Educational creativity

My Back to School Box of books includes books about family and friends.  We have always done those themes at the same time. When I Was Little A four-year-old's Memoir of Her Youth by Jamie Lee Curtis If you have four year olds this one is perfect.  It creates so much language and background information about your children.  We always did a self portrait after reading this one. This is a funny rhyming book that you could easily use to teach children when it is appropriate to paint. Are There Any Questions? by Denys Cazet (Children ask lots of questions while on a field trip) Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes (making new Friends) Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes (great self esteem) Clifford Runs to Story Time by Norman Bridwell Countdown to the First Day of School by AnnMarie Harris Dinosaur Starts School by Pamela Duncan Edwards First Day, Hooray! by Nancy Poydar First Day of Kindergarten by Kim Jackson Go To School by Stan and Jan Berenstain (Berenstain Bears stor...

I love fingerplays and songs where the tune is familiar but the words are new.  Here's one. The Friendship Song (London Bridges) A friend is someone who is kind, who is kind, who is kind. A friend is someone who is kind, just like (child's name) A friend is someone who can help, who can help, who can help. A friend is someone who can help, just like (child's name) A friend is someone who can share, who can share, who can share. A friend is someone who can share, just like (child's name) A friend is someone you can trust, you can trust, you can trust. A friend is someone you can trust, just like (child's name) Finger People Finger people are such fun We will meet them one by one. First comes mother, (pointer finger) Next comes father, Ther is big brother, Here is sister with her ball Here is baby last of all Now we'll count them just to see How many in our family 1,2,3,4,5               ...

     We read this book by Leo Lionni about 2 friends, little blobs of color, who are different yet are the best of friends.  They show all the events of their day together after accidentally squishing together becoming green during a hug. While teaching, I would have the kids find a friend to do this art activity.  I would paint one child's hand blue and one child's hand yellow.  Then they squished their hands together representing the hug in the book. Since I only have one child, we adapted it this way to make a book. One hand was painted one color the other hand painted a different color, then rug together. We made hand prints on paper I had printed simple words to recreate the story. "This is Little Red. This is Little Blue.  They are friends.  They hugged, and hugged, and hugged.  They turned Purple. We did all the primary colors and added white to red and black. My daughter loves singing the mixing colors song on Little...