Don't Throw Your Junk in My Backyard

As this week was the week we talked about the letter J, we did a lot of things with that letter.  One of the things that we did was to learn a new song:  "Don't Throw Your Junk in my Backyard" (because "junk" starts with J). While I  know that this song has been recorded by different people (including Greg and Steve), I first remember reading about it in this great book:

The song goes like this, to the tune of  "The Wheels on the Bus":

Don't throw your junk in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard.
Don't throw your junk in my backyard, my backyard's full.

After we sang the song a few times and talked about the word "junk", I had everyone who wanted to come up with something that they wouldn't want in their backyard, and we sang it with their suggestions in it.

They all thought this was great, so today I wrote the song onto sentence strips and put it in a pocket chart.

(Unfortunately, I left a phrase out and also added a very strange period in there, but you get the idea:)

Then during Center time I invited the Little People to color a picture of something they didn't want in their backyard and told them that I would write the words for them.  

We got a wide variety of things that we didn't want in our backyard:

 

After centers, we got back together and  and sang the songs with everyone's suggestion in it.  (Even the verse that ended up as "Don't throw your dead dog in my backyard", because it's just that kind of silly song.)

The Little People loved it, and I thought it was a great way to making language meaningful (and silly) for them.

I'll be interested to see if they want to draw and label more "junk" for this chart next week...