The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is such a heartwarming read! If you haven’t read it, it is about a little racoon named Chester, who is about to start his first day of school. He is feeling anxious about leaving home and starting school for the first time. His mother shares a secret kiss on his paw and tells him to press his paw with the kiss against his cheek whenever he misses her. This is a wonderful story to talk about the different feelings we might have when we are starting school!
If you would like to create your own Chesters click here!
On chart paper I write how we might be feeling coming to school on the first day. Some of the emotions I write on our are excited/happy, nervous/worried, sad, or shy. We then graph how we felt coming to school on the first day of school. It gives us a wonderful opportunity to discuss all the different emotions and to understand that we all might be feeling different ways. For example, if it is our first day at a new school, or for some students they might miss their parents or siblings. Once student’s have decided what emotion they feel, they come up and write their name in the graph.
After we read the book and graph our feelings we then create a class book together! I come around and trace every student’s hand. I give them heart templates and they then cut out the heart and glue it in the center of their hand. While they are waiting for me they all write their name on the top line. They then find their name in our class graph above the emotion they felt and write that on the second line. I bind the pages together to make a class book that goes in our classroom library! The students LOVE reading it throughout the year. At the end of the year I hand the page back to them to take home.
After we make our own Chesters! I love how simple this craft is and how cute it is by making every piece of Chester out of hearts! This lesson and craft is one that I use EVERY year! I have included all the templates in my Kissing Hand Resource. If you have colored paper you can simply press print from your printer or photocopier. Otherwise you can use the template to create tracers.
I have all the Chester pieces traced and ready for my students and I love to watch to see how they cut and hold the paper. Next, I hand out a pre-traced nose that they have to cut out, or I have a few pre-cut for some of my learners that might need an extra hand. We then glue our nose on and write our names on the back! After we hand out two heart eyes to cut out and two heart ears to cut out. Then we arrange everything on our paper and glue it on! Lastly, the students are always so excited to add their googly eyes!
Since we do so many activities with this book we also love to read some other books by Audrey Penn! We love to read A Pocket Full of Kisses, Chester the Brave, Chester the Racoon and the Big Bad Bully.
Let me know if you read any of these books with your students and if you create your own Chesters please tag me @firstgradelodge on Instagram!
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