Curious in Kindergarten

During my student teaching, I planned a lesson based on Taking Photos of Curious George: Exploring Character Through Images from ReadWriteThink.org. I fell in love with the concept and reinvented the project to cater to my kindergarteners' needs. I planned a five-day unit, overflowing with Curious George.

We began the week by reading Curious George books, creating webs, and making lists of character attributes. For example: He is a monkey, he likes bananas, he lived at the zoo, he is friendly, he likes to explore, and he is curious. Next, we made a list of places in our school, and I put my students in groups to let them brainstorm what he would do in different places or how he might get into mischief. Giving students the power to decide the course of the story was very exciting, and they were very imaginative! We came back together as a group and made a list of things Curious George would do in our school.

The following day, we posed George in different places in the school and took pictures of him doing the things we had listed. I came to class the next day with printed photos and gave each student a different photo to write a sentence about the picture. We had discussed Curious George's actions beforehand, but it was up to them what they wanted to write. Because I teach kindergarteners, I made a list of words on the board, like “Curious George,” “nurse,” “library,” “gym,” and so on for them to copy the spelling if they needed to.

On the final day, we worked together to put our photos (with sentences) into the order we wanted our story to follow. I allowed the students to take turns deciding what should come next in our story. Then I created a digital photo story out of the photos and their handwritten sentences. I also added music to it, and it came out so cute!

I was so inspired by this ReadWriteThink lesson that I found ways to incorporate Curious George aspects into almost every subject. We baked banana bread, created Curious George clocks to practice telling time, wrote journal entries including Curious George, and so much more! I also used my Curious George toy to spark interest each day by hiding him somewhere different in the room.

Based on the outcome of this project, ReadWriteThink will become a permanent part of my teaching career!