Rainbow Fish and Friendship

I taught in a grade 1 class a couple of weeks ago in which the teacher was away for 3 days. I knew about the assignment ahead of time and she let me do some planning since I've been in for her before. Fun! Their theme was friendship, and she had so many beautiful books about friendship for the kids to read and for me to read to them. One of them was Rainbow Fish to the Rescue, the follow up to The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.

On the third day I was there the kids had a block of art so I decided to try to tie some things together and do a bit of a Rainbow Fish day. I started by reading them Rainbow Fish to the Rescue, which they all seemed to LOVE! We then talked about friendship and what Rainbow Fish did to help a friend (distracted a shark so a little fish could get away). We talked about different things they have done to help a friend. I then had them do their writing on a photocopied sheet (with interlines) and a starter of: I helped a friend.... They were to finish the sentence and there was space for them to illustrate. Very cute and they had some great ideas!

I found a fish worksheet to help them practice their math facts, and a fish dot to dot for them to do when their work was finished. Then it was time for art. This is what we did and it turned out great: Rainbow Fish Craft. They all seemed to enjoy their crafting and they were excited with their end product of colourful fish! (I had photocopied the template onto card stock so they had no trouble cutting it out.) It was a really fun day for me, and I think for them too! And what better theme than "Friendship!"