If you think of anymore, I'd enjoy hearing from you diane@teachwithme.com or feel free to leave a comment below. 

To expedite things, I've also included a list of contractions, as well as a list of synonyms/antonyms to help you program those Popsicle sticks. 

If you'd like a list of compound words, I just finished updating a comprehensive alphabetical list of 3,317 compound words! Click on the link to view/download it. 

Click on the link to view/download the I'm All Ears Bunny Packet.   Thanks for visiting today.  As always, you may PIN away.

"I wish I could be more resilient like the Energizer Bunny; after all my students are."

1-2-3 Come Learn Contractions and Color Words With Me!

I wanted to make another activity to help students learn and practice contractions.  Since spring is just around the corner, I thought I'd design contraction eggs.  You can use them for Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham lessons or someting related to spring or Easter. 

Because they are often seen "cracked" open, the halves aspect of the egg was a perfect vehicle to show the contraction on one half of the egg, and the words that are involved, on the other half.

If you need a transition activity after reading Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, then run the templates off on various shades of green.  You could also revisit this activity for St. Patty's Day too.

If you'd like it to be an activity students can do through out spring, then run off the templates on a variety of bright and pastel colored construction paper.  You can keep the laminated eggs in a basket.

I've included a blank set of eggs for you to program with upper and lowercase letters, word wall words, spelling words, equations or whatever else you can think of, to make games for your students.

The "Contraction of the Day" poster egg, is a way you can feature a different half egg each day. Students figure out what contraction or set of words should be on the other half. I've also included over 20 other ideas that you can use these contraction eggs for, in a tips list, which includes games like Kaboom.

Click on the link to view/download the Egg Contraction Packet.

Another egg activity that I think your students will enjoy is an egg color matching game.

Students can match either the colored egg yolk to the color word, in a face up fashion, or flip the cards over and match a colored egg with a color word egg, as a Memory Match game.

If you have plastic eggs, have students twist them apart and match the colors and color words that way.  Students can also play "I Have; Who Has?"  i.e. "I have the color word egg yellow.  Who has the yellow egg?"

Click on the link to view/download the Egg Colors Packet. 

If you are looking for more Seuss activities I have over 50 freebies.  Simply click on the link to zip over to that section of my site.

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything that you think others will find helpful.

"Why fit in, when you were born to stand out!" -Dr. Seuss