Mrs. Drakes room - STORYTELLING

BIG MOUTH FROG

Big Mouth Frog Flannel Board Story
Submitted by Jan
The Big Mouth Frog
You will need: 1 frog (or you can use two-one with a big mouth and one with small mouth), 1 giraffe, 1 elephant, 1 crocodile,
Once upon a time there was a little frog with a Very Big Mouth. The frog use to drive everyone crazy with his big mouth. He was always opening it and hollering at people. "HI! WHO ARE YOU? I'M THE BIG MOUTH FROG!" (as you say it make your own mouth big and wide) One morning he decided to find out what everyone ate for breakfast. He hopped out of his frog pond, hopped to the zoo, and began to pester all the animals. The first animal he met was a giraffe. "HI! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU EAT FOR BREAKFAST?" The giraffe looked down. "I am a giraffe. I eat leaves for breakfast." "Well, I'M THE BIG MOUTH FROG! I EAT FLIES FOR BREAKFAST!" He stuck out his long tongue, and SLUUUUURP, he caught a fly. Continue with: elephant - leaves; monkeys - bananas; The Big mouth frog went to visit the crocodile. "Hi! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU EAT FOR BREAKFAST?" "I am the crocodile. I eat BIG MOUTH FROG for breakfast. Who did you say you were?" I'M THE BIG MOUTH-Ooops! I'm the small mouth frog. (have your mouth go form wide open I eat FL-Ooops... mo-o-squi-i-to-o-es for breakfast. "And the small mouth frog hopped right back to his pond. oooh...ooooh(his mouth is making a tiny "o")

BIRTHDAY CAKE, THE

These are some activitites that I like to do with The Birthday Cake.
- recall and sequence color order, use ordinal numbers
- TLC style art project (just round corners of rectangles and layer by color), finish with sentence: My birthday is on _______________.
- Building Blocks style sentence strip dictation made into class book: I will have ____ (#) candles on my
______ (color) birthday cake
Centers:
build cakes with unifix cubes (using reference sheets that have the cake colors in order, or the color words)
-given play dough and number cards, make cakes and stick correct number of birthday candles in each cake
- given a baggie full of small cakes cut from colored paper, build a graph, use again to make patterns
- follow color order in book to make "cakes" using vanilla wafers and colored frostings
- use colored blocks to design and build birthday cakes

BLUE BALLOON, THE

A wonderful book is The Blue Balloon by Mick Inkpen. The kids love it. After reading the book, I give them each a cut out of a balloon to dip in soap (Dawn Detergent and water) that I've added some blue paint to. I teach them how to blow into a straw to make bubbles in the soapy water. They then gently lay the paper balloon on top of the bubbles, and it makes a beautiful design. When they are dry, I add a ribbon (string) to the bottom and put a little typed blurb on it that says: Today we read The Blue Balloon Mick Inkpen. Ask me about it!

BROWN BEAR COLOR BOOK

Submitted by Peta
I made a Brown Bear color book that I do with my kids at the start of the year during our color theme.
Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?
I see a.....
red apple looking at me (sponge paint red apple)
blue bird looking at me (blue collage)
green leaf looking at me (leaf print)
yellow star looking at me (finger-paint print on cut out star)
orange balloon looking at me (staple orange balloon onto picture of bear holding string)
purple grapes looking at me (bubble wrap print)
pink lollipop (squeeze bottle paint swirl)
black spider looking at me (scrunch black paper to glue on - draw legs)
We do one page a day and they turn out great! The kids love reading them! The cover has a picture of a bear which they color brown and brush over with dye.

Submitted by Karen
We use this popular book as our model to make our own version for our new class each year. Take a picture of each child, along with a picture of each teacher. Place photos individually on pages (the teachers' pictures will be on the last pages) and bind with rings to form your book. Begin with the first page, and add the words of that child's name, followed with the next page's child's name.
ex. "Christopher, Christopher, who do you see? I see Jonathan looking at me!" On the next page you would continue, "Jonathan, Jonathan, who do you see? I see Melissa looking at me." Your last page will be that of the teacher and will read, "Ms. Karen, Ms. Karen, who do you see? I see beautiful children looking at me!" I recommend that you laminate the pages because this book will get a lot of use! (Kids love looking at themselves! o) ) In our class, we take turns sending it home with each child. Not only do they begin to recognize their own name, they start to recognize their friends' names as well, and the parents get to know the classmates.

Brown Bear Visual Memory Activity
Submitted by Judy Haskin
I found these ideas on the internet-sorry I cannot give credit to the originators. I have used these ideas and they work.I have flannelboard pictures for all the "Brown Bear" animals. After chances to tell and retell the story with the pictures, I put all the animals on the flannel board. I ask the kids to close/cover their eyes-no peeking! I remove one of the animals and the students try to remember and guess which is missing.Sometimes I remove more than one. They love to play!
Math Game #2
Make a game board in the shape of a circle, and section it off, placing a picture or drawing of one of the "brown bear" animals in each section. In the center of the circle place a spinner. A spinner can be purchased or made with a paper clip and a pencil holding it in place. To take a turn the student spins and the others ask-"Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?"The student tells what he "saw" according to where the spinner stops. We then "tally" using marks or cubes. Students take turns spinning and tallying. We then use this information to make a Brown Bear graph.

CAT IN THE HAT

Find a large hat and round up small things from the house/classroom to put in the hat..if you really want to get into it..only put in things that ryhme with hat..i.e. small cat from dollhouse, or word cards with ryhming words that get acted out charade style..then either blindfold kids if they are taking items out and have them figure out what it is..then maybe match to a corresponding word card. Or if it is cards in the hat, choose a card and act it out...

CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM

Submitted by Alice
After reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, I use contact paper to make palm trees on two small cookie sheets. Magnetic letters and numbers can then be used on them. For the math idea, I give the children magnetic numbers and Coco Puff cereal (coconuts). They choose a number and put that many coconuts on the tree. Then they eat their coconuts. This is great for number recognition. Later, I use it for number words. It can also be used for addition and subtraction practice.

Bring in a real coconut. Let them feel and shake it. Draw a large coconut on butcher paper and hang it on the wall at their eye level. As the children feel and explore the coconut, write down the words they use to describe it and hang these words around the coconut.
Use a hammer and nail to pierce the shell and drain the milk. (If you are also studying community helpers, ask your school custodian to come in and help open the coconut.) Allow anyone who wants too to sample the milk.
(Have water on hand) Chart who likes it and who doesn't. Next break the shell open with the hammer. (Cover it with a towel) Scrape off the meat for the kids to sample. A potato peeler works well and is safer to have at circle time. If the children don't like the taste, then let them try shredded baking coconut. Again chart their reactions.
Day 1: WE pass around and discuss a real coconut - what's inside, how it feels, etc.
Day 2: I open the coconut up with a hammer in front of the children and we pour out the milk and we feel and smell the inside of the coconut.
Day 3: We taste the real coconut and the shredded coconut and graph our favorite.
Day 4: WE make a coconut fruit salad : 1 cup of cherries, 1 cup of mandarine oranges, 1 cup of pineapple chunks, 1 cup of sliced banana, and 1 cup of shredded coconut, mix and eat!
I also use science journals and everyday we write and draw about the acitivity we did in science.

Submitted by Eilleen
Here is an activity that I did with my kinders this year and it turned out great. I had half the class finger paint brown and half green. I told them that we would be using them to cut out trees and leaves so they wouldn't necessarily get 'their' paper back. When they were dry, I traced leaves on the back of the green and trunks on the back of the brown. Each child got 5 or 6 leaves and 1 trunk to cut out. Then they glued them to a white paper to make the tree. Then, they sponge painted letters all over the tree and paper. It really looked like the tree in the book. They were thrilled, the parents loved them, and the children got practice in finger-painting (fun), cutting and pasting.

CAPS FOR SALE

Read the book Caps for Sale. I pin lots of hats on top of each other, and wear it as I read the story.
For an activity I have the children make a hat, I cut strips of paper to go around their heads. I put on a table many different items, like pompoms,
feathers, stickers, yarn, foam shapes etc. to decorate their hat and then ask the children at circle time to tell us about their hat. I then write down their comments and we make up our own caps for sale story. great You will be amazed at the creativity and interesting hats as well as a great story. I also have children bring in hats for us to look at, beach hats, sport hats, winter hats. etc.
Have Fun!

CHARLOTTE'S WEB

Submitted by Raymel
After reading the book Charlotte's Web have your sudents choose a character from the book .Write his or her name in the middle of the Web . With a partner , brainstorm ideas about what the character is like -what he\she does the way the character acts,etc. Write different ideas in each section of the web.Share your character Web with the class.

CHICKEN SOUP WITH RICE by Maurice Sendak

Read it once. Read it twice. Read it with chicken soup and rice! Serve small bowls of chicken soup with rice to accompany Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup With Rice that features the months of the year and some pretty unusual uses for chicken soup. As a follow-up, create rice collages. Prepare the rice in advance by soaking it in bowls of water and food coloring for about five minutes. Drain the rice and let it dry overnight. Provide each child with a construction paper circle to represent a bowl of soup. Encourage each child to squirt or spread glue on his circle as desired and then cover it with colored rice. Any month of the year, art with rice is mighty nice!

CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG

Submitted by Tammy
Clifford graduation hats. I am a preschool teacher and every year we plan a graduation for our jumpstart class. This year we will be doing the theme Clifford. I wanted to do something out of the ordinary so I took a look out the average graduation cap and cut one out of red construction paper. I add ears and for the tassle I am using a dog bone with the year 2003. It is sooo cute! I showed it to the 5 year olds. They had a fit they wanted to wear it now. They can`t wait for graduation day.

Submitted by Adrienne Sprecker
My class had a really great time making Clifford Fridge magnets. Materials needed : Mini - dog biscuits (red) ,Small Red pompom, extra small black pom-pom, 2 wiggly eyes, red felt for the ears and magnetic tape.
First you choose a red dog biscuit that looks like a small bone and you glue on the red pom- pom. Then you glue the little black pom-pom on top (this is Clifford's nose). Above this you glue your wiggly eyes and then make the ears out of the felt ( Clifford's ears are quite big and floppy). Glue on the Fridge magnet on the back. Put it high on the fridge so your pet doesn't eat it!!!

Submiited by Maryann
We used red plastic cups (large size) and added long red ears, squiggly eyes, small pom pom nose and drew a mouth with marker. We used our puppets when we sang Clifford songs and Do Your Ears Hang Low.

Submitted by Margaret
You could paint with red paint, finger paint with red paint, paint with dog bone cookie cutters, paint with dog shaped cookie cutters. I also have painted with small, medium and large milk bones. Just a few.

Submitted by Jan
Cut out a large, red heart; a large, narrow pink heart; two small, white hearts; and a black heart.
To make Clifford, turn the red heart upside down to represent his face. Cut the pink heart in half; then attach one half to each side of the red heart to represent ears. Finally glue on the white heart eyes and the black heart nose and you have Clifford.

Submitted by Bobbi
I have used a bone cookie cutter and made bone cookies for them to eat. They thought it was such a hoot to eat Clifford's bones. We used a package sugar cookie mix and added cinnamon to make it darker. Then they cut out the bone shape and we cooked them.
The next day, in the play dough they made bones and started to count how many bones they would need to feed Clifford.
We have also painted big red dogs on big pieces of paper.
We have gone on a Clifford hunt following Clifford's tracks around the school. We would stop at the office, library, cafeteria, gym and nurse to see where he went. It was great because the kids would say how can you not have seen him-he is a BIG RED DOG? We would follow the tracks back to our porch where a friend of mine would be waiting with a Veterinarian, who always comes up with a Irish Setter or Red Golden Retriever. The kids love it and really get into pet care afterwards.

Following cross curricular activities submitted by Anita
Read about CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG.
Have a large poster sized Clifford that the children color red by tearing red pieces of construction paper and gluing onto him.
Title: Clifford the Big Red Dog (Tune: Bingo)
Emily Elizabeth had a dog
And Clifford was his name -o
Clifford was his name
Clifford was his name
Clifford was his name
And Clifford was his name - o
Emily Elizabeth had a dog
And Clifford was his name -o
He was R-E-D
He was R-E-D
He was R-E-D
Clifford was a big RED dog-o
Make this on large chart paper with a big red clifford drawn first and the letters written on it..the letters are all done in black except the work red which of course is done in red.
Make red dog ears and attach them to a red head band to wear. Sing "if you're a red dog clap your hands..." Paint their noses black and paint a few freckles on their faces.
Start with a red circle for his face. Use the children's red hand prints to make his ears (hands upside down). Then sing "Do your ears hang low?"
Read a different Clifford book everyday.
Draw a giant Clifford, and have all of the kids help color him red.
Make Clifford cupcakes by frosting the cupcake red, then adding M&M eyes, a whopper nose and red thin string licorice for ears.
Title: Puppy Chow
Melt in microwave:
1 stick margarine
2/3 cup peanut butter
1 pkg. chocolate chips
Pour over 1 12 oz box Chex cereal in a large bowl. Stir. Give each child a zip lock baggie with a little powdered sugar in the bottom. Add one spoonful of cereal mixture and zip bag. Then the children shake it up until it cools. Be sure the servings are very small as this is very sweet.
Use a projector to blow up a picture of Clifford on white butcher paper. Give students strips of red construction paper to cut up and glue inside of the shape to make it red. When the shape is covered, glue on eyes and a black collar.
Use a dog bone cookie cutter (Wilton makes them - Walmart sells them) to cut out play dough, sugar cookies or peanut butter play dough bones.
Make big Cliffords with red paper, ie. an oval for the body out of 12 x18 paper, a circle for the head out of 9x12 paper, ovals out of 41/2 x 6 for the long ears, and smaller pieces for the tail and feet. Cut, glue together and draw the face on with black.
Clifford's Counting Song (tune this old man)
Clifford the big red dog
He ate zero and was a hero
With a knick-knack paddy whack
Give that dog a bone
Then lets all go rolling home
...one and had some fun
...two and then he grew
...three up a tree
....four down on the floor
....five and took a dive
....six and chased some sticks
...seven and looked to heaven
...eight and cleaned his plate
....ten and started again

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS

Read aloud Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. After reading and discussing the story, create this impressive child made mural to display in your classroom. Provide a long sheet of bulletin board paper. On the lower portion of the paper, have children draw elements of a town, such as houses, stores, gas stations, and a post office. Then have them paint or sponge paint scattered raindrops and clouds in the sky portion. While the paint is drying, have each child make a construction paper food item or cut out food pictures from discarded magazines. Then glue the food creations and/or pictures in the sky area. Display the completed mural with the title "Cloudy With a Chance of…"

COOKIES WEEK

My favourite follow up activity is (and this is not original!!) to finish the story. As a class we discuss what Cookie the cat might do on Sunday. Then each child is responsible for illustrating their ending and finishing the sentence "On Sunday Cookie .......". This is made into a class book to be shared and then put in the class library.

