Verb Birds

I had to extend our bird unit into this week.  I am My students are so into it that we had to keep going.  Yesterday when I saw  Chickadee Jubilee’s post I knew I had to write some bird poetry.  We haven’t done as much poetry this year as I would like and I knew my students would benefit from this activity because we are also learning about verbs.  The poetry frame originally came from WritingFix.  I used paintbrushes instead of marbles because I didn’t have any marbles at school and I forgot mine at home.  We pretended that the brushes were feathers and now I’ve made a mental note to use feathers when  I reapeat this craftivity in the future.

Just like the Chickadees we Owlets read the book Birds by Kevin Henkes again.  This time we listened for and recorded the verbs we heard as we read.  Then we made the verbs  fly across the paper before we painted what we thought the sky would look like if birds left paint behind when they flew. We all hooted with pleasure as we hung our finished projects up for others to admire and learn from.

My owlets have always loved speech bubbles, so today as we finished up another project we used them to reinforce the idea that verbs are what a noun does.  Each child made a bird with a foot and handprint.  They used markers to add the details.  I placed the birds on a blue background.  I added speech bubbles and the owlets told me what their bird could do. 

A whole flock of verbs!

I saw this idea somewhere on Pintrest.  It looked more.....hmm
professional when I saw it!

Don't you love this Hummingbird!

This has been a rough week.  My owlets are getting restless and branching out.  They are ready to fly. Tempers have flared, and arguments have erupted over play-dates and birthday parties.  I found that my patience ran low, too.  Today the sweetness of three students made me smile and remember why I do what I do.  One child, who loves to test me said, “You are so cool!  I love you.”  Another left a note on my desk that said, “Mrs. Reck I love you as a teachur and a purson.” Another student returned to give me hugs during the afternoon because, “I’m going to miss you so much, tomorrow!”  Not too many people have that happen on their jobs.