This fall we have been enjoying all kinds of seasonal books in the library. One of my favorite projects is the synonym sentence project the 5th graders did. It is really easy to plan and great practice in creative thinking and good sentence structure.
First we read the book How BIG Could Your Pumpkin Grow? by Wendell Minor we enjoyed each page and took time to read the super cool facts in the end notes.
I took each of the colored words, which are synonyms for the word big, from the book and wrote them on an index card. I added a few so there would be plenty of choices. Then I reminded the kids that synonyms are words with similar meanings. We talked about how using purposeful word choice and adding synonyms made this book very fun to read. After our discussion, each child got a piece of orange paper, a large index card, scissors and markers. Then, they drew one of the synonym cards from my stack.
I asked them to create a pumpkin any way they wanted and then write a sentence that would either describe their pumpkin or what it could be doing using the synonym card they drew. When they finished the pumpkin and the sentence, they stapled the two together.
They had a blast working on this project and it was fun to see the natural collaboration that occurred as they shared ideas and worked in close proximity to each other. Hanging them up made a fun display and provided a great opportunity for other classes to review synonyms too!
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