Have you ever had a book that you didn’t know what to do with it in your classroom? Well, if you have Watermelon Day by Kathi Appelt… you’re in luck! I’d like to share with you some activities and ideas that I’ve done with my first graders. My students LOVE this book and it captures their attention throughout the whole story. I use A LOT of expressions when I read this book to my class and I have their full attention. I like to use this story at the beginning of the year, usually in September. This book lends itself to activities in writing, reading, math, and science.
If you wanted to, you could use this story for the whole week, read it every day and do a different activity. The possibilities are endless!
Day 1: Tiny Moment Stories
The first activity I do with my first graders is writing. We talk about tiny moment stories and how a watermelon symbolizes our tiny moments. Here is my anchor chart that I use:
This is how I begin our unit of personal narrative. I got the Tiny Moment idea from Lucy Calkins… by the way if you haven’t read any of her books, they are amazing for the writer’s workshop!
This anchor chart really breaks the idea down for the students about what a tiny moment is. So, we brainstorm different parts of this book that are tiny moment stories. We talk about how the whole watermelon symbolizes a big topic, a slice of a watermelon symbolizes a smaller topic, and the watermelon seeds symbolize a tiny moment. A tiny moment is a “snapshot” of their lives. Later, I’ll have the students write their own tiny moment stories together as a class. They color, cut it out and glue it into their schema notebook.
Day 2: How to Grow a Watermelon
The next day, you can have your students write a how-to story about how to grow a watermelon:
I also do an interactive writing piece with my students that has facts about watermelon. I call on students to come up and write a sentence about what we learned about watermelons from the story.
Here’s my interactive writing out in the hallway:
Day 3: Interactive Writing Piece:
Day 4: Watermelon Experiment
After the students do their craftivity, the next day we use our 5 senses to experience a watermelon. I bring in a small watermelon and we touch, smell, taste, hear, and look at its attributes. We use a tape measure to see how many inches around it is for the circumference and we weigh it to see how many pounds it is. Last, I let them taste the watermelon. You could cut it up, or already have it cut up from home. After they taste it, then they can write their sensory poem the next day.
Day 5: Sensory Poem
Here is the template that I use for our 5 senses:
Day 6: Watermelon Life Cycle
We also talk about the life cycle of a watermelon: seeds, seedling, sprout, vine, and watermelon. We use this template to color, cut out and glue into our science notebook.
Day 7: Retell BME
We also practice retelling the story from beginning, middle and end. I have sentence strips on my pocket chart that we put in order. Then, the students get to write or illustrate their own beginning, middle and end of the story. If you have reluctant writers at the beginning of the year…which we all have… let them just draw pictures. Or, you could scribe for them!
I hope you have gotten some good ideas and activities to use with Watermelon Day. This is one of my favorite books to read to my class and I hope it’s one of your favorites too! If you are interested in more of my ideas and activities for this book, check out my Watermelon Day resource click here.
Love,
Kara
P.S.) If you’re interested in checking out how I organize my mentor texts, click here.
