April Showers

It has been so rainy this month...we have seen many April Showers.  Now here's hoping they really bring us some beautiful May Flowers!  With all this rain and the fact that it is poetry month, I decided to target some poems dealing with rainy weather.  We turned this into a little mini unit of reading the poem, writing journals, and doing an art project related to the topic.  I found and adapted the poems from http://www.cceschool.org/hayes/Poetry%20Page-April.htm

We started with reading the poems out-loud as a group during our morning circle.  Then, when we broke up into our rotations, I was able to work on reading the poems with pairs of students.  We talked about "showers" being another word for rain.  We also talked about why April showers would bring May flowers.  With my most advanced students, we even talked a little about the water cycle.  

Next, we went into some journal writing.  My students could choose from 2 different topics.  You can find these journal templates for FREE by clicking here.

  For my students who are non-readers/writers, I read the poem to them (for those who could sit and listen).  Next, we worked on some simple counting, tracing, coloring worksheets related to the topic.  I found these for FREE download here.

Then, in the afternoon, we did an umbrella art craft together as a group.  I outlined all the pieces on construction paper so my students only needed to cut the pieces out and tape them together (we used double-sided sticky tape which was way cleaner than using glue!).  We used ribbon (left over from my wedding welcome bags!) to hang the rain drops from the umbrellas.

 They decorated their names and we hung them up in the hallway.