Five Little Ducks

One of my favorite songs is Five Little Ducks, the students love it too.  We have been reading about ducks in our classroom.  Some of the books have been fiction and some non-fiction.  Some of my favorite ducks books are One Duck Stuck, Come Along Daisy, and Do like a Duck Does.  During our time reading about ducks we sang Five Little Ducks and we acted it out.  We acted it out first using the mats in the picture below.  To make the mats I used green and blue construction paper and this website's resources to make the ducks.

Then we acted out 5 little ducks using students.  They loved pretending to be ducks and wanted to do it over an over again.  When we acted it out we use a life size 5 frame to help them visualize what 5 ,4, 3, 2, 1, and 0 look like in a 5 frame.

Building sets

As a follow up activity to the counting and cardinality frog and lily pad activity seen here, we built a set on a lily pad today.  Students rolled a die and then wrote that number and their name on a lily pad.  Next students built a set of that many dots and placed them on the lily pad.  In order to differentiate this activity the lower group rolled a die that had the numbers 1-6, the middle group rolled a die with numbers 1-10, and the high group rolled a die with numbers 7-12.  The kids really loved the activity and they are proud of their number pond. 

Movement

We have been learning about movement and directions.  During story time we have read several books about movement.  We have sung movement songs, rolled dice and then done a movement that many times, sorted movements as big or small.  Students have really enjoyed this subject matter.  We have also been learning about the letters H and J which have lead to some interesting talks about hopping and jumping.  Today we thought about animals that hop or jump.  Next I showed students pictures of animals that hop or jump on the Smart board and we sounded out the words and I erased the white over the letters to expose the word.  Below is a picture of my smart notebook page....

Next students wrote and drew about what they jump like.  They really enjoyed talking, writing, and drawing about what they jump like.  Below are some examples of the students work...