Good morning,

I'm in contact with a number of teachers around the globe hoping to get something going this year. I'm not familiar with Webkinz, but I was hoping to collaboratee on something to do with the popular beginning-of-the-year for kindergarten books The Kissing Hand and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Perhaps some pictures that could be shared to discuss with respective classes and repsonded to? I was considering useing Voicethread so that the kids could leave a recorded message to other classes. How about a collaborative alphabet book on Voicethread? Just a few ideas to throw around.

Let me know - and thanks again for the contact and interest.
Pete

Hi Maria

Here are a few (not original) ideas that I've found but not yet tried. Sorry they seem so "artificial", but I'm just cutting and pasting. Here goes:

For Chicka:

Take pictures of kids for a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Look Who’s in Mr. Dawson’s Room book.

make coconut trees for b. Board; use newspapers for kids to find letters to add to trees. Do it twice, first time with their names done in teacher font to be cut apart and glued on tree, taken home; 2nd time as above to stay in class. Glue sand around bottom of tree.

Fill a beach pail with sand and mix in some plastic alphabet letters. Have students sit in a circle, placing the pail on a beach towel in the middle of the circle. Let each child take a turn pulling out a letter from the sand. Ask them to hand the letter to you. Then, see if the class knows the name of the letter. Once all of the letters are pulled from the sand, have students help count how many letters there are altogether. Stress that there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

Make a Chicka Boom Boom Tree from celery, cheese whiz, and Alph-Bits cereal! Yum! (Put on a paper plate, 1 celery leaf makes the coconut tree leaves)

paint centre - use foam letters to paint the alphabet on a coconut tree template, or coconut tree made from construction paper.

graph letters based on curved / not curved lines; how many of each? Each child could make their own graph with prepared letters; what about doing an upper case and lower case graph with the same criteria?

Count the letters - count both upper and lower case together


For Kissing Hand: (not so many ideas as of yet)

Kissing Hand necklace (see picture I used as the Primary Teachers Collaborating group "logo"). Let me know if you can't see it too well, and I'll email it directly to you - that is if you're not familiar with this craft.

Assign each character a movement (ex. for Chester, make a mask out of hands). Everytime you mention the character in the book, have the children make the movement.

On a predictable chart,"___ came to school and felt ___." Fill in the predictable chart with your childrens' names and how they feel/felt on the first day of school.

There you go Maria - I'd love to hear some of your ideas too!!