Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

A few weeks ago we were reading various stories about school. One of the books we read was Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes - one of my favorites! As a part of the lessons, we talked about how Chrysanthemum was feeling and made connections to how we were feeling about starting school. We then extended the lesson by counting the letters in our names, just as Chrysanthemum's classmates do in the book, and compared how long our names are to hers. We then created a bar-type graph to record our findings. The students then created art with their names by coloring patterns on bubble letters. After they were completed, the students read the names as a group and clapped out the syllables. We then sorted the names according to the number of syllables in the names to create a real-object graph. Their artwork was then added to our classroom helper area as a name word wall.