CORDUROY

This month, we made a Corduroy class book. After spending a lot of time doing activities relating to that book, I copied and enlarged a picture of Corduroy. On each page, I pasted the bear's picture and left half the paper blank. Underneath, I wrote Corduroy and so and so. Each child will make a picture of themselves and color in Corduroy. We will compile all the pages
and make it available for each child to take the class book home and share with their families crossing the child's name off in the back once they had a turn.

Read Corduroy by Don Freeman's
Make brown craft foam bears & overalls out of a differant color. Hot glue overalls on each bear. Gather pairs of large craft buttons-hot glue one button on each pair on a differant bear. Place remaining buttons in a container in center . Invite children to match buttons by placing the corresponding button on the bears overalls.

Circle Time (Discussions)
Read the story to the children and involve the children in talking about the story. Tell the children they are going to pretend to be Corduroy searching for his button. Review the spatial relationship concepts that are a part of the story: up the escalator, on top of the bed, on the shelf.
Tell the children the area in the room in which they can move while searching for the button. Ask the children to act out the movements as you retell the story about Corduroy searching for his button. Expand on the story adding words describing spatial relationships, such as jumps off the shelf to search for his button; walks up the escalator; searches (looking on the floor); searches under, on top of, behind and between furniture; squeezes between furniture; climbs on the mattress and falls off; hears (put hand to ear) the lamp crash; climbs back onto the bed and falls asleep; blinks because the night watchman's flashlight shines in his eyes; gets carried back down the steps; plops back on the shelf; and smiles when he gets carried home by his new friend.
Cognitive (Math Concepts/Critical Thinking)
Have a tray out with all kinds of different colored buttons. Have the children match the colors of the buttons. Use this as an extension activity to Corduroy's missing button.
Cooking (Snacks)
Make round shortbread cookies, poke four holes in each cookie to look like a button. You can also put icing on the cookies and have the children decorate it with four raisins as the holes of the button.
Creative Arts & Activities
Cut a Corduroy bear and an overall pattern out of tag board for the children
to use as tracers. They trace the bear on brown and the overalls onto their
choice out of wallpaper book. Glue them together and add buttons. For
smaller children, precut and have them choose the color and paste.
For "A Pocket for Corduroy", make pockets. Sew a little muslin pocket (just two squares sewn on three sides, with a ribbon attached to wear as a necklace), and the kids decorate them with fabric markers. They love to wear
their pockets, and fill them with odds and ends.
Button Pictures - Discuss Corduroy's missing button. Ask the children where they think it might be. Give children a button, drawing materials, glue, and some paper. Encourage them to use the button as a part of their picture.
Language & Literacy (Puppets)
Discuss the events in the story and encourage children to talk about their favorite part of the story.
Make a flannel story using simple bear shape, little girl, button & overalls. Practice reading story to self and then tell it to children as an alternative storytelling experience. Afterwards the children can tell the story to themselves.
Fine/Gross Motor Development
Make a bed for Corduroy out of a sheet of heavy paper, or tag and 4 toilet paper rolls. Quilts (patterning) can also be made with squares of different colored and printed papers glued to a square or rectangle of butcher paper. The beds are durable enough for a small teddy bear from home too.
Music & Movement
Original Song used in Corduroy
Tune: Are You Sleeping?
Corduroy, Corduroy
Searched for his button, Searched for his button.
He looked on the floor. He looked on the floor,
Of the department store, Of the department store.
Corduroy, Corduroy
Searched for his button. Searched for his button.
He walked up the escalator. He walked up the escalator
To the furniture department, to the furniture department.
(Add other verses in sequence to the story.)
Circle Time & Group Activities
Pass the Button - Have children sit in a circle. Play music, and teach the children to play "pass the button". Periodically stop the music, and the child who is holding the button when the music stops can stand to continue the game. Keep playing till all are standing, and then play again, having them sit when they have the button this time. The children really need to focus on listening and body movement to pass the button to a sitting or standing friend
Social/Emotional
Ask the children how Corduroy might feel at different stages in the different books. Ex: How do you think Corduroy felt when he lost his button? How did Corduroy feel when he was finally picked to be someone's special teddy bear? Etc

DO YOU LIKE MY HAT?

I like to read the book DO YOU LIKE MY HAT by Dr. Seuss. Mother's day week. We then make a mother's day hat for our moms.
Take a white paper plate and make to small slits on the plate, big enough to
slide a ribbon through, that make the tie for the hat.
Then give the children lots of silk or make paper flowers, ribbon, scrapes
of material, sequence and any other creative material you have and glue it
to the plate.
I invite moms to school for a Mother's day tea and just before we present
the hat, the teacher tape on a small balloon on top and then have each child
give a hat to mom. Get the cameras ready and have some great laughs.
We recite this poem:
What a mother means to ME
M is for the many things you do.
O is for the other things you do.
T is for the tons of things you do.
H is for the hundreds of things you do.
E is for everything you do.
R is the the rest of the things you do.

ELMER THE ELEPHANT

Review Colors
Art Activity:
Cut out pieces of paper in the shape of elephants. Provide several colors of tempera paint, sponges, bristle blocks, combs, strawberry baskets, etc. Have children dip the sponges, etc., into paint and paint the elephants colorful!
What Will Happen Next?
When reading the story stop after Elmer turns himself "elephant" color and have the class make predictions about what will happen next. Write the predictions on chart paper and have the children vote on what they think will happen next. Turn the voting results into a graphing activity using little elephant cutouts on the graph to show the results.
Patterning
Give children an ouline of an elephant. Tell them to fill in the outline by creating a pattern such as stripes, colors, etc. Use the last page as an example for the class in the patterning. Make an "Elmer Day Parade" book. Accordion fold for a long,colorful parade of Elmers'. the cover should be a simple gray elephant to lead the parade.
Art
Give each child a large outline of Elmer. Cut many colors of tissue paper into 1" squares. Glue the tissue squares into the outline to completely fill it. When dry cut it out and talk about the similarities and differences with the creations.

EVERYBODY BREAKS BREAD by Norah Dooly

A rainy day errand introduces Carrie to many different kinds of bread, including chapatis, challah, coconut bread, corn bread Italian bread, pocket bread and pupusas. Includes recipes.
Circle Time (Discussions)
Point out the different types of bread in the pictures.Tell the children that people living in all parts of the world eat bread but that bread doesn't always look like the bread we eat.Show them the different types of bread you have brought to share with them.Discuss the differences in the breads and the cultures they have come from.Invite the children to taste small pieces of the bread you have brought.Talk about the differences in the taste of the bread and which type of bread the children liked best.
Art
As an extension, make baker's hats. Let the children decorate a 3-inch strip of white (sturdy) paper, that will fit around their head, with sponge prints or with food stickers. Staple a sheet of tissue paper around the top of the strip. Put tape over the staples on the inside of the strip so it won't scratch the children's skin. Gather the tissue paper into your
hand and tie with a piece of yarn on the inside or outside. Let the children wear their baker's hats throughout their playtime. [Erna] a.. Let the children find pictures in magaines to cut out and glue on bread cards. In addition to cutting out food items they like on sandwiches, the children could cut out pictures of items they think would make a silly sandwich.
Language
Own Book Extension. Make a book and ask each of the children to finish the sentence . . . "Everybody Eats . . . " Then, have the children paint or draw a picture of an item they like to eat. Put it all into one neat book and read it to the class. If you wish, you could also let the children take turns having the book at home for a night or two. You could also put a picture of the child on their page.

GET TO ELEVEN

This book is excellent for helping children learn how to count in twos and threes and so on. It starts out by counting to twelve, but leaving out eleven and asking where's eleven. Then throughout the rest of the book you count to eleven using two or three different objects. For example picking up nine acorns from a forest floor and two acorns, equaling eleven. This book will help chilren understand the concept of adding and subtracting better.
Lesson Plan
This lesson plan could be used for ages 3-5
To begin lesson first introduce the book to the children and read it once. Then I would explain the concept of adding different things and still getting the same number. While explaining this I would show examples from the book. Then i would let the children take turns counting all the examples from the book.
Activity!
Materials: glue, construction paper, cut-outs of shapes, animals, etc. (in the book there are rabbits, flowers, cars, apples, frogs, turtles, stars, and others).
When explaining a math concept to young children it helps them understand it better if you can give them some sort of visual activity to go along with it. I would give the children each a piece of paper and let them each count 11 different shapes of objects from the book to glue on their paper. This activity would help them practice counting and adding plus it makes a cute picture for them to take home.

GINGERBREAD MAN

Submitted by Marilyn
I have been having fun with my 3's class with a gingerbread theme. I have repeatedly read the story of the gingerbread boy by Karen Schmidt. I precut out 6" gingerbread boys (from brown construction paper) and put them on craft sticks. I handed one out to each child at circle time. Then when I was reading the story, they could participate by pretending that their moving their gingerbread boy stick puppets to "run, run as fast as you can". They enjoyed using a prop with the story. We had gingerbread cookies for snack. The next time I did the story using pictures from the story. I xeroxed key photos and put them on crafts sticks. Then I told the story orally (using just the stick pictures) and the children loved that too. We baked gingerbread that day and enjoyed it for snack. Tomorrow, I will have the children tell the story to me using the stick puppets. I have purchased large gingerbread cookies and the children will decorate them with pink icing and m&ms, sprinkles, gumdrops. This will be a hit, I am sure!
For art, we decorated large, brown construction paper gingerbread boys. Another day, we used gingerbread boy cookie cutters dipped in white or pink paint and printed onto brown paper. It came out so cute. At the easel, I precut large gingerbread easel paper shapes and they used different types of brushes with brown, white and pink paint.
Flannel board
5 small brown gingerbread boys cut from felt
5 little gingerbreads sitting on a tray,
one jumped up and ran away,
"Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can"
"You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man"
(continue with 4, 3, 2, 1 gingerbread men)

Every time you say "little old lady", the children say "Oh, Dear" (in a very soft high voice) and when you say "little old man", they say (in a very DEEP loud voice) "I'm hungry". Every time you say "ran" or "run", the children hit their hands on the top of their legs. After each animal that is met along the way, they make the appropriate sound. When you say "fox", they can say "swish, swish" for the sound its tail would make.

Five Little Gingerbread Men
Five little gingerbread men in a row (Hold up five fingers, waving back & forth)
Not gonna' eat one no, no, no. (shake finger and head side to side)
But they look so sweet from head to toe (hand binoculars at eyes touch head then toes)
Crunch, munch...uh oh! (slap thighs on crunch, clap hands on munch, then put hands over mouth on uh oh)
Continue until...
No little gingerbread men in a row
Wasn't gonna' eat one, no, no, no
But they looked so sweet that it's sad to tell (binoculars on sweet, then index fingers run down cheeks to represent tears on sad)
Crunch..munch... oh well! (slap thighs once, clap once, then throw hands up and shrug shoulders)

Home project for The Gingerbread Man
Draw a gingerbread man or woman on a piece of large cardboard - one for each student. Send the cardboard gingerbread person home with the children, along with the following note written on a smaller gingerbread paper explaining the project. When the gingerbread creations come back to school, take pictures of each one individually. Put the pictures on pieces or oak-tag to form a booklet. Give each child a chance to talk about his/her creation. Write what the child says-exactly as the child says it- on both the booklet and the large gingerbread person. Send any duplicate pictures and the original creation back home.
Dear Parents,
I am sending home a gingerbread boy/girl shape for the entire family to decorate. Use your imaginations and anything else that you have sitting around the house.
Please return your creation by_________________.
Thank you, _________
Take Care
(Name of teacher)

We made Gingerbread Houses that turned out real cute.
Take graham crackers. You need seven.One for the base, for for the walls and two for the roof.
I used Royal icing and they stuck really good.
Royal Icing
4 cups icing sugar
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp. cream of tarter
Beat about 7 minutes.
I made the house and the children decorated them with candy canes, fruit loops, coconut (for snow) and gum drops.
They turned out adorable.
We also made a giant gingerbread man. We let the children roller paint him and added facial features and buttons.
We also made gingerbread cookies from the Jan Brett website - from the book Gingerbread Baby and they turned out good.

THE GINGERBREAD BABY by Jan Brett

We made and decorated a gingerbread cookie. All the children went with me to put it in the oven. When it was time to take him out, he was gone. The looks of their faces was of such surprise. We looked all over the school and
then we made a trap for the gingerbread baby and waited. Before long we caught him and ate him at snack. The imagination of a child is priceless.
We also decorated a sandpaper gingerbread baby. I used sandpaper because the first thing they did was rub cinnamon all over the baby so it would smell like a real cookie and then they used buttons, ribbons and whatever else I
have in the classroom. From the Jan Brett home page I got these Cookie Award Certificates that I also sent home. It was really a fun day

Read 'The Gingerbread Baby' by Jan Brett
Make gingerbread baby head bands. Staple brown strips of construction paper in circle to fit each childs head have them decorate their paper gingerbread baby cut-out. Decorate with glitter paint, rick rack or
other collage materials attach by tape or staples to head band

Cookie Game
Have children sit in a circle. Choose one child to wear their gingerbread paper head band. He will be the ginderbread child. He walks around the outside of the circle and taps each child on the head. When he comes to the one he wants to chase him, he says "Catch me if you can." as he taps that child. The chase begins. As they chase each other around the outside of the circle the others chant
"Run run as fast as you can."
"You'll never catch him,"
"He's the gingerbread man."

