PeeWees: Grumpy Bird (week 2)

Poppy anxiously awaiting her classmates' arrival

 For our second week of Grumpy Bird, we did some of the same things, and some different, shifting the focus from birds to feelings.  Although.  The gummy worms were such a hit last week that we managed to work them into a lot of the activities. 

Arrival - Magnetic letters again - they really loved this!  And it has inspired Poppy to learn her letters, which she has done a lot in the intervening week.  Now she finds "P for Poppy" and a few others everywhere we go.

 

Circle Time - After welcome, alphabet, and counting birds & worms again, we reviewed "In the Leafy Treetops" and also sang "If You're Happy and You Know It", alternating verses of "If you're happy..." and "If you're grumpy..."  This crowd definitely prefers to be happy!  We also sang "Smiles".  We read Grumpy Bird and paid attention to Bird's expression on each page to catch when he starts changing from grumpy to having fun.

Snack - Halloween pretzels (jack-o-lanterns and bats), strawberries, and gummy worms.  We talked a lot about if the jack-o-lantern pretzels were grumpy or happy.  We practiced grumpy and happy faces. 

Art - Feelings Faces.  Everyone chose their background papers, eye pieces, and feathers.  I put glue down for everyone on all their pieces and then they used the marker to draw mouths.  I talked about how mouths and eyebrows really show the feelings on the face - they all drew happy mouths.

My sample

Activity 1 -  We repeated the color matching game from last week, then I tried letter matching - matching the animal with the letter it starts with.  I figured, this group is so advanced, let's try it.  It was ambitious, and I lost all their attention before we got far, but we pushed through and then did some running.

Activity 2 - We looked through a book called The Way I Feel and talked about the feelings on each page (didn't take the time to read it), and tried to mimic the expressions.

Then we played a picture Feelings Bingo game I made a few years ago when Ginger was in Peewees.  It was fun - and funny - teaching them to play bingo with cards and chips.  Definitely a learning curve but they liked it!  At the end I broke out the magnetic wands with which to pick up the bingo chips and that was amaaaazing to them.

Activity 3 - Everyone chose an animal to be in the story, and we acted out Grumpy Bird.  They liked it so much, we switched animals and did it twice.

Closing - We reviewed all the songs we have learned over the two weeks, sang our goodbye song, and did some running with instruments to my birdie songs listed in the last post.  Another day in PeeWee paradise!