Vincent van Gogh Paintings

After reading several stories about Vincent and watching the adorable interview with Sophia, the children painted their own moon paintings.

While searching the internet for ideas on Vincent, I ran across the most adorable video by Sophia interviewing Vincent van Gogh.  It is often very difficult to find elementary age appropriate information on many of the great artists of our time. Though she was several years younger than my students, they thoroughly enjoyed the interview. 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

One of the best video series I have ever viewed with Beaitrix Potter stories is  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisrUJX3QGU&feature=related  By the end of the video just about every child in my class was speaking with a British accent, which was pretty interesting.  You may think that Peter Rabbit would be below their interest level, but I have always found the opposite response.  There is something almost calming about these simple stories.  Some of our activities included writing character traits for Peter, reading the play of Peter Rabbit (http://www.kidsinco.com/2008/07/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit/), text to self/text to text/text to world, and a creative writing project on how we disobeyed our parents.