GRANDFATHER TANG'S STORY by Ann Tompert

Grandfather Tang and Little Soo spend the afternoon sitting under a peach tree in their backyard, making different shapes with their tangram pieces. Grandfather Tang uses his pieces to tell a story about the fox fairies, Wu Ling and Chou. The fox fairies are an important part of Chinese folklore and are believed to be capable of changing their shapes.
Activities
1 Have the children make their own tangram pieces out of construction paper. Have the children try to put the seven pieces back together to form a square. (Making Your Own Tangram)
2 As they follow along in the story, have the children make the shapes described with the tans they made.
3 Have the children make up their own designs. They may want to create their own story using the new designs. Have the children make the initial of their first name using all seven tans.
4 Give the students a variety of tangrams. Have them combine the tangrams to make geometric shapes, such as a square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid, and so forth. Individually, in small groups, or as a class, ask the students to make a chart that shows how many shapes were made.
5 Make tans out of flannel for the children to use on a flannelboard.
6. Tangoes is a game that contains numerous designs using tans. Have children work with these.
7. Other shapes can also be divided to make a puzzle. Using the patterns in figures 5.4 and 5.5, cut the shapes into A, B, C, and D pieces. Paperclip all the A pieces together, the B pieces together, and so on. Divide the children into cooperative groups of four and give each person one clipped bundle of pieces. The objective is for each member of the group to try to create a hexagon. No one may take a shape from anyone else, and the person with the shape must offer it to the person who needs it. No talking is allowed.

Title: Reading Bag
Submitted by Shelley
1. Take a bag and draw a picture of what the book may be about on the outside of the bag. A simple picture will do. Put the book inside the bag. We made several "bags" and set them on a shelf for the children to choose from. BIG HIT!
2. Make a reading hat of some kind and place this in the bag along with a couple of books. We instructed the children that these books were very special (pop-up or other interactive books) and that if they wanted to read these books they had to wear the hat and sit down quietly and read the books. When they are finished with the books they must remove the hat and place it back in the bag along with the "special" books. They can only look at these "special" books when they are using the "reading hat bag". We bring in different books everyday to place in the bag and this has been quite successful in getting the children involved with personal reading.
Don't forget to include other books besides children's books in the children's library. Such as cookbooks, how-to books, simple science or social studies books, etc.

Book List
Submitted by Kris
Last year I made a poster where I listed my literature selections all year. The parents could see how many books we had read! I purchased a poster that looked like a piece of notebook paper, but anything would do. I bordered it with a "reading" theme border. I list the books as I read them. It also makes a good reference for me so I know if I have read a book and how long ago I did -- faster than checking lesson plans!

HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON

Line Art
Submitted by Janice
Play a selection of music. Have children pick a marker and make a line on the paer from one end to the other as they move to the music (this is done on butcher paper with a small group). Allow each child a turn. When everyone has had a turn, select another piece of music and other markers-repeat.
Read Harold and the Purple Crayon. After give each child white paper and a purple crayon. Have them make lines which tell a story.

HARRY THE DIRTY DOG

After I read Harry the Dirty Dog to the students we take paper plates and make them into dogs by gluing on a nose and ears and drawing eyes and a mouth. Then the students put glue in spots and sprinkle potting soil on to make "dirty dogs".

HENNY PENNY

Submitted by Gail
My 4's loved the story of Henny Penny (aka Chicken Little). Here are some of the activities that did. Ideas are from fellow teachers and Mailbox magazine.
HENNY PENNY
Read the story aloud, encouraging your student to join in with the repetition. Ask them if they think the sky could really fall. Explain that the sky is "air that surrounds the earth." Have the children discuss what could fall from the sky (or clouds in the sky), such as rain and snow, leaves from trees, etc.
Follow up a reading aloud of HENNY PENNY by making a Henny Penny character. Trace the child's hand onto red construction paper and cut out the shape. Have the child glue the hand shape to the top of a paper plate (for her "feathered head", a yellow triangle to the center of the plate for a beak, and two pennies to the plate to represent eyes.
Sung to the tune of "Here we go 'round the Mulberry Bush"
Henny Penny has a bump on her head,
Bump on her head, Bump on her head.
Henny Penny has a bump on her head
And thinks the sky is falling.
chorus:
The sky is falling on our heads,
On our head, on our heads.
The sky is falling on our heads
We must go tell the king!
Cocky Locky went along,
Went along, went along.
Cocky Locky went along
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Ducky Lucky went along...
Quack, quack, quack!
Goosey Loosey went along...
Honk, honk, honk!
Turkey Lurkey went along...
Gobble, gobble, gobble!
Foxy Loxy tricked them all,
Tricked them all, tricked them all.
Foxy Loxy tricked them all
And took them to his cave.
Foxes had a tasty lunch,
Tasty lunch, tasty lunch.
Toxes had a tasty lunch.
Yum! Yum! Yum!
The King will never ever know,
Never know, never know.
The King will never ever know
That the sky is falling.

IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE

Submitted by Amy
Counting Chip Cookies
1. Make 10 large round shapes. I found some small cheapo round pillows at a crafts store. You can also just laminate some brown paper, and cut into circles. 2. With a permanent marker, write a number (1 to 10) on each cookie. (do this before laminating, if using paper)
3. Attach the appropriate number of scratchy velcro dots on each cookie. (The 5 cookie will have 5 velcro dots, etc.)
4. Make 55 black dots (the chocolate chips!) out of laminated paper or fabric. Attach a fuzzy velcro dot to each.
Encourage the children to stick the chocolate chips onto the cookies! Help them count the chips, and recognize the numbers. A nice tactile way for children to work on one-to-one correspondence and number recognition.

Submitted by Robin
I love the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie! I gathered up all the things that were in the story.....A plastic cookies....a tiny broom,....crayons.....pen....small cloth for a blanket and pillow......a small box to make the bed and so on. I made a pair of mouse ears and attached them to a head band. When I read the story someone gets to play mouse and wear the ears. and the other children select something from the box to give to the mouse. As I read the story the mouse goes and collects the items and when the story is done everything is back in the box and ready to put away. The children like to take the box in small groups and one "reads" the story while the others take turns doing the rest.

In dramatic play, we are going to add baking equipment to the dramatic play area. I put a small tray out and am just going to let them stir and line up bottle caps as cookies. Thought I'd have out some construction paper , scissors, etc. and see if they can create some of their own "cookies" and "cheese".
In art, I thought we could marble roll and then have the child find one dry spot to thumbprint a mouse (adding ears, whiskers, legs, etc. with an ink pen). Don't you think they would just love going home and asking mom or dad to find the mouse? In the fine motor center, I am going to try to have them try a variety of ways to poke or make holes in pieces of "cheese", (yellow, white, and orange construction paper pre-cut in various shapes).
In the Math Center, I thought of creating a counting game with the cookie like cereal pieces.

Cookie Poem:
Five round cookies as yummy as can be.
The first cookie said, "Please eat me!"
The second cookie said, "I have lots of chocolate chips"
The third cookie said, "I'll taste good on your lips"
The fourth cookie said, "I'm right here on the pan"
The fifth cookie said, "Find me if you can!"
Then "Ding!" went the timer
'Cause the cookies were done
We ate all the cookies and had lots of fun!
Make a Class Big Book "If you Give a Mouse"
On separate large, white paper circles write each child's completion to the following sentence:
"If you give a mouse a ________. he will __________."
Have him illustrate his page. Bind all the pages together between same-sized tan construction paper covers.
Add facial features, whiskers and paper ears to the cover.
Mouse Cookies
With the children, prepare a batch of drop cookie dough. Demonstrate how to drop three spoonfuls of dough onto a cookie sheet so that it will resemble a mouses head with two ears when baked. The mouse cookies can be frosted or details can be added with raisins, chocolate chips, an dstring licorice.
Play Mouse, Mouse, Where's the Cheese
This game is played in cicle formation. Arrange the chairs and place one in the center of the circle.Place a block to represent the cheese under the chair. Select one child, the "mouse" to sit on the chair and close his or her eyes. Then point to another child. This child must try to remove the cheese without making a sound. After the child returns to his chair in the circle,
instruct all of the children to place their hands behind their backs. Then in unison the children say,"Mouse, "Mouse, Where's the Cheese?" The "mouse" then opens his/her eyes and tries to guess who is holding the cheese. Circle Time (Discussions)
Make a story wheel: Have children draw a large circle and include major
events from the story.
Cognitive (Math Concepts/Critical Thinking)
Make flannel board pieces or magnets of different kinds, colors, and sizes of cookies. Several sets, for matching and lotto games.
Make paper cookies of a variety of shapes Be sure there are two of each children need to match. Make paper chocolate chip cookies each cookie has a number of chips on them (1-10) Make ten mice each having a number on them (1-10) children match mouse to cookie number
Creative Arts & Activities
Make a class book- for each page, have each child dictate their response to "If you gave me a Cookie, I would ____________. Let them illustrate their pages.
Make paper cookies. Encourage children to draw circles on butcher paper, and then cut out. Let them glue chocolate chips or raisins to their cookies.
Fine/Gross Motor Development
Put out a container holding chocolate chips and a pan of tweezers. Children use the tweezers to move the chips from container to another container. (Be prepared for children to eat some of the chips) Could use raisins instead of chips = oatmeal cookies!
Have children use domino blocks to create their own domino effects; a chain reaction.
Science & Discovery (Sensory)
Give the children white play dough, rolling pins, and cookies cutters.
Encourage them to make play dough cookies. If you use baker's clay, bake them, and then let the children paint their clay cookies.
Outdoors
Provide a large box for the children to turn into a mouse-house. Give them materials as they ask for them (if possible) to furnish the house with. This
may be used to conclude or lead into a discussion about what is in our house and that everyone has the same and different things in their houses.

INSIDE THE BARN INSIDE THE COUNTRY

Submitted by Maya
I read the book “Inside the Barn In the Country” to my Pre Kindergarten kids. They love this book and always remember it. I made headbands with Velcro on them and had all the characters from the book laminated and also Velcroed to stick on to the headbands. Each child gets a character, (if you have many children, you can double up the characters). I then go through the book again, having the Characters now separate on the board, telling the story, pointing to each character as they are awoken. I have the children make the animal noises for each character in the book as they are awoken, for example, when the cat wakes up the cow, the cow goes MOO, and the Cat goes MEOW! The great thing about this game is that every animal is repeated over and over again every time an animal is awoken, so the children are constantly making animal noises. As the book goes on, I read it faster and faster, and the children get so mixed up and laugh a lot. I also like to switch the characters back and forth back and forth, really mixing them up. The faster you go and the more mixed up it gets, the more fun it gets and the more
they laugh. When the animals wake up the farmer you can yell “It’s not morning yet!! Get back to bed!!” and all the children lay down on the
floor, laughing. And of course, then the whole story starts all over again, when the cat wakes up the owl, “HOO HOO!!”

IS YOUR MAMA A LLAMA?

Submitted by Susan
I did this activity while doing a field experience in a 3 year classroom. The kids loved it.
First, find several pictures of animals. One adult and one baby picture of each animal. A few odd animals can make it more of a challenge. Simply color and laminate them if you want. Put the animals up on the board, all mixed up. It is a simple matching game you can use after reading the story. One child comes up and picks an animal and moves the animals of to the side. Another child comes up and has to find the match to that animal, either the baby or the mother. The children love the game and the interaction involved.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

Submitted by Julianne
Paint (or use construction paper) a toitlet tissues tube green. Then attach between three and five 1/2" by 12" green strips, twisting them. These are the vines. Also attach some leaves to the vines. Students color and cut a picture of Jack. Staple or tape Jack to a piece of yarn and tie the yarn through the tube. Pulling the yarn will make Jack climb up the beanstalk.

JESSIE BEAR WHAT WILL YOU WEAR?

Jessie Bear What Will You Wear.
Make a bear paper doll out of a brown paper bag. Just cut it like cookie person with ears. Than make clothes for the bag bear to match the clothes Jessie wears in the book. Just use paper and crayons.
Snack idea: Teddy bear graham crackers with a bit of honey.

JUMP, FROG, JUMP

Frog Jumping Number Line (submitted by Time)
Using a pattern of a frog. Make multiple copies on green construction paper
Cut them up. Line them up one on top of the other. Touching head to toe.
Number them. I find 6-7 is about the maximum. I used a pattern of and a real frog length, stretched out from an old Mailbox. But you can us anything. I then run this through the laminator and leave it in one piece.
I now have my frog jumping number line..
I teach the children how to frog jump. Starting from a marker. Both feet together, swinging their arms. We Practice.
I have a recording sheet for each child.
The children take turns jumping and record their 3 jumps. I make a class line graph which records each child's greatest jump. The kids love it.

Class Book
Have the class brainstorm all different types of movement and ways they can move. Then give each child a large sheet of construction paper and have him or her draw a frog in the movement of his or her choice. For example someone may draw a frog dancing. Either have them write on the page (movement chosen), frog, (movement chosen)----Dance,frog, dance, or have them dictate to you. Put together into a book. When sharing the book pause after each page to allow the children to move like the frog.
Frog Float
materials needed: paper cups (1 per child)
lime sherbert
7-Up or sprite
Miniature marshmallows or M&M’s
Directions: Put one scoop of lime sherbert into a cup. Pour in 7-UP or Sprite. Add marshmallows or M&M’s to the sherbert for the frog’s eyes.

