Kindergarten - ELA
1: Letters
Unit 2: H - Hondo and Fabian
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 1 asks the child to think about different ways objects and animals move and gives examples (straight, zigzag, round and round, back and forth, fast and slow). It instructs the child to act like a dog or cat and move in the above ways, practicing different movement manners.
Unit 5: L - We're Going on a Leaf Hunt
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to act out the story and to move from room to room to represent different settings (e.g., stairs as a mountain). In places where the story uses the verb "go," adults are directed to substitute more specific verbs such as skip, march, stroll, or hop and to ask students to act out those actions. Students receive adult guidance and support while performing and practicing the different verbs in context.
Unit 6: F - Fireflies
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to recall another word that means the same thing as "blinking on, blinking off" (flickering) and to explain what "soaring" means. Students are prompted to use surrounding words as context clues to determine word meaning. The lesson explicitly engages students in discussing word relationships and nuances for these example verbs.
Unit 7: E - But No Elephants
Lesson 3
Day 3
Activity 1 asks the child to go out, knock, then come in and act like an animal while the adult guesses the animal. The adult models coming in pretending to be a horse and explains the horse's action (mowing the grass), and the child is prompted to act and have the adult guess who she is.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students glue animal puppets to craft sticks and use those puppets to retell or invent endings for the story. Students pretend to be Grandma Tildy, use an exaggerated old-lady voice, dramatize actions (knocking, opening doors, pretending to eat, sleep, wake, shop, etc.), and hold up each animal as it is introduced. These activities require students to act out parts and respond to oral storytelling.
Unit 8: C - Millions of Cats
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks the child to create motions to go along with the words of the poem and to act out what the words describe, with instruction to read the poem slowly, create motions line by line, and then perform the motions for family. The poem includes multiple action verbs (e.g., chewing, climbing, hanging, fighting, tumbling) that the child is asked to represent with physical motions. The optional extension encourages the child to recite the poem and do the accompanying motions from memory, reinforcing acting out verb meanings.
Unit 9: G - The Real Mother Goose
Lesson 1
Day 1
Activity 1 asks the child to "walk in a circle" and then explicitly prompts, "How else can she move in a circle? Try different ways of moving in a circle (such as skipping, hopping, jumping, crawling, or rolling)." The directions place an adult with the child ("With your child, read...") who will guide the child to perform each different movement. The instructions require the child to physically act out multiple verbs that describe the same general action (moving in a circle).
Unit 10: O - Owl Babies
Lesson 3
Day 3
In Activity 2, students are asked to move to shapes using different action words: the teacher asks the child to "crawl, skip, hop, walk, roll, jump, dance, or spin." The activity also has students take turns calling out shapes and deciding on the method of travel, and an optional challenge asks the child to move creatively to a shape chosen by reading its name.
Unit 12: D - Dinosaurs Big and Small
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to warm up by marching ("Play 'We are the Dinosaurs' and warm up by marching!") and to join in motions for the poem (e.g., reach up, touch toes, flap arms, make horns, and stomp). Students are prompted to discuss movement vocabulary in the book (the text notes "All dinosaurs walked tall" and asks about the meaning of "sprawl," using pictures to infer meaning). The poem and read-aloud encourage students to act out motions while saying words aloud.
Unit 14: B - Blueberries for Sal
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 3 asks the child to infer the meaning of the verb "hustle" from the picture and to try hustling like Little Bear. The activity then lists many movement verbs (walked slowly, struggled along, hurried, followed, hustled, tramping, hurried away, backed away, padded up, etc.) and directs the child to pretend to be the characters and act out how they move. The child practices producing different physical movements that correspond to different verbs describing the same general action (moving/walking).
Lesson 4
Day 4
In Activity 2 students learn and sing "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" and are prompted to add motions such as "marching" up the mountain and putting a hand over their eyes to "see." The activity directs students to substitute other movement verbs (for example, "hustled," "backed," "followed," "padded") and to perform the corresponding motions, including singing "hustled" quickly to show difference. The activity also invites students to suggest additional motions and act them out.
Unit 15: R - Rain
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson prompts children to talk about different words for rain and explicitly lists sprinkling, raining, drizzling, pouring and the noun downpour. It asks the child to discuss different kinds of rain they have experienced and whether they have been caught in a downpour and what they did.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 1 instructs the child to "find that number, move to it in a creative way (hop, jump, skip, twist, zoom, etc.) and stand on it." Students are asked to perform different movement verbs and act them out when moving to the numbered raindrops. The activity therefore has students physically produce variations of motion words such as hop, jump, and skip.
