The Night the Candy Corns Escaped

Don't get me wrong, I love those "Lady that Swallowed Everything" and I always use "Five Little Pumpkins", but this year I wanted a new little story to use with my 1st graders.  I also found some super cute candy-corn erasers (see previous post) at Target and I can't wait to use those.

So, I created a poem called, "The Night the Candy Corns Escaped."  I know the firsties will love to figure out what happens.  We can also pantomine and dramatize the words which will help them get ready for their Winter Program in December.  The 'refrain' of the poem also incorporates rhythms the first graders are working on, so we'll get music reading practice too.

Here's the slides (instructions and printables are included in my Fall into Music set, but you are more than welcome to use what you see here):

In a subsequent lesson, we'll extract the rhythmic content of the first refrain:

I also included some printables to use (a rhythm worksheet, cards for matching the iconic representation to the real rhythm symbols) including this jar dictation sheet (we will use our erasers on this):

Here are a few pictures of the printables/manipulatives in action.  I use sheet protectors and dry erase markers for student work all the time - I can easily assess the students without having to run off a bunch of worksheet copies.  Students enjoy working with dry erase markers as well, so it is a win-win.  For this activity, both pages are placed in the plastic sheet, as well as a marker, a piece of black felt for an eraser, and a bag of candy-corn erasers (again, those are from Target - $1 for 50 erasers).