KISSING HAND, THE

Materials/Preparation:
Put the following items in a book bag or backpack or shoebox: · Book: The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn · Heart shaped stickers · Hand cut outs · Journal book · Pencils or crayons
The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn
Activity:
Read the book at either your orientation, your first day of school, or send home the back pack the first week. Make sure you have 3 or 4 backpacks or book bags made up so the children don't have to wait too long for a turn.
When reading the story be very sensitive to your child's custodial needs. If you have a child with an absent parent adjust your story to be generic. Say: "And someone who loved Chester said give me your hand," instead of his
Mother.
Alternative if you're not comfortable reading story to parents or sending home --
Do this at circle time and give your students a kiss on their hand and a heart sticker. Have laminated hand name tags for comfort. Put a picture of your student with parent on bulletin board.
CHESTER PATH GAME
Chester Path Game
Create a game board. Have a picture of Chester at one end of the board with a crooked path of handprints with hearts in the center that lead to Chester’s mom. Each child gets his own board. Use heart shaped erasers for the marker. And a dice with the #’s 1,2,and 3 on it . Help Chester get to his Mommy.
Day and Night
Discuss that Chester goes to school at night. Introduce the word Nocturnal. Have different ideas printed and ask if these things happen in the daytime or at night. (‘owls come out, we wear p.j.s’ the sun is out, we eat lunch, wear shoes, bats fly…. Let children come up with their own ideas. Print their ideas out so they can see their words.
THE KISS GOES ON
sung to twinkle twinkle
Here's a special trick I know
When I'm sad and scared to go
Take my hand and kiss it here
the kiss from you I will hold dear
Down my hand and up my arm
into my heart the kiss goes on
I changed it some to sing to my daughter
Here's a special trick I know
when you're sad and don't want to go
I'll take your hand and kiss it here
a special kiss to hold dear
down your hand and up your arm
into your heart the love goes on.

More Kissing Hand Ideas
If you meet with the parents before school starts, read the book to them and tell them you will read it to the students on the first day. Many parents then give their children a kiss in their hand on the first day. The kids get very excited when you read the story and they have a kiss like the racoon. Give parents a heart to color during testing for their child the first day of school.
Before school starts, send each parent a large piece of construction paper.Ask them to trace each family member's hand on the banner and write their name next to their hand. They can decorate their banner with crayons,markers, ribbon, colored glue, paint, stickers, photos, etc. Ask them to send their banner in with their child on the first day of school. The children will have a great time looking at the banners. This also provides them with a sense of familiarity.
Adapt this activity for the very first "homework".When I finish reading it, I give each child 2 heart stickers, 1 for them and 1for Mom( Then do a little take home paper that has a little xeroxed pictureof Chester, the racoon and the title/author. The child traces around his/herhand and stamps a heart in the middle. There's a place for the parent totrace his/her hand as well. On the bottom of the paper,it says,"Trace yourmom or dad's hand and tell them about this special story."
If you had a stuffed baby raccoon and a stuffed mother raccoon, you could have Chester hunt for his mom. When you found her, she could havehandcookies for everyone.
Give the children each a pre traced heart that they will cut and then givethem a pre cut hand to paste the heart on. On each child's hand I will write...______'s Kissing Hand and make a bulletin board out of them.
Give each child two hands, have them put a heart on the middle of them and attach to a piece of yarn. Then they can give to their Mom's to wear for a hug and a kiss.I had lip stickers and gave one to the kids to give their Mom's that night. I told them school was a fun place to be... but Mom's need a kiss so they need to tell Mom, the sticker is a kiss from them to help Mom get through thedayGlue "I love you" hand on a painted heart
- they could make folded heartblots
- take a pre-cut heart, fold, add a few dabs of paint with differentcolors,
fold closed, rub all over, open up and you have a nice symmetricalpaint
design.
Since raccoons have masks, each child could decorate a mask (that you cutout ahead of time) with art materials (or a raccoon mask)
Get die-cut hands in different body colors. The children can choose the handcolor they want and use either a heart stamp on the hand or use a stamp oflips on it. They can take this hand home to their parents. Kids put lipstick on and kiss paper to make a collage, or cutting/pasting lips(from magazines or ellison shapes) all over a small heart shape.
Make handprints using paint on paper plates. Add the phrase 'These people love me...." and write names suggested by children.First, teach the children the sign for I love you in sign language.... then.....
1 Have the children cut out a pretraced heart (big - on 81/2x11 paper).
2 Have them trace and cut out their hand print.
3 Glue the palm of the hand on the heart (don't glue the fingers yet). Or doit the other way, make the hand bigger and the heart smaller to fit in the middle of the hand.
4 Have the children pull down the middle and ring fingers, and glue themdown to the palm of the hand. The other three fingers glue in place (pointing up). This will be the I love you sign.
5 Write the words I love you on the heart or mount the heart on arectangular piece of paper and write I love you underneath the heart..
As a small group activity, my kids each make a page for our class book We use big washable stamp pads from Lakeshore, and the kids make a handprint in the hand outline. They then dictate to me who brought them to school,and how they felt. I take pictures of the children with our digital camera,and put a heart shaped picture of the child in the middle of the handprint on their page. I then laminate the pages, put on the cover, and bind the book.
Night and Day Chart
After reading "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn, I talk about how Chester the Raccoon goes to school at night (introduce the term "nocturnal"), but of course, we go to school during the day! I then introduce this chart. In a box, I have sentence strips with Day/Night ideas written on them. As agroup
we decide if the ideas happen at night or during the day, and attach(tape) them to the chart After they get the idea, I have the kids give me examples of things they think belong on our chart and write them on sentence strips before attaching them to the chart.
Talk about raccoons and tell how they use their front feet like hands. They always pick up their food and feel and often wash it before eating.

LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW By Leo Lionni

Little Blue and Little Yellow is a wonderful, simple story about two friends who are shown in the illustrations as blue and yellow shapes. They have lots of fun together but when they hug, they turn green! When they go home, neither one of their families recognizes them anymore. A great book to introduce colors and color mixing, as well as promote discussion about families and friendship.
ART
Paint one hand yellow and one hand blue. Have children make handprints on the edge of the paper overlapping the edges. Then have them squish their hands together and place handprints in the center of the page. Print "I can make green!' in under the handprints.
Snack
make yellow lemon Kool-aid (I put a bit of yellow food coloring to exaggerate the color). Every child gets a clear plastic cup of it, and then we add blue ice cubes and watch what happens! Drinking it is the best part. Some children start drinking as soon as they see a hint of green and others want to wait until the whole ice cube melts.
Language Arts
Give each child a blue and yellow circle. Instruct them to glue the shapes on their paper, and then draw a picture of something they think the friends like to do together around the shapes. Bind all the finished pictures together to make a classroom book called "Little Blue and Little Yellow Are Friends."

THE LITTLE MOUSE, THE RED RIPE STRAWBERRY, ND THE BIG HUNGRY BEAR

I usually have the kids tear or cut out a red strawberry from construction and glue it onto a white paper on which I have printed at the top

"The Little Mouse ____________ _________ ." They write how they would protect it from the Big Hungry Bear and collage or draw what they would do to the strawberry.? For instance, I have had kids try to disguise it, chain it, and other creative ideas that were not in the story.? Then they draw the mouse or you can copy the blackline of the mouse right on for them.?

They turn out great and the kids are excited to come up with their own ideas.? I have put them together in a book for the class to read and they love it

THE LITTLE RED HEN

Submitted by Jan
We read the story and watch the video. We make character puppets from the story. We bake bread in my bread-maker. We make a little red hen with red feathers, glitter, and red sequins, and red sand. I bring in stalks of wheat so we can talk about it and then we use the wheat, dip it in red paint, and make a picture.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

Submitted by Jan
I do a big theme on Little Red Riding Hood. The girls make little red hoods (we use a pilgrim hat pattern), and the boy make wolf masks (and they really like them, of course!) We make a big brown basket out of construction paper, cut slits, and weave paper strips to finish our basket. Then we cut out food from magazines and glue it on. We also draw and paint pictures from the story.

LOOKS LIKE SPILT MILK

Submitted by Marilyn
At our playground time, I bring out a large sheet and we all lay down on it.
We do cloud gazing. Each child takes a turn telling what he/she sees. They love this activity. When we get inside (circle time) I hand out the white, flannel pieces to the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles Shaw. As I
read the book, the children bring up the pieces to the flannel board that match to the story. The children stay focused and it helps to distinguish shapes. For the art for the day, I put out white paint and spoons and light blue construction paper. The paper is folded in half and the child places some white paint on one side. Then he/she presses very hard and opens the paper to see what he created. They enjoy this so much. I ask, "What do you see......." and I write their reply on the paper. We hang them in our hallway for the parents to enjoy. this is a big success.

LOOK WHAT I DID WITH A LEAF

Read aloud excerpts from Look What I Did With a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi.
Afterward, have youngsters collect many different types and sizes of tree leaves. Back in the classroom, supply each child with a large piece of construction paper and glue. Review each page in the story, showing the youngsters each leaf creature. Then encourage each student to use his leaves to create his own simple leaf animal.

MITTEN, THE

Submitted by Marilyn
After repeatedly reading The Mitten, I did this activity with my class. I used masking tape to make a HUGE outline of a mitten on our carpet. Then I made stick puppets of the animals in the book. I just xerox copied the
figures and attached a craft stick. As I read the book, the child with the matching animal stick puppet got up and sat/laid in the center of the large mitten outline. They loved positioning themselves to allow for the rest of
the "animals" to fit in. Then we sneezed and the children rolled and moved out of the mitten shape. Of course, I had to do this a few times to allow all the children a chance to participate. It was a good activity.

This past month my "author of the month" was Jan Brett. We had a mitten week where I brought snow in from outside and filled the water table with it. The children had brought their mittens into school for the week. The
children had a ball playing with the snow. We also painted with water color paints in the snow. In the end it looked like rainbow sherbet. We measured each other to see how many mittens tall they were which was a good counting
lesson.   I also did the story THE MITTEN however, I used a huge comforter and the children crawled under it and when the mouse went in I pulled the comforter off them. Of course there was a lot of laughing and silliness afterwards. I also went to the Jan Brett home page where there is many ideas for all her books. Coloring pages, lesson plans etc. can be found there.

Submitted by Sandra
We are doing The Mitten this week. I am sorry I cannot remember where it came from, but we used the idea of putting up clothesline. We had relays of putting the mittens on and then alternating person would take them off. They
were so cute. We just leave the line up and they actually have fun hanging clothes.
Another idea was to cut a big mitten out (of card stock) and punch holes around it and then lace (I first prepare the ends with glue and let it dry to a hard pretend needle) and put the animals inside. After the Mitten, we read
The Hat (also by Jan Brett) Then we read Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing. What a fun week. We also read different authors interpretation of The Mitten. The Mitten Tree is cute and we also read the Three Little
Kittens. I have had a fun week for sure!

Submitted by Tammy
We're doing activities related to "The Mitten" this week too. One of our favorites is to make 2 construction paper mittens, staple them together, and have the kids decorate them. They then get to see how many animal crackers
can fit into their mittens.

THE MITTEN (tune: Farmer in the Dell)
The mitten on the ground.
The mitten on the ground.
Heigh-ho! It's cold outside.
The mitten on the ground.
The (mole) snuggles in.
The (mole) snuggles in.
Heigh-ho! It's cold outside.
The (mole) snuggles in.
(After the last animal, all pretend to sneeze and fall out of the mitten.)
Mitten Music
(Where has my little dog gone)    by Jean Rogers
Oh where, oh where did my NEW mittens go?
Oh where, oh where can they be?
Oh, I have looked high and I have looked low.
Oh where, oh where can they be?
sing and replace "NEW" with old, soft, warm, red, blue, etc.
Mitten Finger play
by Lucia Kemp Henry
Here is a mitten,                    (hold up one hand)
A snug, fuzzy one-                 (rub palms together)
With a place for my fingers     (wiggle 4 fingers)
And a place for my thumb        (wiggle thumb)
Here are two mittens,              (hold up two hands)
A colorful sight.                       (hands back and forth)
One for the left hand                (hold up left hand)
One for the right.                     (hold up right hand)
Here are OUR mittens,              (hold up two hands)
As soft as can be                      (stroke the back of one hand)
A warm pair for you                   (point to the neighbor)
And a warm pair for me             (point to yourself)
Puttin' On Mittens
(Theme: The Farmer In the Dell)
The thumb in the thumb place,
Fingers all together!
This is the song we sing
When it is mitten weather
(Tune - "If You're Happy And You Know It")
Each mitten has a mate, has a mate.
Each mitten has a mate, has a mate.
Can (child's name) find the pair?
(He/She) is looking here and there.
Can (child's name) find the mate.
Find the mate?

THE MITTEN BULLETIN BOARD
We have a paper tree in our classroom. January is hard to decorate the tree.
We decided to have a mitten and snowflake tree. The children made mittens and then we punched holes and they laced the mittens together. We then hung them on the branches of the trees.

Submitted by Rhonda
You could do a lesson on empty and full using the mitten. I am an elementary ed student and I just did a clinical on Jan Brett and I used this. It went real well. You could also use have children predict how many crayons that they can fit inside a mitten and then graph their predictions.

