Page
updated October 2, 2003 ~ all underlined items are links
Fall
is prime-time for scarecrows. Sometimes you see them in summer fields,
and sometimes you have to wait until nearly Halloween, when you'll see
them in the Pumpkin Patch. They're a fun symbol of the Harvest season,
and kids love them. You can incorporate scarecrows into your studies
of the farm, harvest, autumn, falling
leaves, Halloween, pumpkins,
and/or Thanksgiving ... or do what I do, and give them a unit all their
own.
Fall comes late where
I live in central California, so we keep our scarecrows a long time, and
they're featured in my classroom from late September until Thanksgiving,
integrated with my other fall units.
I've
created a lot of new materials for scarecrows, and "Scarecrows Don't Scare
Me" is just one of three themes covered in my brand-new Fantastic
Fall Too! Balanced Literacy Workshop, which is being presented in several
states this fall. I've written a terrific resource book for this
workshop, with over 50 pages of ready-to-use Scarecrow themed songs and
poems (in poetry journal size and also in Song & Poetry Card size for
shared reading), learning games, emergent readers, and art projects.
You'll find blackline masters for Scarecrow Bingo, a Scarecrow Math Workjob,
two emergent readers, the TLC directed art Scarecrow project (shown on
this page), directions for pocketchart acticities, and a whole lot more.
The other themes included in this new resource book are "Down On The Farm,"
and "The Leaves Are Falling Down." Each of those themes also features
many ready-to-use materials. Click here
to purchase this book by mail, or use the Add To Cart button to purchase
the book through PayPal.
Fantastic
Fall Too!
Workshop
Resource Book
$35
+ $5 shipping
Enjoy the songs, poems,
and activities you'll find below. All underlined items are links
to other pages. To find out more about any of the featured books,
click on the cover or title to go to Amazon.com, then use your back button
to return to this page. You can also use the new Buy From Amazon.com
links provided for many of the books ... those timesaving links will open
a pop-up wndow so that you don't lost your place here on KinderKorner.
As always, Amazon will save your selections in your electronic shopping
cart for up to 90 days.
Happy Teaching!
Victoria
Victoria at Avila
Barn.
All photos copyright
Victoria Smith.
Written by Linda Williams,
Illustrated by Megan Lloyd
My students love this
story each and every year!
A brave little old
lady goes for a walk and encounters some very strange company ... a pair
of clapping gloves, a top hat that nods, pants and a shirt that follow
her down the road, two shoes that go CLOMP, CLOMP! and a very scary pumpkin
head!
A great story for promoting phonemic awareness,
pattern,
repetition and rhyme, and sequencing.
I have a wonderful
pocketchart set for this book, which I purchased from McCracken at the
California Kindergarten Conference several years ago. My students
love assembling the scarecrow and making the words match the pictures.
We write extension
sentences to the story,
using writing frames
to add new parts of the scarecrow and the sounds they make.
Example:
shiny buttons
go clink! clink!
Children enjoy coming
up with those nifty sounds.
Put clothes that match
the ones in the book in your creative play center.
Be sure to include
a shawl for the little old lady, and let the children act out the story.
They'll always have
a willing audience to help with the sounds!
Five
Crows All Shiny Black Tune:
Five Green And Speckled Frogs
Five
crows all shiny black,
Sat
on a scarecrow's back,
Eating
some most delicious corn ... yum yum!
Scarecrow
winked and shouted "Boo!"
Scared
one crow and away he flew,
Now
there are four black shiny crows, caw caw!
We make many different kinds
of scarecrows in class,
some from construction paper,
some from fabric scraps, and some that
are made from collage objects
glued to an outline.
There are Mommy scarecrows,
Daddy scarecrows, Baby scarecrows,
and sometimes we even have
Puppy scarecrows.
This is a TLC scarecrow,
on the rail fence on our Pumpkin
Patch wall.
You can find the directions
in the TLC "Farm" book, available through the TLC
Website, and they are also included in my Fantastic Fall Too! Workshop
Resource Book.
A fun at-home project is making
a Family Scarecrow.
You can do this by sending
home a blackline scarecrow printed on cardstock, for the family to decorate
and return, or you can ask families to build a "real" scarcrow stuffed
with hay (I gladly provide the hay, donated by local farmers).
Scarecrow Building Tip ~ If
you are stuffing real clothing to build a scarecrow, stuff an old pair
of pantyhose or tights and place it inside the pants for a solid base.
My son's school displays their
scarecrows on the kindergarten playyard at Thanksgiving,
when they also turn the sandboxes
into cornfields by "planting" dried cornstalks in rows.
Featured
Book
The Scarecrow
By Victoria Smith
This book is part of my popular six-title
"Down On The Farm" Emergent Reader Set. The focus of this 11 page
book is color words and other high frequency words, along with building
beginning reading skills and Concepts About Print.
See below for ordering information.
Farm Themed books to complement your Fall,
Farm, and Garden Units.