Unit 17: M - Marshmallow
Lesson 2
Day 2
The lesson asks the child what it means to "hesitate," prompting discussion of a verb's meaning. The Simon Says activity has children physically act out commands (e.g., "Touch your toes," "Spin around," "Sit down"), so students perform verbs through movement. The Oliver example (stopping himself after reprimand) is discussed, which could elicit talk about actions and self-control.
Unit 23: W - George Washington's Birthday
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks students to read sentences with italicized words, deduce meanings from context, and then use dramatic skills to act out the sentence including the action described by the italicized word(s). The activity includes action verbs such as 'strode,' 'patted,' 'toss,' 'hacked,' and directs students to act out those verbs. The instructions also prompt discussion of words with multiple meanings (for example, two meanings of 'mind').
Unit 25: X - An Extraordinary Egg
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks students to act out life-cycle stages using specific movement verbs (e.g., "sit still," "burst out," "swim," "take a little hop," "hop around," "crawl," "stretch out… and keep crawling"). Students physically perform different movement behaviors for frog and alligator stages, enacting variations in how an animal moves at each stage.
Unit 26: Z - Greedy Zebra
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 directs students to read pages of Greedy Zebra and act out the ways the animals moved. The teacher highlights and has students look out for phrases such as "crept cautiously," "peered into the darkness," "rushed out," and "running and jumping and sliding and swinging and slithering," and frames these as "action-packed verbs and verbals" to imagine and act out. Students are explicitly asked to physically perform different movement verbs from the text.
1: Environment
Unit 1: Habitats and Homes
Lesson 6
Exploring Animal Habitats
Students are asked to observe and describe how animals move (Activity 1: "How do the animals move?"). The wrapping up/optional extension asks students to role play things the animal might do and have others guess the action or animal, which requires acting out behaviors. The skills list includes "Use words that name, describe, and tell action," supporting practice with action words.
Lesson 8
Animal Care
Students are asked to practice taking care of a pet by performing actions such as feeding, brushing, playing, walking, and giving the pet a bath (Activity 1). Students who do not have a real pet are instructed to use a stuffed animal and to role-play caring actions, including walking and playing with the pretend pet. Students create and place a clay salamander in a shoebox habitat, which involves enacting needs like providing water and food (Activity 3).
Lesson 9
Animal Designs
Students are asked to imitate and act out specific animal movement verbs (e.g., swims, flies, waddles, jumps, slithers) in Activity 1 and Option 2. Students read movement words, choose matching animals, and act out each movement, and they are prompted to explain which body parts help make those movements. The wrap-up asks students to demonstrate different ways they can move (jump, slide, skip) and discuss the body parts used.
Lesson 10
Amazing Animals
Activity 2 asks students to pretend to be animals and either explain or role play what they would do in given situations (e.g., a starfish pulling free and losing an arm; a lizard hiding from a bird). The scenarios use action verbs (swim away, pull, run away, hide, change color) and prompt students to act out or describe those actions. The activities require students to present dramatic interpretations and respond to questions about how the animal would behave.
Final Project
Animal Research / My Environment
The Project Extension explicitly invites the child to "act out the pages in the book he designed, pretending to be the animal he researched or acting out the motions described on some of the pages." The Introduction asks the child to review hand motions for food, water, and shelter, giving students opportunities to use movement to represent concepts. The Wrapping Up section asks the child to explain pages and share dramatizations, which prompts students to perform actions related to the content.
Unit 3: Community
Lesson 3
Jobs in the Community
Students are asked to act out community worker jobs in a community helper charades activity, using actions instead of words to show what the worker does. Activity 4 encourages students to dress up and use props (e.g., sound the alarm, slide down the pole, drive the fire truck) and then have others guess the worker. Several activities ask students to observe, describe, and imitate workers' actions during real or observed work (Activity 3 and dressing-up in Activity 4).
3: Patterns
Unit 2: Patterns in Sounds, Words, and Actions
Lesson 4
Sentence Patterns
Students are asked to act out situations and produce sentences that describe those actions (Activity 2), and to make up sentences using provided verbs such as runs and walks (Activity 1 and Activity 5). Students choose and write action words to complete sentences in "Completing a Sentence Pattern" (Parts A–C) and circle or underline verbs in sentences from books (Activity 4 and Day 2 activities).
4: Change
Unit 1: Changes on Planet Earth
Lesson 6
Changes in the Sky
In Activity 2, students stand still while an adult walks in a circle (revolving) and then spins in place (rotating), and later trade places to perform those actions themselves. Students use a hands-on model in Activity 3 to demonstrate how the Earth revolves around the Sun and how the Moon revolves around the Earth, reinforcing the motion verbs. The wrapping up and life application ask students to describe how objects change position, explicitly using the terms rotate and revolve.