"I like me"
One of the biggest themes my kiddos will be discussing and learning about in EAK this year is understanding themselves and others. We've been doing a lot of talking about how each of us are special and have unique skills, interests, values, and personalities. One activity that we do together at the beginning of the year are these "I am special" word segmentation sentences.
First, we do a lot of building up their schema of understanding that they have special skills that allow them to do things. Next, they pick a body part that helps them do that something special and it was great hearing about all of the different things they came up with, like...
"My voice tells my mom "I love you."
"My hands can open doors."
"My hands can hold my baby sister."
I mean, cue the aww factor!
Afterwards, I dictate what they said and create little sentence strips with a section for them to trace their names. As an added skill practice of segmenting words, I asked them to place a box around the words within their sentence. This is another skill we've been working on and I found this activity to be a great way to practice it!
"Me" Portraits
Continuing with our learning about their senses of self, we read a bunch of stories about how we all are unique and those qualities make us special. There are a ton of read aloud out there that help reinforce these concepts and for my kids the directed drawings help them develop key drawing/writing skills for kindergarten!
A Color All His Own
One of my favorite stories to share during our unit on "All About Me" is Leo Lionni's A Color All His Own. This is a special story about a chameleon who is sad that he doesn't have just one color, like his other animal friends. Pigs are all pink, crickets are all green, but his colors change. It's not until he finds a friend in another chameleon that they both find true happiness in being themselves.
I loved the discussion with my class about how we are all like this little chameleon in that we look different, but we all have unique differences within our personalities and interests too that make us special. Each of my kiddos created their own chameleons using watercolors. They turned out so adorably!
What are your favorite ways to explore your All About Me units with your students?
