Do the Monster Mash

Today was one of our bimonthly trips to the library and while Sean hunted for...gasp- TRAIN books, I picked out a few monster books. We have a few at home that Sean likes to read (Birthday Monsters by Sandra Boynton, Glad Monster, Sad Monster by Ed Emberly, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak) and I had seen some cute projects on Instagram, so I thought I’d grab a few new titles.

 

We read Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters by Jane Yolen and Monsters on Machines by Deb Lund. While reading we took note of how different the monsters looked in size, shape, and body parts. Sean counted eyes, used adjectives to describe, and created silly names for them based on appearance.

 

When we finished the book we whipped up half a batch of The Imagination Tree’s 4 minute no cook playdough. Anna has a very creative play based blog that I’ve been reading for a while. She has TONS of playdough ideas that far exceed simply busting open a jar of dollar store playdough. I usually make JELLO dough but didn’t feel like cooking. I prefer making my own because it doesn't dry out as fast as store bought, and it's a great way to get kids involved in the kitchen.

 

Her recipe is simple: (I halved her recipe so check out her blog for the original recipe)

• 1 cup flour
• ¼ cup salt
• 1 tablespoon cream of tarter
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• ¾ cup of boiling water
• Food coloring

 

 

Mix flour, salt, cream of tarter and vegetable oil in bowl. Add food coloring to the water and gradually mix in the water. Mix until it comes together and is slightly sticky. When it cools down knead it until no longer sticky. You may need to add a little flour if it’s too sticky. I separated the dry ingredients into 3 small bowls and added a little less than ¼ cup of colored water to each bowl.

 

 

I gathered some random loose parts and placed them in an old egg carton and Sean, Olivia, and I started creating monsters.

I used googly eyes, buttons, pom poms, cubes and craft sticks. I also pulled out some rollers, scissors and other random playdough tools.

 

This was a great activity for both kids. Yes! Olivia did try out the playdough, but since it has salt she quickly discovered that it was better for play than snacking!

 

 

After making several monsters, Sean decided he wanted to make a birthday cake for his monster like in his book Birthday Monsters by Sandra Boynton.  I love that playdough can really spark those creative juices!

 

 

 

Some other great Monster reads are:

• Go Away Big Green Monster

• If You’re a Monster and You Know It

• How to Potty Train Your Monster

• Tickle Monster

• That’s Not my Monster

• Go to Bed Monster

• The Book that Eats People

• The Monster Show

Seuss-tastic!

 

Every year on March 2 (this year the 3^rd) schools across America celebrate the famed Dr. Seuss by reading his stories, dressing up as favorite characters, and doing activities galore to celebrate his birthday. When I was teaching, especially 1^st grade, I spent the entire week exposing my students to his wonderful works while crafting, playing, and learning along the way. I’m super excited to continue the tradition at home this year with Sean and Olivia! We will share a story a day, or more, with a few activities to extend the fun. Grab yourself a few Seuss classics and join in on the fun.

A few Facts about the Author:

·         His full name is Theodor Seuss Geisel.

·         He took on the pseudonym “Seuss” after being kicked off his college’s magazine for drinking.

·         His first children’s book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times before it was finally published in 1937.

·         “The Cat in the Hat, published in 1957, was written by Seuss in response to a 1954 LIFE magazine article that criticized children's reading levels, Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked him to write a children's primer using 220 vocabulary words.”

·         Before his death in 1991 Dr. Seuss published 60 children’s books.

A few activities we will be doing this week in honor of Dr. Seuss…(Click red links to be directed to activities throughout!)

The Cat in the Hat…the book that sparked the craze!

Sean is working on beginning sounds so he will complete a matching activity sheet created on a word document with a simple table. He will look at the –at word picture and find/match the correct beginning sound.

Hat pattern activity- Use various strips of colored paper to make patterns on the Cat’s Hat.

Thing 1 & 2 Handprint art with Sean and Olivia

 

And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry St… Perfect since that street is in our neighborhood!

Sean will make and decorate toilet paper roll binoculars and take a walk on Mulberry Street in our neighborhood noting things he sees and practice using descriptive language!

 

Mcelligot’s Pool

Sean and Olivia will make water color paintings of a pool and make fish collages to add to the pool.  For the water color paintings, tape a large sheet of white paper to an easel or wall and dilute some blue tempera paint with water. Provide large brushes to coat the paper. Then provide several fish shaped templates and a ton of random art scraps (construction paper, foil, material, buttons, string, etc.) and collage away!

Sean will play a magnetic fishing game where he will fish for paper fish with paper clips attached, practicing his colors, shapes, and numbers. To make the fishing pole simply attach a magnet to the end of a pencil or stick.

 

Green Eggs and Ham… One of my favorites!

We will of course have a good ol' fashion green eggs (spinach scramble) and ham (bacon) breakfast.

Both kiddos will explore in a Green Eggs and Ham themed bath.

