Autumn at Cody Elementary School

Autumn is a beautiful time in Iowa!  Our school is located on the outskirts of historic LeClaire, where Interstate 80 crosses the Mississippi River.  LeClaire is the birthplace of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, for whom our school is named.  Although we are in the heart of the Quad Cities area, a grouping of cities and townships that contain over a quarter million people within two states, Cody Elementary School has a surprisingly rural location… we are literally surrounded by cornfields. 

When we come back to school in the middle of August, the corn that surrounds us has already grown much taller than we are – and it still isn’t done growing!  Along with brisk winds and falling leaves, one of the signs of autumn at Cody is the harvest that takes place around us.  In recognition of this harvest, our first grade class delved into a study of scarecrows.   

I'm A little Scarecrow!

 

We read many wonderful books about scarecrows.  Some of our favorites included:

The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston
Jeb Scarecrow’s Pumpkin Patch by Jana Dillon
The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown
Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant

 Our class has been working a lot on making connections when we read; these books worked great as we practiced the skill of making text-to-text connections. 

In conjunction with our readings, we created paper scarecrows and wrote our own “web stories” about the fictional lives of our scarecrows.  We also wrote poems titled “Scarecrows Are…”, which we made into a class book.  Finally, we created scarecrow heads out of wire hangers and paper.