MOUSE PAINT

Circle Time (Discussions)
Read "Mouse Paint" during circle time. Make three mice out of white construction paper. In the middle of the mouse, cut a large circle. On the back, paste some red/blue/yellow cellophane over the circle. The children should be able to see the transparent colours through the circle. Overlap the different mice and ask the children what colours they see. Leave the mice out on the discovery table for the children to play with on their own.
[adapted from an idea seen in the Giant Encyclopedia of Circle Time Activities, p. 91]
Cooking (Snacks)
I did a neat food experience with Mouse Paint once... we gave each child cream cheese and ritz crackers, and then let them decide what colors to make their cheese...(we ended up with a lot of gray cheese, but it was fun and delicious!)
Creative Arts & Activities
Purchase several cat-toy mouses, those made from rabbit fur are especially realistic. Have the children dip them in paint to paint their paper.
Make a mouse shape, or have the children cut their own "mice" out of fingerpaint paper. Using finger paint or ice paints in red, blue, and yellow, let the children see what colours they can make.
Make little mice shapes out of blue, red, and yellow cellophane. Let the children glue these "mice" onto a white sheet of construction paper. Watch them as they explore making new colours by overlapping the mice!
Fine motor:
Have the children use scissors to cut colored sheets of acetate into smaller pieces, and use them to make a collage on clear contact paper. The colors will blend and create areas of see-through and opaque. Punch a hole in each child's color creation, and attach string for hanging.
Sensory:
Do no-mess fingerpainting. Put out fingerpaint paper or wax paper, and tape to the table. Drop on a few blobs of thick tempera paint or fingerpaint. Cover the paint with a sheet of saran wrap, and tape down the edges. Encourage the children to move the colors around with their hands to mix. When they're done, take off the saran wrap, and invite the children to press sheets of white paper over the wet paint to make prints.
Fine/Gross Motor Development
a.. Movement/Listening: A variation on "Freeze Dance". Tape different colors of construction paper to the floor. (the kids love to help do this!)Start out with primary colors. Make sure there is the same number of particular colors as there are children (6 kids, so 6 red, etc.)Play music, and invite the children to dance. When the music stops, call out a color, and the children must find one of the color papers to stand on. Do again and again. As they gain familiarity with color blending, you can make it harder by calling out "yellow and red", so they need to find orange.
Social/Emotional
a.. Have sheets of acetate in each of the three primary colors. Give one to each child, and let them look through the sheets to see the world tined different colors. Encourage them to trade colors. Then, invite them to put their color sheets together with other children to look at the new colors they create. Make sure everyone changes partners to see all the different colors.
Science & Discovery (Sensory)
a.. Sensory: Make color blending bags. In a saucepan, pour 1 cup cornstarch, 1/3 cup sugar, and four cups water. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. The mixture will start to turn lumpy, and then thicken into a sort of vaseline-looking product. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Divide into 4-6 small strong ziploc storage bags. Squirt in a few drops of food coloring in primary colors, aiming for different areas of the bags. Press out as much air as possible, and seal the bags. Fold a piece of duct tape over the top for added security. Now- give to the kids, and let them squeeze and press the colors around. The colors will blend beautifully, and the bags will last for quite a while.

MRS. BINDERGARTEN

Submitted by Melissa
As me and my assistant were getting ready for the beginning of school we took pictures of each other and then using word I created the start of the book "Miss Melissa and Miss Nancy get ready for kids connect". Then after reading "Miss Bindergarten gets ready for kindergarten" the children acted out what they did to get ready the first day. Then we put together a class book that the children love to read during choice time. Also we did another one called ABC zoo. the characters in Miss Bindergarten are all animals that match up with their names. We had the children choose an animal that matched their name like Lakisha the lion and then drew themselves as this animal. We made up names of friends for missing letters.

MRS. WISHY WASHY

Submitted by Vicky
We just had the most fun in our 5's class the other day, we made "clean mud". You need 3 small bars of ivory soap, 1&1/2 cups borax, water, and 6 rolls of toilet paper (Like Charmin, not cheap kind). The kids unroll the TP and put it in container like a dish tub, and add water so it is all wet and fits in. Grate the soap and add, add borax, mix well with hands, and play in it! It will keep for weeks if you seal it, and it smells so good. We made mud pies with ours, and decorated them with pebbles and colored toothpicks. The kids also wrote out their recipes for mud pies and illustrated them. They are very cute! We read "Mrs. Wishy-Washy" to go along with all this. Try it!

MY MANY COLORED DAYS

I read this book to my kids last week. Here's what we did....First we talked about what feelings we feel when we see different colors.
Then during center time, I had my kids trace and cut out a person shape. They took different colors of tissue paper that had been cut into small squares.
They placed one square at a time on the person shape and painted over the tissue with water so the tissue color would bleed onto the paper person.
They removed the tissue paper after they painted it with the water and were amazed to see how the color was left behind! I showed them how to overlap different colors to make new colors like in the book. Later, the children explained why they chose the colors they did or what feelings the colors reminded them of. I typed their dictation and we glued their person and dictation onto construction paper.

After reading this wonderful book, I give each child a cutout of a boy/girl cut from oaktag (an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet). On the table I have plates of paint (colors from the story) and small sponges. I have them think about how they feel in certain situations. Then I demonstrate how to put a very small amount of a color on the sponge (wet the sponges first and squeeze out so that they're damp but not wet, then put in paint), dab some off on paper towel and sponge paint an area with the color that represents that feeling. They come out beautifully! By the way, we put up a chart showing what feeling represents each color with a little drawing for happy, sad, mad, etc.

MYSTERY OF THE MISSING RED MITTEN, THE

Submitted by Diane
"The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten" by Steven Kellogg. This is the story of a little girl who loses her mitten while playing and can't find it. After searching with her little dog, she finally finds inside a melting snowman's chest where it looks like his heart. A very cute story and we then make a snowman with a mitten heart to take home. I also usually poll my class as to who likes gloves and who likes mittens and then chart it cutting their hands out in the color of their choice in either a mitten or glove shape. We hang it for the month of January.

MUD

by Wendy Cheyette Lewison
In Mud by Wendy Cheyette Lewison the boy and girl end their muddy tale by leaving a trail of marvelously mucky footprints. Choose a warm spring day and let your youngsters make muddy footprints, too. Have each child in turn take off his shoes and socks and sit in a chair outdoors. Carefully paint the bottom of the child's feet with brown tempera paint. Have him stand on bulletin board paper to leave one set of footprints. Then help the child dunk his feet in a shallow pan of warm water and rinse and dry them. When the footprints are dry, use them as a border for a springtime bulletin board.

NAPPING HOUSE, THE

Submitted by Amy
My House Finger play
My house has a roof, so big and wide (use hands to form a roof above your head)
With a window like this, to look inside. (make window with hands)
Here is my door (hold handup straight)
And here is my key ( use other hand to pretend to unlock the hand door)
Come knock on my door, and play with me! (use hand to knock on hand door)
What do we know about houses?
At a chalkboard or using a large piece of paper taped to the wall, help children brainstorm about houses. Draw (or ask children to draw) the children's ideas. What do we need to build a house? What parts does it have? Where should we put the door, windows, etc. Why do we need a roof? What would we like to have inside?
Outside? Who would we like to live there?
Shoe box Houses
Give each child a shoe box, and let him paint it and then furnish with dollhouse furniture and dollhouse dolls. Make sure to have little "blankets" and small boxes for putting doll children to bed.
Build a Home
Give children glue, and various shapes, sizes, colors and textures of paper to build paper houses with. Make sure you have many small squares available for windows!
Block Houses
Encourage the children to use the blocks to make homes for the baby dolls, the stuffed animals, each other, etc. Have masking tape available for making streets between the houses. Go visiting!

OLD BLACK FLY

We use fly swatters and dip them in paint and do swat paintings so they match the artwork in the story. When dry add a plastic fly or a fly that the kids make out of const. paper and wax paper for wings. HINT: Do the painings outside :0)

OWL BABIES

I love this book. Actually, I have 3 copies and put it in my Listening Center. Afterwards, the children make a paperbag puppet. Children can draw two LARGE eyes and triangle for beak. (Always cute to see how some rotate the triangle or make a square as their attempt).
Next, comes the fun part. Children take construction paper and "listen" for the ripping sound as they make l-o-n-g stips of paper. They, then, attach these long strips just under the flap of the owl's head (do not glue the entire strip). The paper will curl at the bottom somewhat and look like feathers--if they make enough. Very cute and 5 year olds can do this independently. 3 and 4's may need some additional help.
Cross Curriculum Ideas
To introduce the story, ask the children "what do you think the story will be about?"
Discuss that the mother is called an owl and the babies are called owlets.
How many words do you see in the title? What letter does owl begin with? What letter does babies begin with?
Literacy:
In a large group, use a tree with an owl attached to a piece of yarn to position the owl in, over, next to, in front of and beside.
Let each child choose to illustrate their own picture with a tree, owl and preposition. Use the sentence frame ____________'s (child's name) owl is ______the tree.
Assemble the book and place in the class library.
Art:
Make a feather collage.
Make an owl baby puppet using a paper bag, a pattern for the owl's head and whiteconstruction paper.
Science:
Compare the remains that are found in several owl pellets. Encourage children to sort the bones and make a list of possible sources.
Since owls have keen eyesight, use magnifying glasses to examine the owl pellets.
Math:
Make an Owl Number Book. Since this project needs to be done in two days, the children will glue chinese noodles onto each page for the owl's nest and copy a numeral onto each page (1-5). On the second day, the children will use their thumb print to make the appropriate number of owls in each nest. Add eyes, nose and toes with fine-tip marker. The teacher and child should assemble the pages and staple.

Little Hoot Owl
(sung to the tune of "Six Little Ducks")
Who flies around in the dark of night?
Who glides on wings o'er silent night?
Who eats his dinner by late moonlight?
It's a little hoot owl with his owl eyesight!

Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl.
Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl.
Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl.
It's a little hoot owl with his owl eyesight

THE POLAR EXPRESS

Material:
sleigh bell (wrapped in small box)
drawing supplies
Introduction Activity :
Show the small gift wrapped box (containing the bell) to the class. Ask them to speculate what's inside. After everyone has had the opportunity to guess, select a child to open the box and show its contents. Tell the children that they will hear a story about a boy's exciting nightime adventure and the very special gift he receives.
Body :
Read the story "The Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg.
Pause to discuss the illustrations (How do they make you feel?)Also, pause to discuss things that children might see on the way to the North Pole, as well as, what they might see when they arrive.At the end of the story, review the happenings of the boys very special evening.
Note: I always end the story with the sentence, "It made the most beautiful sound my sister and I had ever heard." It seems a more appropriate ending for children of this age.
Conclusion Activity :
Children draw pictures of what they might be seen on the way to or at the North Pole, on cloud shaped pieces of paper. To use for a bulletin board display, make a Polar Exprees train and use the cloud shaped pictues as the puffs of smoke coming from the engine.

Submitted by Kozan
When I read this book, at Christmas time, to my Kindergarten class I also set up my class to represent a train. When the children enter the room, Christmas music is playing while they select a seat to sit in to ride the pretend train. In each seat is a cup of hot chocolate/marshmallows to drink and a candy cane to eat while they are listening to the story. I also have a very large gold bell that I ring at the appropriate times in the story. Some children don't see the bell and they really belive it is ringing from the book or the story!! This year my class asked me to reasd the book three times!I have also done this with third graders and they enjoy it as much as the Kindergarteners do.
I have a friend who mails her students a bell during the Christmas break. Many think it could have come from Santa.

Submitted by Michele
Usually this is book I read over the Christmas holiday season. I get the children geared up for a train ride to the North Pole aboard the Polar Express. Prior to this I print up a ticket that they will need to board the train. I use each childs name, date and destination, sprinkle silver glitter over it and laminate it. On the day of our trip, I blow a wooden train whistle that I purchased a long time ago for my young son and "All Aboard." The children line up at the door where tickets are taken and they board the train. The train is made up of classroom chairs in 2 rows with long pieces of tagboard that I have painted to look like train wheels. The lights are all off as they board the train and we are off. I read the story to the children and upon returning back home they are each presented with a silver bell. The children love it and is always a highlight of the holiday season.

Submitted by Barbie
We started a polar express day last yr. and the kids loved it. Our students are required to wear uniforms, so we had everyone bring their pajamas and change or some just put over their clothes. The teachers wore matching flannel pj's. (We are in central Florida so the air conditioner was being used) There are 4 k teachers in our wing so we had activities in each room and the kids rotated around every 30 minutes or so. Christmas CD's were playing in each room. Each teacher read the story in her own room before we started rotating.
One room had hot chocolate and Christmas cookies (we kept hot in 2 large crock pots) and watched the video of polar express that our librarian was able to find from another school in our county.
One laced up and decorated stockings, one used ribbon to make a bell necklace
and played hide the bell, last one did a coloring activity. We took pictures of each child in front of their class Christmas tree in their pj's for the memory book. We realized that we needed more help to get kids around to each
class, so we have already enlisted some volunteer moms to take classes around while the teachers stay put and direct activities for each room. The moms will wear pj's also.

THREE LITTLE PIGS

Read the story and then talk about what happened to each little pig and why. Have 3 groups of children and have each group build one of the homes like the little pigs did. Straw- raffia Sticks-pretzel sticks and marshmallows bricks-blocks or 1" wooden cubes. Have one student be the big bad wolf and try to blow the houses down. What happened? Why? What good the litte pigs have done differently when building their houses? Hopefully they will come up with they should have worked together as a team, etc;

THE RAG COAT by Lauren Mills

Minna proudly wears her new coat to school and shares the stories sewn into its patchwork design. This uplifting story was inspired by tales from the Appalachian Mountains, a song by Dolly Parton, and the author's own childhood.
A reading of The Rag Coat is the perfect springboard to a discussion of values such as friendship, kindness, respect, and self-esteem. Follow up your class discussion with this art activity. Request that each child bring in a scrap of cloth. Then have her share a story about the cloth. Cut each child's scrap into smaller pieces, and then combine all the pieces. Provide each child with a tagboard coat shape and encourage her to cover the shape with assorted fabric pieces. Have her glue the cloth on the coat and then trim around the edges. When the coats are complete, everyone will have a rag coat like Minna's that is "full of stories."

RAINBOW FISH

Color in fish template using chalk. Glue fish on blue construction paper. Glue a recycled cd to the center of the fish and finish off with reinforcers for eyes and a tissue paper fin. Click here to see a pic.

Take a card board box open on one side and have the children paint the inside blue and then give each child a precut fish (or have them design their own) have the children decorate the fish with glitter, sequins, feathers, whatever is on hand. Then suspend the fish with fishing wire from the fish tank. It will look like the fish are swimming. Allow the children to add things to the tank like rocks, plants etc.

Easy Rainbow Fish
Here's a school of fish your youngsters can create in a flash! To make a fish, cut a triangle from a colored paper plate. (If time permits, paint a white plate the color or colors of your choice, and allow it to dry before cutting.) Glue the tip of the triangle to the opposite side of the plate. Glue on (or draw) a black circle for an eye. Suddenly you've got a school of fish for a special summer display. Add foil for shiny scales!

