Oh My Gosh, I'm a Squash!

During a recent pumpkin unit we read the book The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz (available through Scholastic Books.) It is a great story about accepting difference.  After reading the story, each child got to take off and trace his/her shoe, cut it out and decorate it.  They think it is super funny to trace their own shoe!   In the future I would give the student a choice of colored paper to use.  The vine is made out of crunched up brown paper that came in a box of shipped items.

Our shoe shaped squash displayed on their vine.

Tube Owls

I am trying to incorporate more non-fiction/ expository text into our literacy time. I found a fabulous book Incredible Owls by Justin McCory Martin (available through Scholastic book companies). The book has great photographs of different types of owls and lots of facts without being too long. After reading and writing about owls, we created our own using 2 toilet paper tubes glued together (I hot glue them in advance), feathers, a cut out of owl features (which I made, traced and copied) and fun wiggle eyes (available through classroom direct catalogues) I like how the wiggles eyes have lashes and eyelids. They make the owl look nocturnal.

Scarecrows

These 3-D scarecrow are easy to make and require mostly recycled materials. I collected oatmeal cans, coffee cans and other cylindrical containers. I wrapped the containers in newsprint. Then the students used felt to create the faces. Construction paper shapes can be used as well.

November Quilt

This is the November art quilt. I alternated hand print turkeys with tube turkeys. Directions for the tube turkeys can be found under the celebrations section.