Sean will play a matching game (upper and lower case letter) and a counting game. For the letter match I folded a paper into 8 rectangles and free handed 8 egg shapes then made 8 small green circles. I wrote uppercase letters on the paper and lower case letters on the circles. On the back I repeated the same 8 egg shapes and covered it with contact paper. He will place 8 dollops of green play dough as the yolk and stick a dry spaghetti stick in the center. He will place a magnetic number on each egg and count out and place the correct number of buttons on the spaghetti. This is great practice for counting and fine motor skills.

If I Ran the Zoo

Of course a zoo outing is in order to end the week!

Sean will also play an online animal mix up game!

I’m beyond excited for this week’s Seuss-tastic activities! I hope you grab a few of your favorites and join in on the fun!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS!!!!!

Tell me a Tale

I am a huge fan of fairytales, and the benefits they provide for young readers are fantastic. Though Sean is a bit young for the Brother Grimm tales LOL, I love that fairy tales have a moral and often teach children of tribulation and perseverance. Educationally speaking they are a perfect genre in terms of teaching story elements as they have well developed characters (protagonist and antagonist), magical settings, problems, and solutions. Fairytales are simple enough to remember and retell with fun props and have the cutest twisted rewrites (fractured tales) such as The Runaway Tortilla, The Rolling Rice Cake, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, and Goldilocks and Just 1 Bear. They are great examples for teaching fact from fiction and carry children off into imaginary wonders. They also serve as great ways to ease into discussions of various character traits.

I chose to introduce The 3 Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the 3 Bears since they both play off the 3s theme and he is newly 3!!!! He loved both stories as I expected so I created 2 simple activities to accompany them.

The 3 Little Pigs

Supplies:

Clear Contact Paper

3 triangles cut from colored paper

Container to collect items (sticks, straw, brick look alikes)

3 pig stickers or clipart

 

Process:

After reading the book, several times, take your child on a nature hunt for items to build the 3 little pigs’ homes. I let Sean brainstorm items and he found pine needles for straw, twigs for sticks, and mulch for bricks.

 

Tape a sheet of contact paper sticky side up on your surface. Retell the story together and build the houses as you go. Everything should stick to the contact paper. Place each little pig into their newly built home and have the big bad wolf blow the houses down. This was a fun retelling!

 

 

 

 

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

I made a word document with clipart pictures and labels for the opposite pairs listed and clipart images of a bowl in several sizes. Sean and I have been working on opposites and this story is great for reviewing hot/cold, high/low, big/little, full/empty, awake/asleep and also ordering by size. I placed half of the opposite matches on contact paper (sticky side up) and had Sean find the matching opposite and place it next to it, you could also use the pieces for a matching game or have your little one practice gluing. For the bowls have your child order from biggest to smallest, smallest to biggest or sort small, medium, large.

 

I already have my eye on some fractured fairytales so stay tuned!

Snow Babies

I guess all of the books about snow days that Sean and I have been reading over the past few weeks have awoken the snow gods because Hotlanta got SNOW!!! It hasn’t snowed since the year Sean was born so the excitement was unreal. We were home to catch the first snowflakes, watch the soft fluffy flakes pile on top of leaves, and played for hours.

I love the connection that Sean was able to make from our snow day and the story The Snowy Day.  We made tracks in the snow, threw snow balls, made snow angels, and built a small snowman just like Peter. In the morning we woke up to snow still on the ground and he was so excited as he noted that the sun hadn’t melted the snow yet like in his book.

When I was in the classroom I noticed a huge discrepancy between my readers and nonreaders. Those students who loved to read and had a tendency to be stronger readers had vast background knowledge (also called prior knowledge) to topics we were studying because they had been exposed to similar experiences outside of the classroom. These experiences gave them a leg up over their peers who lacked exposure to a variety of topics in vocabulary and comprehension. Because they already had prior knowledge they were able to dig deeper and be more inquisitive than those who spent their time just trying to get the basics of the topic.  As a teacher I promised myself that when I had kids of my own I would try my best to provide them with opportunities to explore their surroundings, various people, and situations out of the 4 walls in a room. I often use books, songs, and nature to help Sean build connections from what he learns and experiences. This was a perfect ending to all of our stories on winter days.  

One of my favorite things about living in the southeast is that we truly get to experience all 4 seasons and the splendor each one brings. This was a magical time for both my babes.

Olivia didn’t quite enjoy wearing all the layers I stuffed her in, but it was so cute to watch her explore how the snow felt on her fingers and the taste of it on her tongue. She even braved sledding on daddy’s make-shift box lid sled.

 

Tomorrow will probably be the last of our snow this season, as the temperature will be rising so I plan on bringing a pan of snow in the house for Sean to “paint” with food colored water and a medicine dropper. We will also be making an Ezra Jack Keats inspired “Snowy Day” illustration of our own. Sean will use crayons to draw a picture of his favorite snowy day activity (with the help of mommy) and then he will use water color paints to wash over his drawing.

