Nursery Rhymes (week 1 of Kinder)

The first week of Kindergarten is a whole lot of routines, routines, routines....and I throw in some rhyming to spice it up. My district has us using the severely outdated Houghton Mifflin series for language arts, but because it is so old we can't really rely on it too much. As a result, we've been given free reign to supplement! Free reign?! Why that's one of my favorite phrases! Like when my husband tells I have free reign to go shopping...SUH-weeeet! Don't mind if I do :) Anyhooo, boy did I fly off the handle with that one. Way too excited...
I decided that this year, being my 4th fantabulous year in K, would be the year I just take the friggin' reigns and teach the standard they way I want! And you know it wouldn't be so easy if it weren't for all you fabulous teacher bloggers out there! Seriously, where have you been all my life?! I think I have serious teaching blog addiction, for reals.

I decided early on that for the first week I would be teaching a Nursery Rhymes theme. I chose Hey Diddle Diddle (a silly one the kids always love), Jack and Jill, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Hickory Dickory Dock. I had Itsy Bitsy Spider in there too but on the first day of school, we really never made it to nursery rhyme time, so it was omitted. Share time! Here is my week one schedule :)

Standards focused on: Sequencing and rhyming and positional words (a mini lesson)

I got a lot of the worksheets and ideas from Carls Corner.

Day 1: Hey Diddle Diddle. Whoops, didn't get to that! Save it for tomorrow. First day of Kinder...you know :)

Day 2:Hey Diddle Diddle.

• We read that poem over a few times, then sang it with music. We found all of the rhymes.
• I put the characters on craft sticks after I laminated them so that we could sequence the rhyme.
  
• I took sentence strips and gave them a sheet that list all the characters, and a little tracing of that characters name. We colored, discussed and traced...then cut and sequenced them onto the sentence strip which I fashioned into a hat. They loved it. Plus they could look at their hat and be able to use it as a tool to recite the beloved nursery rhyme. It looked like this....imagine it as a hat, or course.
  
  
  
  

Day 3: Jack and Jill.

• On this day, once we got the hang of the rhyme, acted it out a few times, sang it a few more times then we talked about position words; up, down. I set them down to color (with detail) the characters in the rhyme. I got a large piece of white paper, drew a light line for a hill, taped the paper on the white board and had them paint green under the line. Then had them cut and glue the characters in the right positions using their positional words. It came out like this:
  

Day 4: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
I don't have pictures of this but basically we learned the rhyme in the same way we learned the others. I had a star printout that was given to me by my grade level, but I didn't know what it was exactly for. I thought, hey! Perfect of Twinkle Star :) Come to find out later that it was a cutting assessment for me to include in their portfolios. Oops! Oh well, I had them color and cut out the star and glue to craft sticks to be waved around while we sang it. I thought about using glitter to make them twinkle, but it was only day 4 of Kinder and I was kinda afraid it would be a big ol' mess. Maybe next year.

Day 5: Hickory Dickory Dock
I also don't have pictures of this but maybe I can explain it to you. I got a regular sized sheet of construction paper, (I used blue) and had a parent cut slits in them in the middle, and slightly to the right, and about 3 inches long. I had the students color a mouse and a grandfather clock and cut them out. They glued the clock to the left of the slit, making sure not to cover it. We glued the mice on a craft stick and stuck the craft stick into the slit so the mouse 'ran' up the clock.

I think this was simple 'not too much' way to start Kinder and I loved it. It gave me the opportunity to explain routines, teach how to use scissors, crayons, pencils and my method for gluing. I make anchor charts like Jessica Meacham does (LOVE her!), it really helps. This way they can't say they didn't know or hear you. You just point at the chart and say, 'there it is!'.

At the end of this unit, I went through and named each of my 5 table groups after the rhymes we did. Table 1 is called the "Jack and Jills", table 2 is called the "Twinkle Stars", group 3 is called "The Mice", group 4 is called the "Dishes and Spoons" and group 5 is called the "Itsy Bitsy Spiders". They are so proud of their group names. My plan is to change the names of the groups once a month according to the theme of the month. Next month (sept), we will be focusing on colors and apples. So colored apple labels? Duh! of course! I make these labels, laminate them and attach them to their crayon crates that sit at their tables.