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Submitted by Mrs. Joan Green
This year during our "Rumble in the Jungle" (This is also the title of the book I use, I can't think of the author, but it is a fun book to start the theme off with); We studied animals from within the jungle with names that began with the letter of the week(s) we were studing; for instance "m"... we learned about Mcaw's. Very fasinating birds. For Art we took TP tubes and wraped a water painted(by the children) picture of a McCaw around it. We added long lengthes of colored creepe paper for their long tails, and colorful feathers for wings. The picture I used (from High Reach) Place the wings in such a manner that they were glued above the TP tube as if they were flying. I hole punched these and hung from our classroom ceiling. They were quite a hit!
We also make camera's from Macaroni and cheese type boxes painted black, dried, and then painted details as the children wished. Next, on 3x5 index cards we glued pictures we cut out of magazines of jungle animals for our "photographs". Then we went on a "safari".
We played "animal freeze". Just like "The Freeze" by Steve & Greg, but the children had to freeze into a position of a jungle animal and we all took turns guessing what each other was.
Show N Share time consistated of only jungle animals from their toy boxes; with a story of how they "captured" their animal and in what part of the world would they replace the animal?
We listened to rainforest music in the background, which turned out to open the mind to many a question to real vs pretend.
Using babyfood jars we placed some dirt and ivy and watched as the dew would gather and go away.
Finally using the shape of a girrafe we made journals and told our own stories of what we learned during our jungle month.

RUNAWAY BUNNY

Class Book
Submitted by Amy
Here's something I've done with older preschoolers- Have the children think of additional ways for the little bunny to hide and the Mother to find him, to make a class "Runaway Bunny" book. Invite the children to dictate their ideas, and illustrate.

Pita Cake Snack
Submitted by Amy
Make a cute rabbit out of pita bread (they call it "Pita Rabbit" - *groan*!) Carefully slice through the pita so you have 2 circles. Cut one circle in half for the ears. Spread all with pb, then cover with marsmallow fluff. Mix a bit of red jam with some fluff to make it pink. Use for nose and inside of ears. Put 2 dollops of jam for the eyes. Use pretzel sticks for whiskers

Foot Bunnies
Materials:
Construction paper - brown, pink, blue and green
Black markers
Scissors
Glue
Cotton balls
Pipe cleaners
Curling ribbon
Pink pom pom
Blue beads

Directions:
Remove one shoe; leave sock on. Bunny's head and body are made by tracing your foot onto brown construction paper with a pencil. Cut out. Cut green construction paper to look line grass. Glue to bottom of blue construction
paper. Turn foot tracing upside down and glue to the blue piece of construction paper on the grass (fat part on bottom). Cut out 2 long ears from brown and pink paper. Glue pink pieces onto brown pieces. Then glue on
top of heel outline. Glue on beads for eyes, a pink pom pom for nose and a large cotton ball for a tail. With black marker, draw in mouth and whiskers.

Growing Flowers
Materials:
Styrofoam or paper cups (decorated as desired)
Popsicle sticks (painted green)
Flowers made from construction paper, wallpaper scraps, or fun foam Stick the popsicle stick carefully through bottom of cup. Glue the flower to the stick inside the cup. (We made our Crocus out of construction paper and
glued it around the stick so the stick tip didn't show). The stick can now be raised and lowered through the cup as if the flower is growing. We put a fun foam bunny in each of our flowers and pretended it was the little bunny in the story.

Tying Shoes with Runaway Bunny
submitted by Joyce
I like to connect the runaway bunny with learning to tie our shoes. We have two bunnies, one runs around the other, through a hole and away from the other. A fine motor skill, beginning to teach tying and just something fun the kids love to use as a filler. It is amazing how many will remember how to do this skill because of the connection between the theme and the skill.

Bunny Hide and Seek Game
Submitted by Amy
Take turns being the Mommy bunny finding the little bunnies

Science
Submitted by Peta
Carrot Tops: Provide carrot tops, plastic containers, potting soil, spoons and a watering can. Invite the children to plant the carrot tops.

SILLY SALLY

For Silly Sally we take a picture of the children standing with arms over their head and hands straight up. When the pictures are cut out they can be
turned over so it looks like the children are walking upside down. We have them stamp a field of yellow flowers on the bottom of a piece of paper with the sentence Silly ___________________________ went to town walking backwards upside down. Then the child's picture gets glued on so it looks like they are walking upside down. Fill in each child's name in the sentence and put together into a class book titled Miss/Mrs./Mr./Ms. __________________________ Silly Class.

STELLALUNA

Math
After reading stellaluna, make a venn diagram comparing bats and birds. Compare the largests bats in the world with the smallest bats. as a class we measured 6 ft the wingspan of the largest bats. i drew a bat that fit in the wingspan. then give each child a 5 in strip of paper and have them draw, color and cut out a bat to represent the smallest bats. (although i read somewhere later that some bats are even smaller than that, so the papers, possibly should have been smaller)

Taste mangoes like Stellaluna. Graph who likes/dislikes this fruit.

Snack
Make a fruit salad from mangoes, banana and dates to represent the types of fruit that fruit bats eat.
Use a bat shaped cookie cutter and make bat shaped french toast to eat with the fruit salad.

STONE SOUP

Submitted by LeeAnn
Cooking Stone Soup
(Tune: The Farmer in the Dell)
Cooking Stone Soup
Cooking Stone Soup
Stir the pot,
It's getting hot,
We're cooking Stone Soup.
First, we add potatoes,
First, we add the potatoes,
Stir the pot,
It's getting hot,
We're cooking Stone Soup.

Additional verses could be sung for all the other ingredients in your particular version of STONE SOUP.

OTHER SOUP BOOKS
Growing Vegetable Soup Lois Ehlert
Pirate Soup   Erica Farber and J.R. Sansevere
Tomato Soup   Thacher   Hurd
Mouse Soup   Arnold Lobel

Submitted by Margie
Read the story...Stone Soup. Talk about the different vegetables you could add to a soup.
Make a list of what each child would like to contribute to a "classroom soup". Send home notes to the parents to have them bring their vegetable in on Soup day. You provide the stones...use chicken/beef bouillon to toss in the soup. Have children wash, cut up, etc., the vegetables and simmer soup from morning until snack time.
CLASSIFICATION GAME: "Vegetable, Fruit or both"
Label 3 medium boxes (Or grocery bags folded down) on the sides...the 1st "VEGETABLES", 2nd "FRUIT" and 3rd bag "BOTH". Using the classroom plastic vegs. or vegs. cut out from magazines/newspapers...classify them.
VARIATION: Turn the bags around so that the opposite sides are labeled: "VINE", "TREE", "UNDERGROUND".
Now play the same game, classifying which grow on a vine, tree and underground.

THE SNOWY DAY By Ezra Jack Keats

Submitted by Staci
Today we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and then the children got a chance to paint (onto black paper using white paint or white paper using black paint) using a stick to make a trail just like Peter did in the snow. We also finger painted and let them draw a trail in the snow using their fingers or the sticks.

This classic story of a little boy's adventures in a snowy city won a Caldecott Medal in 1963.
Peter wanted to keep a snowball as a remembrance of the snowy day. Help your youngsters create their own snowball keepsakes with three-inch Styrofoam balls, white and blue one inch tissue paper squares, glue brushes, and thinned white glue. To make an imitation snowball, place a Styrofoam ball in the bottom part of an egg carton to prevent the ball from rolling. Brush the upper half of the ball with thinned white glue; then place tissue paper squares on the glue. Brush glue on the tissue paper and add additional squares so that they overlap the others. Sprinkle silver or clear glitter sparingly over the wet surface. Allow the glue to dry and repeat the process to complete the other half of the ball. Hey, it's a snowball to keep!

TEN BLACK DOTS

I had my pre-k class make our own class book of "Ten Black Dots".
Each child took 10 black dots and then created a drawing around them. We had a train, balloons, dalmation, ice cream cones, flowers, etc. The book was really cute and their creativity was amazing. I simply wrote what they said the drawing was but for older kids maybe they could write their own story.

Marilyn Burns has a wonderful book entitled Math And Literature (K-3). She uses Ten Black Dots and suggested doing the following with
students:
Each student creates a book with 10 pages over a period of several days. The format is similar to the piece of literature in that on page one the child draws a picture and uses one black self-adhesive dot, two on page two, etc.
When the books are done, the students have to figure out how many black dots are in their books and they must show how they figured out the answer. Every child had to complete these sentences: We each needed ___ dots. I got my answer by _______________ .
Some of the children had to count all the individual dots; some did an addition problem 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10; some used tally marks.
This was done in a first grade classroom and was used to assess what students can do with numbers and how they think.

THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR UNDER MY BED

We like the story"There is a alligator under my bed", Mercer Mayer. I have them cut out pictures of food from magazines with their parents at home. They brought these pictures in to feed our alligator, I let the kids make footprints in a alligator shape by painting on a heay tagboard, then we made a trail with these footprints leading to the food. We also have alligator shape sponges that they sponge painted on a large letter A.

The alligator
(FINGER PLAY)
The Alligator snaps his jaws(lay arms flat together)
Snap, snap, snap, hands open and shut
The alligator smacks his tail(hands on thighs)
smack ,smack, smack.
The alligator crawls away
Tap tap tap(Stomp feet.)
Hope this helps.

Alligator
We have made an alligator out of a clothespin. Paint the clothespin green, add wiggly eyes on top and then put small yellow poms poms on down the nose (or snout)I'm not sure what you would call it on an alligator. I found that the clothespins that do not clip on but rather slide on (all wood no metal) work
the best. Hope this is easy to follow!

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

PJ PARTY
Host a wild rumpus. Have children wear blanket sleeper pjs or sweat suits. Put on wild dancing music and let the wild rumpus begin!
Monster Masks
1).Precut or have children trace pattern and cut out mask. Decorate with seqins, feathers, stickers etc. Wear the masks for the wild rumpus. Hint: to keep the headband from ripping so easily...attach paper strips to either side of the mask. Thread the open ends thru a rubber band, fold back and staple to the paper strip. The rubberband stretchs so the mask can go over pontails, braids etc.
2). Materials: paper plate, or pizza wheel, or poster board circle, glue, scissors, various colors of tissue paper, sequins, butttons, or other art supplies.
Have each child glue the entire surface of their paper plaet, pizza wheel, or poster board circle.
The glued surface should then be covered with pieces of tissue paper.
Add facial features, horns, teeth, manes, beards, etc. with the other art supplies.
Display on bulletin board with a cut out crown near the lower edge of the board and caption "Be Still Wild Things".
3). Give each child a paper plate with eye holes cut out. Put out a variety of art materials- paper scraps, crepe paper, tissue paper, sequins, beads, cloth scraps, yarn, etc. Have each child look at the wild things in the book and make his/her own wild things mask. When all are made, put on the music from the story tape or some other wild music. The children hold their masks in front of their faces and "let the wild ruckus start"!
4. Using brown paper grocery bags cut out holes for the eyes,nose, and mouth. Provide the class with a wide collection of art materials. Have them create wild thing masks. Have a wild rumpus!
Art Project
For a follow up to "Where the Wild Things Are", I have my students make their own monsters by ripping paper. I put a variety of colored construction out and the kids get to select what colors they would like to use. They then must rip the paper to make their monsters. NO SCISSORS ALLOWED!! They then glue the monster together. We usually display their
monsters in the hallway for everyone to see. Everyone succeeds with this project...(even those that struggle with cutting). I like to do this for Maurice Sendak's B-day (June).
Snack and Chant
If your wild things are getting restless, the following chant will give them something to roar about! Provide each child with ten Bugles corn chips to slip onto clean fingertips to represent claws. When the chanting is done, sit down for a snack that finger-lickin' fun.
Teacher: Wild things, wild things,
Look at you!
Wild things, wild things,
What can you do?
Class: We can roar our roars! (Roar)
Gnash our teeth at you! (Show teeth)
We can roll our eyes! (Roll eyes)
Show our claws, too! (Extend fingers)
Repeat teacher's verse
Class: We can eat you up,
'Cause we love you!
Music and Movement
Material: a recording of lively instrumental music
1. With the children seated around you, reread the part of the story where Max controls the "wild things" by staring them down, and the part where the "wild things" are having a wild rumpus as they play.
2. Ask the children what they think a wild rumpus might look like. Discuss the characters' actions in the story.
3. Tell the children that they can be the "wild things" when the music is playing, but when the music stops they must act tired and gently sit or lay down down on the floor. Be sure to give them guidelines before beginning about what behavior is appropriate in a wild rumpus.

