Kindergarten Crew // Weather Puppet Theater
This winter, Kindergarten became weather experts! The focus of our second ELA Module this year was on how weather affects others, and how kids can help others who are affected by weather. For this learning, we started by learning about the components of weather: wind, moisture, and temperature. We read some great nonfiction texts like Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons, did some fun weather science experiments, and even had an expert visit from a local meteorologist!
After we learned about the components of weather, we learned about weather in different parts of the world, practiced observing, drawing, and writing about the weather, and then started to think about the ways different kinds of weather affect people. We read some beautiful weather stories like Come on Rain! and One Hot Summer Day to think about these different kinds of weather.
Then, we launched our final product! In years past, Kindergarten students have written their own creative weather story, inspired by Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day. This year, we took it up a notch by having students create their own puppet shows to go along with their stories! We started by reading The Snowy Day as a mentor text to learn about the components of a good story. Then, students drew out the different elements of their story (thinking of their own original characters and setting, type of weather, and a way their character could help someone in their community). Students took these drawings to create a puppet and background in Art Class with Mrs. Brott-Holtzmann. Then, we wrote sentences to go along with each page and event. After our stories were complete, students practiced using their puppets to act out the story and even added their own dialogue! Since many of our students are learning remotely this year, students filmed their puppet shows for everyone to see later!
We finished with our first ever Kindergarten Puppet Theater, where all of the Kindergarten students, their families, and many DAA staff and community members came together to watch the puppet shows! The Kindergarten students were so proud of their work and thrilled to share their creative products with the DAA community! If you’d like to watch one of the kindergartener’s creative performance, click here. :)