- drawing materials
- kitchen spices such as thyme, parsley, rosemary, etc. (dried, ground, and plant if possible)
- picture books of flowers and herb plants
- kitchen
- plant
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Writing/W.PK.MA.2: Use a combination of dictating and drawing to explain information about a topic.
Head Start Outcomes:
Logic and Reasoning/Symbolic Representation: Represents people, places, or things through drawings, movement, and three-dimensional objects.
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing: Uses scribbles, shapes, pictures, and letters to represent objects, stories, experiences, or ideas.
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing: Copies, traces, or independently writes letters or words.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Composition 16: Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information about a topic of interest.
Draw and Write Together: My Kitchen
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Letter Recognition, Word Recognition
Display the spices and have children look at and smell them. Tell children that they are spices that people use to flavor their foods. Ask children if they have ever seen them or seen anyone use them while cooking. Then show the plants (or pictures of the plants) and talk about how the spices come from plants. Emphasize that they are plants just like all the others they have been learning about—they have seeds, roots, stems, etc.
Then tell children they are going to draw a window box that will sit outside a kitchen window. Have them think about what kind of plants they would like to have in their kitchen window box (flowers, herbs, etc.) Ask, What kinds of plants will you plant in your window box?
After children have finished drawing their kitchen window boxes, help them write “My Kitchen Window Box” at the top of their drawings. Ask them to identify the word kitchen and have them point to the letter “Kk” as you say the word kitchen together. Ask, What is the first letter in the word kitchen?