WILL I HAVE A FRIEND? by Miriam Cohen

Use this reassuring story as a springboard for discussion about youngsters' feelings during the first days of school. Ask students to predict whether or not Jim will have a friend and if so, how he will meet his friend. After
reading Will I Have a Friend? aloud, discuss the idea that everyone can be a friend to someone else in the class. On a chart, write several positive traits about each child that would make him a good friend. Then provide each
child with a crown or an award ribbon cut from sturdy paper. Have each child personalize and decorate his item. Then write several positive words from the list on each child's crown or award

The Rainbow Fish Tissue paper collage on paper plate with one foil pice for the shiny scale.
The Scarecrow's Hat To make a reusable headband: Laminate sentence strips or long strips of paper. Attach a large piece of Velcro to the ends so the headband can be adjustable. Put a small piece of Velcro to the front center of the headband. With just a change of the cards on front the headbands can be used to retell any story.	We made a racoon to go with the Kissing Hand. They followed rebus instructions.
Simple Puppet Theater I saw this simple and easy to make idea on Fairy Dust Teaching. The theater is made from two file folders and decorated with wrapping paper or scrapbook paper.	I used an old envelope and taped it on the back and under the puppet theater window. The envelope can hold stationary puppets or scenery (bridge for Billy Goat Gruff for example). I made a pocket of the inside back of the asides of the theater to hold the extra puppets. Go here to get instructions on how to make and other good ideas: http://fairydustteaching.blogspot.com/
After reading How Many Feet in the Bed? we then used this magnet board manipulative to graph how many feet are in each child's family. Find pattern and instructions to make magnetic board in Math Works.	Paint a twin size sheet to look like a barn. Children can make animals masks or wear headbands. Children hide behind sheet as son Old MacDonald is sung and emerge through door as their animal name is called.
Masks to go with poem: Title: 5 LITTLE MONKEYS Submitted by Peg 5 little monkeys high up in the tree. Teasing Mr. Alligator, "You can't catch me, can't catch me, can't catch me!" Along comes Mr. Alligator quiet as can be…SNAP! Continue song counting down till… 0 little monkeys…Along comes Mr. Alligator fat as can be! Why is he so fat?
After reading The Apple Pie Tree we dictated our own apple pie recipes and created an art project: Take a brown construction paper circle and paint the entire surface with glue. Cover with torn pieces of red tissue paper. Paint the red tissue paper with glue then sprinkle on white glitter for the sugar and real cinnamon. Smells and looks yummy!	This is a discovery bottle filled with rice and small icons from the story. The child shakes the bottle to find all the characters in the story.
Following the art work at the beginning of the book we tore construction paper into strips then glued them in chronological order. Perfect for retelling the story at home to family and friends.	We used magnetic letters to retell the story and spell our names. Palm tree is from Oriental Trading.
Smaller magnetic chicka tree for individual use and fun. Tree is made by gluing two soup cans on top of each other and covering with contact paper. Hot glue leaves on top.	Another CCBB prop for retelling. Large cone shaped styrofoam covered in brown felt with leaves hot glued on top. Hooked side Velcro is attached to back of small plastic letters.
Poem: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! Will there be enough room? Here come _____ up the coconut tree. Program a strip with upper and lower case letters and thread it through slits made in poster. Pull strip through as you recite the poem giving each child a turn to say the letter or sound.
Have an idea you would like to share? SUBMIT IDEAS - Submit an idea and receive a coupon for 20% off your next purchase from Hummingbird Educational Resources Catalog BIG MOUTH FROG Big Mouth Frog Flannel Board Story Submitted by Jan The Big Mouth Frog You will need: 1 frog (or you can use two-one with a big mouth and one with small mouth), 1 giraffe, 1 elephant, 1 crocodile, Once upon a time there was a little frog with a Very Big Mouth. The frog use to drive everyone crazy with his big mouth. He was always opening it and hollering at people. "HI! WHO ARE YOU? I'M THE BIG MOUTH FROG!" (as you say it make your own mouth big and wide) One morning he decided to find out what everyone ate for breakfast. He hopped out of his frog pond, hopped to the zoo, and began to pester all the animals. The first animal he met was a giraffe. "HI! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU EAT FOR BREAKFAST?" The giraffe looked down. "I am a giraffe. I eat leaves for breakfast." "Well, I'M THE BIG MOUTH FROG! I EAT FLIES FOR BREAKFAST!" He stuck out his long tongue, and SLUUUUURP, he caught a fly. Continue with: elephant - leaves; monkeys - bananas; The Big mouth frog went to visit the crocodile. "Hi! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU EAT FOR BREAKFAST?" "I am the crocodile. I eat BIG MOUTH FROG for breakfast. Who did you say you were?" I'M THE BIG MOUTH-Ooops! I'm the small mouth frog. (have your mouth go form wide open I eat FL-Ooops... mo-o-squi-i-to-o-es for breakfast. "And the small mouth frog hopped right back to his pond. oooh...ooooh(his mouth is making a tiny "o") BIRTHDAY CAKE, THE These are some activitites that I like to do with The Birthday Cake. - recall and sequence color order, use ordinal numbers - TLC style art project (just round corners of rectangles and layer by color), finish with sentence: My birthday is on _______________. - Building Blocks style sentence strip dictation made into class book: I will have ____ (#) candles on my ______ (color) birthday cake Centers: build cakes with unifix cubes (using reference sheets that have the cake colors in order, or the color words) -given play dough and number cards, make cakes and stick correct number of birthday candles in each cake - given a baggie full of small cakes cut from colored paper, build a graph, use again to make patterns - follow color order in book to make "cakes" using vanilla wafers and colored frostings - use colored blocks to design and build birthday cakes BLUE BALLOON, THE A wonderful book is The Blue Balloon by Mick Inkpen. The kids love it. After reading the book, I give them each a cut out of a balloon to dip in soap (Dawn Detergent and water) that I've added some blue paint to. I teach them how to blow into a straw to make bubbles in the soapy water. They then gently lay the paper balloon on top of the bubbles, and it makes a beautiful design. When they are dry, I add a ribbon (string) to the bottom and put a little typed blurb on it that says: Today we read The Blue Balloon Mick Inkpen. Ask me about it! BROWN BEAR COLOR BOOK Submitted by Peta I made a Brown Bear color book that I do with my kids at the start of the year during our color theme. Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a..... red apple looking at me (sponge paint red apple) blue bird looking at me (blue collage) green leaf looking at me (leaf print) yellow star looking at me (finger-paint print on cut out star) orange balloon looking at me (staple orange balloon onto picture of bear holding string) purple grapes looking at me (bubble wrap print) pink lollipop (squeeze bottle paint swirl) black spider looking at me (scrunch black paper to glue on - draw legs) We do one page a day and they turn out great! The kids love reading them! The cover has a picture of a bear which they color brown and brush over with dye. Submitted by Karen We use this popular book as our model to make our own version for our new class each year. Take a picture of each child, along with a picture of each teacher. Place photos individually on pages (the teachers' pictures will be on the last pages) and bind with rings to form your book. Begin with the first page, and add the words of that child's name, followed with the next page's child's name. ex. "Christopher, Christopher, who do you see? I see Jonathan looking at me!" On the next page you would continue, "Jonathan, Jonathan, who do you see? I see Melissa looking at me." Your last page will be that of the teacher and will read, "Ms. Karen, Ms. Karen, who do you see? I see beautiful children looking at me!" I recommend that you laminate the pages because this book will get a lot of use! (Kids love looking at themselves! o) ) In our class, we take turns sending it home with each child. Not only do they begin to recognize their own name, they start to recognize their friends' names as well, and the parents get to know the classmates. Brown Bear Visual Memory Activity Submitted by Judy Haskin I found these ideas on the internet-sorry I cannot give credit to the originators. I have used these ideas and they work.I have flannelboard pictures for all the "Brown Bear" animals. After chances to tell and retell the story with the pictures, I put all the animals on the flannel board. I ask the kids to close/cover their eyes-no peeking! I remove one of the animals and the students try to remember and guess which is missing.Sometimes I remove more than one. They love to play! Math Game #2 Make a game board in the shape of a circle, and section it off, placing a picture or drawing of one of the "brown bear" animals in each section. In the center of the circle place a spinner. A spinner can be purchased or made with a paper clip and a pencil holding it in place. To take a turn the student spins and the others ask-"Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?"The student tells what he "saw" according to where the spinner stops. We then "tally" using marks or cubes. Students take turns spinning and tallying. We then use this information to make a Brown Bear graph. CAT IN THE HAT Find a large hat and round up small things from the house/classroom to put in the hat..if you really want to get into it..only put in things that ryhme with hat..i.e. small cat from dollhouse, or word cards with ryhming words that get acted out charade style..then either blindfold kids if they are taking items out and have them figure out what it is..then maybe match to a corresponding word card. Or if it is cards in the hat, choose a card and act it out... CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM Submitted by Alice After reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, I use contact paper to make palm trees on two small cookie sheets. Magnetic letters and numbers can then be used on them. For the math idea, I give the children magnetic numbers and Coco Puff cereal (coconuts). They choose a number and put that many coconuts on the tree. Then they eat their coconuts. This is great for number recognition. Later, I use it for number words. It can also be used for addition and subtraction practice. Bring in a real coconut. Let them feel and shake it. Draw a large coconut on butcher paper and hang it on the wall at their eye level. As the children feel and explore the coconut, write down the words they use to describe it and hang these words around the coconut. Use a hammer and nail to pierce the shell and drain the milk. (If you are also studying community helpers, ask your school custodian to come in and help open the coconut.) Allow anyone who wants too to sample the milk. (Have water on hand) Chart who likes it and who doesn't. Next break the shell open with the hammer. (Cover it with a towel) Scrape off the meat for the kids to sample. A potato peeler works well and is safer to have at circle time. If the children don't like the taste, then let them try shredded baking coconut. Again chart their reactions. Day 1: WE pass around and discuss a real coconut - what's inside, how it feels, etc. Day 2: I open the coconut up with a hammer in front of the children and we pour out the milk and we feel and smell the inside of the coconut. Day 3: We taste the real coconut and the shredded coconut and graph our favorite. Day 4: WE make a coconut fruit salad : 1 cup of cherries, 1 cup of mandarine oranges, 1 cup of pineapple chunks, 1 cup of sliced banana, and 1 cup of shredded coconut, mix and eat! I also use science journals and everyday we write and draw about the acitivity we did in science. Submitted by Eilleen Here is an activity that I did with my kinders this year and it turned out great. I had half the class finger paint brown and half green. I told them that we would be using them to cut out trees and leaves so they wouldn't necessarily get 'their' paper back. When they were dry, I traced leaves on the back of the green and trunks on the back of the brown. Each child got 5 or 6 leaves and 1 trunk to cut out. Then they glued them to a white paper to make the tree. Then, they sponge painted letters all over the tree and paper. It really looked like the tree in the book. They were thrilled, the parents loved them, and the children got practice in finger-painting (fun), cutting and pasting. CAPS FOR SALE Read the book Caps for Sale. I pin lots of hats on top of each other, and wear it as I read the story. For an activity I have the children make a hat, I cut strips of paper to go around their heads. I put on a table many different items, like pompoms, feathers, stickers, yarn, foam shapes etc. to decorate their hat and then ask the children at circle time to tell us about their hat. I then write down their comments and we make up our own caps for sale story. great You will be amazed at the creativity and interesting hats as well as a great story. I also have children bring in hats for us to look at, beach hats, sport hats, winter hats. etc. Have Fun! CHARLOTTE'S WEB Submitted by Raymel After reading the book Charlotte's Web have your sudents choose a character from the book .Write his or her name in the middle of the Web . With a partner , brainstorm ideas about what the character is like -what he\she does the way the character acts,etc. Write different ideas in each section of the web.Share your character Web with the class. CHICKEN SOUP WITH RICE by Maurice Sendak Read it once. Read it twice. Read it with chicken soup and rice! Serve small bowls of chicken soup with rice to accompany Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup With Rice that features the months of the year and some pretty unusual uses for chicken soup. As a follow-up, create rice collages. Prepare the rice in advance by soaking it in bowls of water and food coloring for about five minutes. Drain the rice and let it dry overnight. Provide each child with a construction paper circle to represent a bowl of soup. Encourage each child to squirt or spread glue on his circle as desired and then cover it with colored rice. Any month of the year, art with rice is mighty nice! CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG Submitted by Tammy Clifford graduation hats. I am a preschool teacher and every year we plan a graduation for our jumpstart class. This year we will be doing the theme Clifford. I wanted to do something out of the ordinary so I took a look out the average graduation cap and cut one out of red construction paper. I add ears and for the tassle I am using a dog bone with the year 2003. It is sooo cute! I showed it to the 5 year olds. They had a fit they wanted to wear it now. They can`t wait for graduation day. Submitted by Adrienne Sprecker My class had a really great time making Clifford Fridge magnets. Materials needed : Mini - dog biscuits (red) ,Small Red pompom, extra small black pom-pom, 2 wiggly eyes, red felt for the ears and magnetic tape. First you choose a red dog biscuit that looks like a small bone and you glue on the red pom- pom. Then you glue the little black pom-pom on top (this is Clifford's nose). Above this you glue your wiggly eyes and then make the ears out of the felt ( Clifford's ears are quite big and floppy). Glue on the Fridge magnet on the back. Put it high on the fridge so your pet doesn't eat it!!! Submiited by Maryann We used red plastic cups (large size) and added long red ears, squiggly eyes, small pom pom nose and drew a mouth with marker. We used our puppets when we sang Clifford songs and Do Your Ears Hang Low. Submitted by Margaret You could paint with red paint, finger paint with red paint, paint with dog bone cookie cutters, paint with dog shaped cookie cutters. I also have painted with small, medium and large milk bones. Just a few. Submitted by Jan Cut out a large, red heart; a large, narrow pink heart; two small, white hearts; and a black heart. To make Clifford, turn the red heart upside down to represent his face. Cut the pink heart in half; then attach one half to each side of the red heart to represent ears. Finally glue on the white heart eyes and the black heart nose and you have Clifford. Submitted by Bobbi I have used a bone cookie cutter and made bone cookies for them to eat. They thought it was such a hoot to eat Clifford's bones. We used a package sugar cookie mix and added cinnamon to make it darker. Then they cut out the bone shape and we cooked them. The next day, in the play dough they made bones and started to count how many bones they would need to feed Clifford. We have also painted big red dogs on big pieces of paper. We have gone on a Clifford hunt following Clifford's tracks around the school. We would stop at the office, library, cafeteria, gym and nurse to see where he went. It was great because the kids would say how can you not have seen him-he is a BIG RED DOG? We would follow the tracks back to our porch where a friend of mine would be waiting with a Veterinarian, who always comes up with a Irish Setter or Red Golden Retriever. The kids love it and really get into pet care afterwards. Following cross curricular activities submitted by Anita Read about CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG. Have a large poster sized Clifford that the children color red by tearing