Set includes ready-to-color blackline masters
for six Big Books and ready-to-copy masters for six student sized books,
plus a phonics, grammar, and usage correlation for each title.
Includes instructions for making Pocket Chart
Sets and Seasonal/Thematic Vocabulary
Down
On The Farm Emergent
Reader Set
Six Titles
6 Big Books,
6 Little Books
order online for only
$32
High Frequency Word List:
a, all, an, and, at, by, cat, day, had, he,
here, in, is, little, look, my, of, on, that, the, there, this, to, two,
we, went, who, with, your, black, blue, brown, gray, green, orange, pink,
purple, red, tan, yellow, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday
To view KinderKorner Online Products Catalog,
click button
For printable order form, click button
To purchase
"Down On The Farm" Emergent Reader Set through
PayPal,
click Add To Cart
Scarecrow Tune:
I'm A Little Teapot
I'm a
little scarecrow
Stuffed
with hay,
Standing
watch in my field all day.
When
I see a crow
I like
to shout:
"Hey,
Mr. Crow, you'd better get out!"
The floppy,
floppy scarecrow
Guards
his field all day.
He waves
his floppy, floppy hands
To scare
the crows away.
* repeat,
substituting other body parts ... arms, lets, head, etc.
A marvelous compendium of lore and how-to's
designed to enchant all ages.
Superstition and myth as well as good-hearted
efforts to chase away crop-eaters surround this ragtag hero of the fields;
most ancient civilizations, we learn, created some sort of creature-god
for protecting their harvests. Features more than 20 figures incorporating
every recycled material imaginable, such as paper plates and bags, pottery,
old metal parts, and the ubiquitous tin can.
The KinderKids love looking at the many different
types of scarecrows found in this beautiful book. I like to make
scanned color copies of the illustrationss, so that we can paste one to
a sheet of chart paper and come up with words and phrases to describe it.
We also enjoy sorting and classifying copies
of the many scarecrows into groups based on certain attributes ... this
is a terrific lesson for science, math, and language acquisition.
Scarecrow,
Scarecrow Tune:
Twinkle, Twinkle
This
is a fun, kinesthetic song to use when moving from one
part
of the room to another, or when you need to get the
kids
up-and-moving in order to settle them down again.
Scarecrow,
scarecrow turn around.
Scarecrow,
scarecrow touch the ground.
Stand
up tall and blink your eyes.
Raise
your hands up to the sky.
Clap
your hands, then tap your knees.
Turn
around and tap your feet.
Scarecrow,
scarecrow touch your toes.
Scarecrow,
scarecrow tap your nose.
Swing
your arms so very slow,
Now
real fast to scare the crows!
Tough
your head, jump up and down.
Now
sit down without a sound.
This unusual scarecrow, made
of bits and pieces of this and that, actually likes birds! Rylant's
gentle scarecrow spends his day appreciating the earth and conversing with
birds, rabbits, and bugs. My students love this new-and-different
take on the scarecrow theme!
Based on a tale by Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Brothers Robert and Daniel San Souci teamed up to create
this beautifully illustrated folktale of a scarecrow brought to life who
falls in love and -- like Pinocchio and The Velveteen Rabbit -- becomes
"real" through the power of love.
When Chicken wants Scarecrow's
hat, she has to trade for it ... but she doesn't have what Scarecrow wants.
A fun story involving lots of trades among the animals, with outstanding
illustrations.
Instead of rags, the scarecrows
in this farm community wear old party clothes. Legend has it that folks
have seen the scarecrows waltz in their fancy satins and top hats during
the full moon. Gorgeous watercolor illustrations. The story
ends with a wordless double spread depicting a luminous fall evening when
scarecrows are hopping fences to join others dancing in a field.
Another one of my favorites!
A wonderful guide to making
your own scarecrow, richly illustrated with photographs of scarecrows entered
in the annual Nut Tree scarecrow conference in Vacaville, California.
I went there a lot as a child, and still have fond memories!
A young scarecrow devises a
profitable plan to keep the local crows from having their harvest
party in his pumpkin patch. Colorful, detailed illustrations bring the
story to life.
The scarecrow is used to the
usual commotion of a farm morning. Out in his field he has "nothing at
all" to say about any of it. One morning a mouse skitters up his pant leg,
and the stuffed fellow goes wild with dancing. The text invites participation
from the youngest listeners. By Dennis Cazet, the award-winning author-illustrator
of "I'm Not Sleepy."
When winter descends upon the
cornfield, the first snowfall brings about an amazing transformation: a
lonely scarecrow, ignored and feared by everyone is transformed into a
jolly snowman and is welcomed for the first time into the animals' games.
But what will the scarecrow's new friends think when the snow melts and
he returns -- jagged teeth and all?
A heartwarming story about
loneliness and friendship, on an isoloated farm where the farmer has no
one for company but his scarecrow -- until a homeless farmhand arrives.
