Creativity and a Thesaurus

Friday was an incredibly busy day in our fourth grade classroom. Our first endeavor was to fine tune and publish our own version of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" using other words taken from a thesaurus. This turned out to be a truly valuable lesson in how to appropriately use this reference tool, as we often needed to consider whether our word was being used as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb! It was an idea passed on to me by my fellow fourth grade teacher, Bre, who had gotten the idea from another teacher's blog. It turned out to be more time-consuming than I had predicted, but what the kids learned from it made the time well-spent! Look for pictures on the next post!

We also had a major project to work on in the afternoon!  Thanks to Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer, my kids are plowing through books in my classroom. They are trying to get "first dibs" on new books that come in (although our once generous book fund is nearly depleted so the new titles will be slowing down). They are making pretty amazing book talks. They are beginning to blog and making Prezis, too. And they're having fun reading picture books out loud to their kindergarten book buddies.

Danielle's version of the class pet!

Combining those picture book characters with the pumpkins we brought back from our visit to the pumpkin farm this week was a perfect fit.  My fellow fourth grade teacher, Bre, found and used an idea last year from www.CFClassroom.com and we just HAD to "steal" it. I have also seen quite a few ideas similar to this on Pinterest, but since our class has been delving into characters so much, it was too great of an opportunity to pass up!! And we have amazing results to share!

Love this expression on Splat!

Calvin a la Nick!

McKenzie's Princess

Ladybug Girl!! 

Fancy Nancy with blue lips

Pumpkin Princess Aurora!

Check out those ears on Olivia!!! 

Can you believe the ultra-cute paws??

Gotta love those eyes!!

Okay, I ADORE this one!

Another Olivia!

A Mercer Mayer duo...Award for Best Couple.

This one gets the "Best Use of Felt" award!!! Bad Kitty!!!

I absolutely adore this one, too, even though I've never read the book!! Thanks, Devin!

Now THAT's personality plus!! Love the teeth!

The kids did this 100% on their own during class time. They worked carefully ahead of time to identify character traits as well as the supplies they would need to complete their project and were totally engaged throughout the entire process. I went shopping the night before to be sure they had what they had requested and as you can see, the results are fabulous! The ONLY down-side to this is that those pumpkins will not last forever, darn it!!!

Some of the kids didn't quite finish because of paint not drying, glue not working, or some other technical malfunction, but overall, I'd say they did an outstanding job. they also left me with lots to clean up over the weekend!!! :) But they're SO worth it!

What a great group of kiddos!