Pigeon Party! Author Study Pack

This pack has been a work in progress for months! I am so happy it is finally finished! Each month in my classroom I focus on a different author. Here are some of the authors we have done in the past:

 

Now, obviously these weren't all done in one year. I have so many favourite authors that I rotate through different ones each year. There are some favourites that I try to do every year though. Like this particular one:

Mo Willems is always a class favourite! His books are so simple and so funny and always a hit with the kiddos! I have complied a bunch of my favourite activities for a Mo Willems author study into my new pack: Pigeon Party!

This pack includes 84 pages of activities to go with the Pigeon books, Naked Mole Rat, Elephant & Piggie books, Knuffle Bunny books, and more!

For the Pigeon books there are favourite book graph, favourite book response, persuasive letter writing, making ten math centre, labeling, venn diagram, bubble maps, tree maps, hot dog list writing, don't let the pigeon... writing, pigeon craft & writing, and an emergent reader!

For Naked Mole Rat there are a craft & t-shirt design, tree map, and emergent reader. For the Elephant & Piggie books there are tree maps, bubble maps, favourite book response, venn diagram, and an emergent reader.

For the Knuffle Bunny books there are a setting writing activity, labeling, bubble map, tree map, and text-to-self connection writing. Then there is a Cat the Cat rhyming activity, a favourite book response, and a movie/book compare & contrast.

There are so many activities to keep your little ones excited and engaged in a Mo Willems author study! Tons of reading and writing activities, with a little math thrown in too! Check it out at TpT by licking on the picture below.

Worksheet WEDNESDAY

Woo! Three days in a row! I made it! I'm back for a third day to link up with The Teaching Tribune for their weekly summer linky. Today is Worksheet Wednesday. I'm going to highlight a post from the past with a math worksheet freebie in it!

Here is a throw back post from two years ago, featuring everyone's favourite pigeon and some free cookie subtraction worksheets!

 Late Breaking News from PNN!!

I started this morning off by telling the kids there was the really important news report that I had to show them! It was breaking news!

I have had the release date for this book scheduled into my phone for months now! I was so excited when I finally walked into the book store and saw it sitting there... Oh that Mo Willems cracks me up! I love the little ducking. He's such a cutie-pa-tootie!!

I knew this would get my kids a little excited and goofy first thing on a Monday morning... after a long weekend... with bellies full of chocolate and jelly beans... and I wanted to start some lessons on subtraction because we haven't done much work on it. So I decided that the pigeon, duckling, and cookies would help me get the kids excited about subtraction!

I created this little chart to help us do some subtraction problems together. I just used my name cookies that I made for our "Who Stole the Cookie?" game way back in September... I came up with some subtraction questions for use to practice together. While I was working at the front, students were using unifix cubes in front of them to practice subtraction. They had a lot of fun!

Then I whipped up a few cookie subtraction worksheets to go with our lesson! They seemed to get it quickly when we talked about cookies... Because if you have some cookies and you eat some... you can't have more than you started with! That just doesn't make sense!

If you would like some subtraction practice worksheets (you don't even need to read the book... who doesn't love cookies??) just click the picture below to download!

I'm glad we got Monday out of the way now... Onto Tuesday! :)

Science Design Process starring The Pigeon!

As I am in the middle of finishing up the dreaded report card comments, I just wanted to pop in and share a project that I did with my class last week.

With our new provincial report card, we have to report on the design process each term. I've never really done a design project so close to the beginning of the year. I usually save it for our five senses unit later on in the year. But because we have to report on it each term, I had to come up with a fun design project for my kiddos.

I fully admit that we have a very boring Grade 1 Science curriculum here in our province. The worst unit I think is called "Characteristics of Objects and Materials". I hardly every teach it thoroughly. It's all about the materials that make up different objects. Blah, blah, boring. There is one outcome in the unit that is kind of fun though (1-3-10 Use the design process to construct a useful object by selecting, combining, joining, and shaping materials. Examples: pencil holder, crayon box, desk organizer...). I've done Valentine's Day boxes or pencil holders, but wanted something different for this year.

Our author study this month is Mo Willems and his silly pigeon and friends. The kids are loving the pigeon books so I thought to myself... how can I use the pigeon in my design process? And that is how this project was born.

The Pigeon Wants a Chair!

We started off by having the pigeon send us an email asking the students to make him a new, comfy chair.

We talked about the criteria for making the chair--had to use more than one material, had to use some sort of joining material (tape, glue, etc.), and had to hold the stuffed pigeon without breaking. Then I just laid out a bunch of materials from around the classroom and recycling bin--plastic cups, paper plates, foam, construction paper, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, duct tape, q-tips, straws, plastic containers, toilet paper tubes... Then I let the kids have at it!

They came up with some pretty unique designs!

The next day we drew a diagram of our chair and listed the materials we used. 

Then the fun part--testing out whether or not the chairs would hold the pigeon!

Here's the sheet that I used for this project. If you are interested in trying out this design project, you can download the sheet from {here}.

Late Breaking News from PNN!!

I started this morning off by telling the kids there was the really important news report that I had to show them! It was breaking news!

I have had the release date for this book scheduled into my phone for months now! I was so excited when I finally walked into the book store and saw it sitting there... Oh that Mo Willems cracks me up! I love the little ducking. He's such a cutie-pa-tootie!!

I knew this would get my kids a little excited and goofy first thing on a Monday morning... after a long weekend... with bellies full of chocolate and jelly beans... and I wanted to start some lessons on subtraction because we haven't done much work on it. So I decided that the pigeon, duckling, and cookies would help me get the kids excited about subtraction!

I created this little chart to help us do some subtraction problems together. I just used my name cookies that I made for our "Who Stole the Cookie?" game way back in September... I came up with some subtraction questions for use to practice together. While I was working at the front, students were using unifix cubes in front of them to practice subtraction. They had a lot of fun!

Then I whipped up a few cookie subtraction worksheets to go with our lesson! They seemed to get it quickly when we talked about cookies... Because if you have some cookies and you eat some... you can't have more than you started with! That just doesn't make sense!

If you would like some subtraction practice worksheets (you don't even need to read the book... who doesn't love cookies??) just click the picture below to download!

I'm glad we got Monday out of the way now... Onto Tuesday! :)