Birds, Birdhouses & First Grade

I love all the colors and textures in this picture!

One of my first grades thought they were helping me during clean up by dumping all the pom-poms and feathers together in the box I had been storing the bags in!  "Oh well!"  I remarked that it looked like a soft, feathery ball pit!  They all wanted to run their hands through it!  I used the opportunity to review tactile and implied texture!  They all got a chance to put their hands in and feel for the textures and see if they could sense the different size pom-poms.  (you can't really tell by the photo but the box huge!) 

The first grades recently finished painting and creating birds and bird houses.  They loved this lesson!  I think creating their birds was their favorite part!  I did this lesson two years ago with my second grades.  I was inspired by the cute bird house paintings from Deep Space Sparkle.  I decided to revisit the lesson  with my first grades this year.  We reviewed drawing with shapes to design and draw their bird houses. Demonstrating different ways they could combine shapes to create different style bird houses.  I also drew up a step by step drawing sheet they could keep in front of them to look at while they were drawing if needed.

This lesson took us three 40 minute classes to complete.

The first class the students drew and painted their bird houses.

The second class the kids created their birds.

Everyone made two birds.  I gave each student two pieces of oak tag cut about 5in x 5in.  I demonstrated how to glue together the pom-poms and feathers to make their birds bodies.  The ends of the feathers (quills) had to be cut off in order to get the feathers to stay glued on.  After many a flying quill, I had them hold the feathers over the garbage cans in the room when they trimmed them!  They literally shot across the table and onto the floor every time they cut one!  I was starting to worry we were going to have a flying quill and eyeball disaster!  I showed the kids how to hold the feather down into the garbage can when they cut them so it shot/fell into the can and not into their neighbors eyes! 

The third class I had the kids draw the beaks and legs, add some eyes with sequins, cut their birds out and glue them into their bird house paintings!  Any student that needed to finish their birdhouses, start their houses or make their birds did so that class.  Somehow we all got caught up and finished! 

The bird houses are proudly displayed outside their classrooms marking that Spring has finally come! One of the first grade teachers used their pictures as a prompt for a writing piece!  (yeah!)  They all wrote a little story or poem about their birds and birdhouse!  I will have to remember to take photos next week and update with the photos!  The teacher was hanging them up Friday after school! 

On a final note, I was gifted this enormous bag of rubber stamps and stickers this week!

One of my colleagues daughter is a professional organizer and these are from a house she just helped clean up and organize!  I can't wait to go through the bags!

Hope everyone out their has a wonderful weekend and a beautiful Mother's Day on Sunday!

Looks like rain today, but thats okay because we really need it here!

Mrs. C  :)