When Little Bear's scarecrow
blows down on a windy day, he thinks of a new way to protect the corn from
crows -- he dresses up as Little Scarecrow Bear! But Little Bear
soon feels lonely. Is there enough corn for everybody, including
his new friends, the crows?
Scarecrow bulletin
board decor from party store,
with sentence strips
for Read The Room activities on the Pumpkin Patch Wall.
Phonics
Focus
Making
Words Activities Here
are some of the words that can be made from the letters in
S
c a r e c r o w
are
car
care
rare
scare
core
ore
ware
crow
row
rows
cow
cower
rarer
wore
sore
war
wear
ear
soar
rear
swore
ears
sear
Rimes
/ Word Families / Digraphs & Blends Here
are the word "chunks" found in
S
c a r e c r o w
ar
are
ow
row
sc
cr
Word
chunks are important for emergent readers, because in learning these common
patterns and the way they are pronounced and/or blended, students begin
finding the patterns in words and learning to create new words by substituting
onsets, rimes, and vowels.
Homophones These
common homophones/homonyms are found in scarecrow. Help your
students brainstorm lists of words that contain the same sounds, and determine
whether the sounds are spelled the same way or differently.
S
c a r e c r o w
/ar/
as in car
/are/
sounds like air
/are/
sounds like R
/ow/
as in crow
/ow/
as in cow
far
care
are / our
crow
brow
bar
scare
.
show
how
star
stare / stair
.
flow
flower
pare / pair / pear
.
snow
.
The
Scarecrow
Scarecrow
standing in the field
On a
bright and sunny day,
Don't
forget to do your job.
Scare
the hungry crows away!
Scarecrows Tune:
Sing a Song of Sixpence
We're
the farmer's scarecrows
We scare
away the birds,
We keep
the farmer's corn safe
Without
any words.
But
when Halloween comes
We
jump out of the ground
And
we scare the boys and girls
When
they come walking 'round.
The
Adventures of Poldy, The Scarecrow Boy My students
love these wonderful books from Sweden
First in the series, this book
introduces Poldy the Scarecrow and his friends, as they travel the
world in search of adventure, and learn concepts such as size, colors,
shapes, opposites, and numbers along the way.
Reading
pointers are in top pocket. Sentence strips cut apart into individual
words --
so students
can match and/or rebuild the text -- are in a one gallon plastic bag stapled
to a lower pocket.
Scarecrow
"pointers" for reading pocket charts are inexpensive "plant sticks" from
the dollar store.
More
Scarecrow Activities
Scarecrow
Self-Portraits
Staple
two paper plates together, leaving enough room to stuff lightly with newspaper,
then staple the opening close. This is the scarecrow's head.
Paint the front and back the color of your choice and, when it's dry, add
facial features and hair to make it look like you. Insert a ruler
or dowel where the neck would be.
Students
bring clothes from home to stuff and place in their chairs, in a sitting
position. Slip the ruler/dowel into the neck opening of the clothing,
and you'll have a scarecrow sitting in your seat!
Pattern
Block Scarecrows
Students draw or paint an Autumn
picture (cornfield, garden, woods, etc.) on a 9x12 sheet of construction
paper. Next -- on a workspace paper -- they arrange pattern
blocks in the shape of a scarecrow. The yellow hexagons make great
heads, the green and blue pieces make wonderful clothes, etc. Once
their design is complete, have them copy and record it on their Autumn
background, using paper pattern block shapes. They can add other
details, as desired.
The photo
below is a Song & Poetry card for Shared Reading.
The
scarecrow picture is a page from a scarecrow notepad.
We had fun with a purchased
scarecrow made from plastic bags. It was
similar to the plastic bag
pumpkins. Each of the students took a leg or
arm, and stuffed it with newspaper.
Then we assembled 'Sam' and talked
about body parts. We
added a hat and a stuffed crow. The evening custodian
got a bit of a scare when
she came in to clean our room and saw him in the
shadows.
I also purchased a large jointed
paper scarecrow and small individual ones
for the students. I
would position the scarecrow and the students would
match the position with theirs,
and then we would try to match it with our
bodies. I bought the
scarecrows at Big Lots and they were very inexpensive.
We also made our own scarecrows
by cutting out a circle head, square body,
rectangle arms, triangle hands
and feet. They added their own faces and
patches, buttons, etc.
It made a great bulletin board with sponge painted
pumpkins and fringed cornstalks.
Scarecrows,
Scarecrowland Scarecrow artist Joyce
Warren's wonderful website,
featuring original
scarecrows, celebrity look-alike scarecrows, and much more
Fall
is prime-time for scarecrows. Sometimes you see them in summer fields,
and sometimes you have to wait until nearly Halloween, when you'll see
them in the Pumpkin Patch. They're a fun symbol of the Harvest season,
and kids love them. You can incorporate scarecrows into your studies
of 
I've
created a lot of new materials for scarecrows, and "Scarecrows Don't Scare
Me" is just one of three themes covered in my brand-new 
Scarecrow
Links
