Kindergarten. Shape and Word Families

This summer I took a Reading class and it truly opened my eyes to the literacy epidemic that this country is facing. To fix this problem more then just the reading or classroom teachers need to be involved in promoting literacy, EVERY teacher should be involved, yes even the Art Teacher :)

So with literacy in mind I tweaked my Shape Lesson that I do with Kindergarten students every year. Before with this lesson students would learn about simple shapes and create a "Shape Book", in their book we would create animals using simple shapes, such as Circle-Turkey, Triangle-Mouse, Oval-Fish. The students would collage these animals, so not only are they learning how to draw these shapes but how to cut them out. This is also an opportunity to discuss how we use our materials the correct way, like scissors and glue.

After the tweaking... we not only are learning about simple shapes and how to use our materials. But now we are learning about word families. This year I concentrated on the -AT family. So now we are creating Oval-BAT, Rectangle-MAT, Circle-CAT, Square-HAT, and Triangle-RAT.
Here are some pictures from one class and their success in making their "Shape Book"... Enjoy!

Rectangle-MATS



Oval-BATS