Fall is one of my favorite times of the year in the classroom, because we get to do so many fun themes! One fall theme that we recently began exploring is scarecrows. We have had a BLAST with a week full of scarecrow activities and a free scarecrow craft, so I wanted to share some with you!
How do themes work in your classroom?
When we have classroom themes, it doesn’t mean that any of our regular lessons or standards get pushed aside. Rather, I try to incorporate the theme into our lessons as much as possible.
For our scarecrow week, that looks like:
- Reading scarecrow picture books
- Using scarecrow themed worksheets or printables to practice skills
- Doing shared writing about scarecrows
- Letting students do their own writing about scarecrows
- Adding in scarecrow themed centers wherever I can
Scarecrow Interactive Read Alouds
For our whole group reading lessons, we use the Empowering Little Readers curriculum. In Empowering Little Readers October, one of the weeks uses The Scarecrow’s Hat as an interactive read aloud.
What is an interactive read aloud? An interactive read aloud means that the teacher reads the book aloud throughout the week and focuses on different comprehension skills each day. During our scarecrow week activities, we will read The Scarecrow’s Hat each day and focus on a different skill each day.
The Scarecrow’s Hat activities will focus on:
- Retelling the beginning, middle, and end of a story
- Cause and effect
- Sequencing
In Empowering Little Readers October 1st Grade, the big focus of the month is nonfiction text features. This week, we will be reading the included nonfiction text “Chicken and the Egg” and discussing chickens as parents.
We will use the chickens nonfiction text to discuss how nonfiction books use captions to give more information.
Students will also get to make a chicken craft and write what they learned about chickens as parents!
You can grab the October Empowering Little Readers 1st Grade reading unit here!
FREE Scarecrow Labeling Activities
These free scarecrow activities are perfect for working on labeling, beginning sounds, and listening and following directions. First, students can complete the label a scarecrow activities. Options for just filling in the beginning sound or labeling with the whole word is included.
Next, students can make this free scarecrow craft. We LOVE learning crafts and this free scarecrow craft is no exception! For this craft, students will assemble their scarecrow head.
Then, they will complete the scarecrow craft by labeling the parts of the scarecrow head. Two options for labels are included – with and without picture cues – for differentiation.
You can grab this free scarecrow craft and the label a scarecrow activities below!
Thank you for this!
I’m a second year teacher always looking for great ideas. Love this for my class. Thank you for sharing.
I just love everything you share. My students love them even more than me. Can’t wait to use the scarecrow activities. Thank you for all your hard work.
thank you for sharing-I work with ELLs and these are perfect for them!