If you and your little one would like to join us in our snowy day activities checkout the author’s webpage for a free read aloud, games, and activities for the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

http://www.ezra-jack-keats.org/the-snowy-day-fun-and-games/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smitten with Mittens

Missing Mitten Mystery

Baby it’s STILL cold outside, so we’re still indulging in chilly stories. This week we’ve been smitten by mittens… Missing Mitten Mystery that is! This Steven Kellogg story tells of little Annie’s search for her missing red mitten. She retraces her steps from the day and daydreams of places her mitten could be, only to discover it in an unlikely place.

The missing mitten was Annie’s 5^th one she had lost, so before reading the book I “hid” 5 red paper mittens around the playroom. After we read the story I had Sean hunt for all 5 mittens and then put them in numerical order.

 
 

 

Next, Sean and I played a mitten memory game. Very simple, I just cut out mitten shapes from various scrapbook papers in pairs. Then like any traditional memory game we flipped the mittens upside down and took turns flipping them over to try to find matching patterns.

 

Annie’s missing mitten was found, as the heart, in the snowman that she built with her friends earlier in the day. The final project was a snowman puppet. Sean’s grandparents had taken him to the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts last week to see a play about a snowman that fell in love with a stove; he was given a snowman kit to make his own puppet. We used the template provided and I let Sean decorate it to his liking.

Extending stories for toddlers and preschool aged children is fun and easy. I always preview the story first and find some element of the story that I can connect with art, math, science, movement, colors, vocabulary, or letters. It doesn’t take much to make meaningful learning through play, reading, and art.

Snowy Day

Burrrrr! I don’t know about where you live, but it’s sure been cold this past week in Georgia. The temperature dropped to a chilly 5 degrees and I secretly prayed for some nice fluffy snow for my kids to enjoy…but all we got was COLD! So we snuggled up and experienced a snowy day inside the only other way I know- in a book.

 

I remember reading Snowy Day  by Ezra Jack Keats when I was a kid and reading it to my kiddos brought back memories of building snowmen, making snow angels, and making snow cones with my sisters. In this award winning story a little boy named Peter wakes up to a snowy day and experiences all the joys that snow brings. He even tries to keep a snowball memento in his pocket for later. Sean was captivated by the illustrations and intrigued by all the things that you can do with snow. When a child’s interested is peaked from something in a book it is the prime time to extend the story.

Activity #1: Sensory

The first day that we read the story I let Sean experiment with some Grow Snow. Grow Snow is a fine white powder that I purchased in the science section of Hobby Lobby (I have also seen it at teacher supply stores and Michaels craft store), when you add water it expands and swells and takes on the texture of real snow. I added some crushed ice that I blended to make a more “snow” like feel. Sean was in love at first touch. He scooped, squished, and even tried to make a miniature snowman.

Olivia had the chance to play in some crushed ice as well. Since she is still in the “put everything in the mouth” phase I didn’t feel comfortable with her playing in the Grow Snow. She loved the ice, of course she spent most of her time sucking and soothing her gums.

 

Activity #2: Fine Motor

Sean’s been learning to correctly hold and use scissors, so I found making some good old fashioned paper snowflakes to be the perfect activity to compliment the story. Because he is just learning to cut I used thin, white cupcake liners in lieu of regular paper (coffee filters would work too). If you’re unfamiliar with making paper snowflakes, all you do is fold paper several times and cut out shapes on the folded sides…open and reveal a beautiful snowflake.

 

 

We talked about how every snowflake design is different and special, and compared the patterns on the 2 he made with the one I made.

Activity #3: Science

In the story, Peter places a snowball in his pocket for later but when he returns to check on it he is disappointed that it’s “gone.” Sean was confused as to where it went so we did a quick experiment. We talked about how heat can melt things. I gave Sean a candle to hold over an ice cube and we watched as the ice cube slowly “turned to water.”

 

Next we put the ice cube in a baggie and placed it in Sean’s pocket, like Peter, and left it there while he completed his last story activity.

 

Of course, after 15 minutes we checked it…and Sean discovered that it was completely “gone” like Peter’s snowball.

 

Activity #4: Felt Board

For the last activity I gave Sean several pieces that I cutout of felt (purchased at Hobby Lobby 4 sheets for a dollar) to create a snowy day scene. I used the easel that he got for Christmas, and just attached a large piece of stiff felt (purchased at Hobby Lobby for less than a dollar) as the background. Since he is in love with trains I also included some pieces to make tracks and trains, as well as parts for a snowman, and trees. This was a big hit with Sean. He has a much smaller felt board and pieces that I made for travel and restaurant use, but he loved having a larger surface to create a bigger scene. I will have another post soon with more ways to use your easel and felt boards so stay tuned.

 

 

 

Make sure to check out the author’s webpage for a read aloud and games: http://www.ezra-jack-keats.org/fun-games/the-snowy-day-read-aloud/