Georgia O'Keeffe - O'Yeah!

It’s finally springlike outside and that means in FDK it’s time to paint giant flowers inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. And yes they look FANTASTIC! The beautiful flowers will be on display en masse for Open House.

But last week the FDKers impressed me with their Georgia O’Keeffe knowledge recall and research. At our BOW WOW (word work or writing) station the students filled in a flower-shaped character map. The groups chit-chatted about favorite details from stories about O’Keeffe, reread books looking for fun facts, and planned how to condense their ideas onto flower petals. The resulting character maps were insightful, cute and clever.

 Last week the FDKers drew still lifes also inspired by O’Keeffe. The still life had a skull, shell and trumpet (in honor of our music study of jazz). WOW! The drawings looked great but what really impressed me was the students’ fearless attack of drawing a trumpet. There are a lot of little parts on a trumpet. Lots of curves, straight lines, and intersections. Each child had a unique interpretation. They observed closely, drew carefully and kept trying! Perseverance personified!

Keeping with the O’Keeffe theme we had a math game featuring a BIG Flower - got the idea from thefirstgradeparade.blogspot - then adapted it for my class. The kids dropped 2 foam butterfly stickers over a large flower with numbers 0 - 9. They rolled a die with + and - on it.  Then they filled in and solved an equation using the numbers the butterflies landed on.  Blooming brains! Click to get Free Worksheet for game.

Get the worksheet FREE. Click on worksheet above.