Back to School Unit

My Back to School Unit is a mixture of activities since we are adjusting to school, going over rules, and assessing what the children know. I do a lot with colors, color words, shapes, letters, names, etc.

Books:

• Chrysanthemum
• Bad Boris Goes to School
• The Wheels on the Bus
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear
• Franklin Goes to School
• Gus the Bus
• Nathan Goes to School
• Mary Wore Her Red Dress
• Brown Rabbit’s Shapes
• Brown Rabbit’s Colors
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten
• The Kissing Hand

Poems/Songs/Charts:

• Orange is A Carrot
• Color Word Poems
• Marching Around the Alphabet
• Number Rock
• ABC song/ABC chant
• Shape Poems
• Colors
• What is your Name?
• Poems for Parents

Activities:

• 1. “Hot Cow”-(a name game) Have the students sit in a circle. Pass around a stuffed cow (or any other stuffed animal) to music, when the music stops the student holding the cow has to say his/her name. Continue until everyone has had a chance to tell his/her name. The students love this and ask to do this again and again!
• 2. We make fruit loop necklaces when we talk about circles.
  

• 3. We do a name graph-students find their name and put in it under the letter it starts with on the word wall.
• 4. We make banana pudding for the letter Bb, when we talk about buses.
• 5. Sponge paint with shapes.
• 6. Pattern block sort for studying shapes.
• 8. Favorite color graph.
• 9. The Kissing Hand Activities- Read book. Discuss raccoons. Trace hand and sponge paint a heart in the middle.
  

  Paint a heart in the middle of childrens' hand. Raccoon fingerplay by Pam Miller. We made kissing hands to eat out of handprint sugar cookies and chocolate kisses!

  

  

• 10. Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten- Read book. Talk about how we got ready for school in the morning. How is our room like the one in the book. Talk about how I got ready for school. Identify ABC's, talk about animals, rhyming. Make up own story: Mrs. Griffin gets ready for Kindergarten and make up rhymes for each child.
• 11. We do the Name Game from Building Blocks. I pick a name randomly from the class and write it for the children. Then we chant the letters in the name. I then write it one more time and cut up each letter. Then the students put the letters back in order. The class then interviews the person whose name was picked. Then the children draw that person and write his/her name on it. We make a book for that child out of the pictures. I hang up the child's picture of his/herself with the name. After a couple of days, we compare the students' names.
  

  

• 12. We do the predictable charts: My name is _________. and I like____________(favorite color).
• 13. We read the book, Freight Train, and then color and put the cars of the train in sequence.
  

Letter Recognition:

• 1. Read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I put up a coconut tree on my bulletin board and put letters on the tree. I make sure there is the beg. consonant letter for each child’s name on the tree. I take Polaroid pictures of each child and then they put their pictures on the bulletin board on the letter their names start with. The next week, when I do the Me Unit we frame the pictures with craft sticks to take home to Mom and Dad.
  

  We also make edible trees using celery, peanutbutter, and ABC cereal.

  We make hand and arm print trees and add ABC cereal for the letters going up the coconut tree.
  I assess capital letter recognition on a coconut tree.
  
• 2.Letter Charts: Bb for bus and Ss for school.
• 3.Picture and Words: Bus, Students, School.

Journal topics:

• 1. What do you like to do?
• 2. Favorite part of school
• 3. Favorite color

  Links to other sites on the Web

  Addie'e Wonderful Watermelon Unit
  
  

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