red pieces of construction paper and gluing onto him. Title: Clifford the Big Red Dog (Tune: Bingo) Emily Elizabeth had a dog And Clifford was his name -o Clifford was his name Clifford was his name Clifford was his name And Clifford was his name - o Emily Elizabeth had a dog And Clifford was his name -o He was R-E-D He was R-E-D He was R-E-D Clifford was a big RED dog-o Make this on large chart paper with a big red clifford drawn first and the letters written on it..the letters are all done in black except the work red which of course is done in red. Make red dog ears and attach them to a red head band to wear. Sing "if you're a red dog clap your hands..." Paint their noses black and paint a few freckles on their faces. Start with a red circle for his face. Use the children's red hand prints to make his ears (hands upside down). Then sing "Do your ears hang low?" Read a different Clifford book everyday. Draw a giant Clifford, and have all of the kids help color him red. Make Clifford cupcakes by frosting the cupcake red, then adding M&M eyes, a whopper nose and red thin string licorice for ears. Title: Puppy Chow Melt in microwave: 1 stick margarine 2/3 cup peanut butter 1 pkg. chocolate chips Pour over 1 12 oz box Chex cereal in a large bowl. Stir. Give each child a zip lock baggie with a little powdered sugar in the bottom. Add one spoonful of cereal mixture and zip bag. Then the children shake it up until it cools. Be sure the servings are very small as this is very sweet. Use a projector to blow up a picture of Clifford on white butcher paper. Give students strips of red construction paper to cut up and glue inside of the shape to make it red. When the shape is covered, glue on eyes and a black collar. Use a dog bone cookie cutter (Wilton makes them - Walmart sells them) to cut out play dough, sugar cookies or peanut butter play dough bones. Make big Cliffords with red paper, ie. an oval for the body out of 12 x18 paper, a circle for the head out of 9x12 paper, ovals out of 41/2 x 6 for the long ears, and smaller pieces for the tail and feet. Cut, glue together and draw the face on with black. Clifford's Counting Song (tune this old man) Clifford the big red dog He ate zero and was a hero With a knick-knack paddy whack Give that dog a bone Then lets all go rolling home ...one and had some fun ...two and then he grew ...three up a tree ....four down on the floor ....five and took a dive ....six and chased some sticks ...seven and looked to heaven ...eight and cleaned his plate ....ten and started again CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS Read aloud Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. After reading and discussing the story, create this impressive child made mural to display in your classroom. Provide a long sheet of bulletin board paper. On the lower portion of the paper, have children draw elements of a town, such as houses, stores, gas stations, and a post office. Then have them paint or sponge paint scattered raindrops and clouds in the sky portion. While the paint is drying, have each child make a construction paper food item or cut out food pictures from discarded magazines. Then glue the food creations and/or pictures in the sky area. Display the completed mural with the title "Cloudy With a Chance of…" COOKIES WEEK My favourite follow up activity is (and this is not original!!) to finish the story. As a class we discuss what Cookie the cat might do on Sunday. Then each child is responsible for illustrating their ending and finishing the sentence "On Sunday Cookie .......". This is made into a class book to be shared and then put in the class library. CORDUROY This month, we made a Corduroy class book. After spending a lot of time doing activities relating to that book, I copied and enlarged a picture of Corduroy. On each page, I pasted the bear's picture and left half the paper blank. Underneath, I wrote Corduroy and so and so. Each child will make a picture of themselves and color in Corduroy. We will compile all the pages and make it available for each child to take the class book home and share with their families crossing the child's name off in the back once they had a turn. Read Corduroy by Don Freeman's Make brown craft foam bears & overalls out of a differant color. Hot glue overalls on each bear. Gather pairs of large craft buttons-hot glue one button on each pair on a differant bear. Place remaining buttons in a container in center . Invite children to match buttons by placing the corresponding button on the bears overalls. Circle Time (Discussions) Read the story to the children and involve the children in talking about the story. Tell the children they are going to pretend to be Corduroy searching for his button. Review the spatial relationship concepts that are a part of the story: up the escalator, on top of the bed, on the shelf. Tell the children the area in the room in which they can move while searching for the button. Ask the children to act out the movements as you retell the story about Corduroy searching for his button. Expand on the story adding words describing spatial relationships, such as jumps off the shelf to search for his button; walks up the escalator; searches (looking on the floor); searches under, on top of, behind and between furniture; squeezes between furniture; climbs on the mattress and falls off; hears (put hand to ear) the lamp crash; climbs back onto the bed and falls asleep; blinks because the night watchman's flashlight shines in his eyes; gets carried back down the steps; plops back on the shelf; and smiles when he gets carried home by his new friend. Cognitive (Math Concepts/Critical Thinking) Have a tray out with all kinds of different colored buttons. Have the children match the colors of the buttons. Use this as an extension activity to Corduroy's missing button. Cooking (Snacks) Make round shortbread cookies, poke four holes in each cookie to look like a button. You can also put icing on the cookies and have the children decorate it with four raisins as the holes of the button. Creative Arts & Activities Cut a Corduroy bear and an overall pattern out of tag board for the children to use as tracers. They trace the bear on brown and the overalls onto their choice out of wallpaper book. Glue them together and add buttons. For smaller children, precut and have them choose the color and paste. For "A Pocket for Corduroy", make pockets. Sew a little muslin pocket (just two squares sewn on three sides, with a ribbon attached to wear as a necklace), and the kids decorate them with fabric markers. They love to wear their pockets, and fill them with odds and ends. Button Pictures - Discuss Corduroy's missing button. Ask the children where they think it might be. Give children a button, drawing materials, glue, and some paper. Encourage them to use the button as a part of their picture. Language & Literacy (Puppets) Discuss the events in the story and encourage children to talk about their favorite part of the story. Make a flannel story using simple bear shape, little girl, button & overalls. Practice reading story to self and then tell it to children as an alternative storytelling experience. Afterwards the children can tell the story to themselves. Fine/Gross Motor Development Make a bed for Corduroy out of a sheet of heavy paper, or tag and 4 toilet paper rolls. Quilts (patterning) can also be made with squares of different colored and printed papers glued to a square or rectangle of butcher paper. The beds are durable enough for a small teddy bear from home too. Music & Movement Original Song used in Corduroy Tune: Are You Sleeping? Corduroy, Corduroy Searched for his button, Searched for his button. He looked on the floor. He looked on the floor, Of the department store, Of the department store. Corduroy, Corduroy Searched for his button. Searched for his button. He walked up the escalator. He walked up the escalator To the furniture department, to the furniture department. (Add other verses in sequence to the story.) Circle Time & Group Activities Pass the Button - Have children sit in a circle. Play music, and teach the children to play "pass the button". Periodically stop the music, and the child who is holding the button when the music stops can stand to continue the game. Keep playing till all are standing, and then play again, having them sit when they have the button this time. The children really need to focus on listening and body movement to pass the button to a sitting or standing friend Social/Emotional Ask the children how Corduroy might feel at different stages in the different books. Ex: How do you think Corduroy felt when he lost his button? How did Corduroy feel when he was finally picked to be someone's special teddy bear? Etc DO YOU LIKE MY HAT? I like to read the book DO YOU LIKE MY HAT by Dr. Seuss. Mother's day week. We then make a mother's day hat for our moms. Take a white paper plate and make to small slits on the plate, big enough to slide a ribbon through, that make the tie for the hat. Then give the children lots of silk or make paper flowers, ribbon, scrapes of material, sequence and any other creative material you have and glue it to the plate. I invite moms to school for a Mother's day tea and just before we present the hat, the teacher tape on a small balloon on top and then have each child give a hat to mom. Get the cameras ready and have some great laughs. We recite this poem: What a mother means to ME M is for the many things you do. O is for the other things you do. T is for the tons of things you do. H is for the hundreds of things you do. E is for everything you do. R is the the rest of the things you do. ELMER THE ELEPHANT Review Colors Art Activity: Cut out pieces of paper in the shape of elephants. Provide several colors of tempera paint, sponges, bristle blocks, combs, strawberry baskets, etc. Have children dip the sponges, etc., into paint and paint the elephants colorful! What Will Happen Next? When reading the story stop after Elmer turns himself "elephant" color and have the class make predictions about what will happen next. Write the predictions on chart paper and have the children vote on what they think will happen next. Turn the voting results into a graphing activity using little elephant cutouts on the graph to show the results. Patterning Give children an ouline of an elephant. Tell them to fill in the outline by creating a pattern such as stripes, colors, etc. Use the last page as an example for the class in the patterning. Make an "Elmer Day Parade" book. Accordion fold for a long,colorful parade of Elmers'. the cover should be a simple gray elephant to lead the parade. Art Give each child a large outline of Elmer. Cut many colors of tissue paper into 1" squares. Glue the tissue squares into the outline to completely fill it. When dry cut it out and talk about the similarities and differences with the creations. EVERYBODY BREAKS BREAD by Norah Dooly A rainy day errand introduces Carrie to many different kinds of bread, including chapatis, challah, coconut bread, corn bread Italian bread, pocket bread and pupusas. Includes recipes. Circle Time (Discussions) Point out the different types of bread in the pictures.Tell the children that people living in all parts of the world eat bread but that bread doesn't always look like the bread we eat.Show them the different types of bread you have brought to share with them.Discuss the differences in the breads and the cultures they have come from.Invite the children to taste small pieces of the bread you have brought.Talk about the differences in the taste of the bread and which type of bread the children liked best. Art As an extension, make baker's hats. Let the children decorate a 3-inch strip of white (sturdy) paper, that will fit around their head, with sponge prints or with food stickers. Staple a sheet of tissue paper around the top of the strip. Put tape over the staples on the inside of the strip so it won't scratch the children's skin. Gather the tissue paper into your hand and tie with a piece of yarn on the inside or outside. Let the children wear their baker's hats throughout their playtime. [Erna] a.. Let the children find pictures in magaines to cut out and glue on bread cards. In addition to cutting out food items they like on sandwiches, the children could cut out pictures of items they think would make a silly sandwich. Language Own Book Extension. Make a book and ask each of the children to finish the sentence . . . "Everybody Eats . . . " Then, have the children paint or draw a picture of an item they like to eat. Put it all into one neat book and read it to the class. If you wish, you could also let the children take turns having the book at home for a night or two. You could also put a picture of the child on their page. GET TO ELEVEN This book is excellent for helping children learn how to count in twos and threes and so on. It starts out by counting to twelve, but leaving out eleven and asking where's eleven. Then throughout the rest of the book you count to eleven using two or three different objects. For example picking up nine acorns from a forest floor and two acorns, equaling eleven. This book will help chilren understand the concept of adding and subtracting better. Lesson Plan This lesson plan could be used for ages 3-5 To begin lesson first introduce the book to the children and read it once. Then I would explain the concept of adding different things and still getting the same number. While explaining this I would show examples from the book. Then i would let the children take turns counting all the examples from the book. Activity! Materials: glue, construction paper, cut-outs of shapes, animals, etc. (in the book there are rabbits, flowers, cars, apples, frogs, turtles, stars, and others). When explaining a math concept to young children it helps them understand it better if you can give them some sort of visual activity to go along with it. I would give the children each a piece of paper and let them each count 11 different shapes of objects from the book to glue on their paper. This activity would help them practice counting and adding plus it makes a cute picture for them to take home. GINGERBREAD MAN Submitted by Marilyn I have been having fun with my 3's class with a gingerbread theme. I have repeatedly read the story of the gingerbread boy by Karen Schmidt. I precut out 6" gingerbread boys (from brown construction paper) and put them on craft sticks. I handed one out to each child at circle time. Then when I was reading the story, they could participate by pretending that their moving their gingerbread boy stick puppets to "run, run as fast as you can". They enjoyed using a prop with the story. We had gingerbread cookies for snack. The next time I did the story using pictures from the story. I xeroxed key photos and put them on crafts sticks. Then I told the story orally (using just the stick pictures) and the children loved that too. We baked gingerbread that day and enjoyed it for snack. Tomorrow, I will have the children tell the story to me using the stick puppets. I have purchased large gingerbread cookies and the children will decorate them with pink icing and m&ms, sprinkles, gumdrops. This will be a hit, I am sure! For art, we decorated large, brown construction paper gingerbread boys. Another day, we used gingerbread boy cookie cutters dipped in white or pink paint and printed onto brown paper. It came out so cute. At the easel, I precut large gingerbread easel paper shapes and they used different types of brushes with brown, white and pink paint. Flannel board 5 small brown gingerbread boys cut from felt 5 little gingerbreads sitting on a tray, one jumped up and ran away, "Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can" "You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man" (continue with 4, 3, 2, 1 gingerbread men) Every time you say "little old lady", the children say "Oh, Dear" (in a very soft high voice) and when you say "little old man", they say (in a very DEEP loud voice) "I'm hungry". Every time you say "ran" or "run", the children hit their hands on the top of their legs. After each animal that is met along the way, they make the appropriate sound. When you say "fox", they can say "swish, swish" for the sound its tail would make. Five Little Gingerbread Men Five little gingerbread men in a row (Hold up five fingers, waving back & forth) Not gonna' eat one no, no, no. (shake finger and head side to side) But they look so sweet from head to toe (hand binoculars at eyes touch head then toes) Crunch, munch...uh oh! (slap thighs on crunch, clap hands on munch, then put hands over mouth on uh oh) Continue until... No little gingerbread men in a row Wasn't gonna' eat one, no, no, no But they looked so sweet that it's sad to tell (binoculars on sweet, then index fingers run down cheeks to represent tears on sad) Crunch..munch... oh well! (slap thighs once, clap once, then throw hands up and shrug shoulders) Home project for The Gingerbread Man Draw a gingerbread man or woman on a piece of large cardboard - one for each student. Send the cardboard gingerbread person home with the children, along with the following note written on a smaller gingerbread paper explaining the project. When the gingerbread creations come back to school, take pictures of each one individually. Put the pictures on pieces or oak-tag to form a booklet. Give each child a chance to talk about his/her creation. Write what the child says-exactly as the child says it- on both the booklet and the large gingerbread person. Send any duplicate pictures and the original creation back home. Dear Parents, I am sending home a gingerbread boy/girl shape for the entire family to decorate. Use your imaginations and anything else that you have sitting around the house. Please return your creation by_________________. Thank you, _________ Take Care (Name of teacher) We made Gingerbread Houses that turned out real cute. Take graham crackers. You need seven.One for the base, for for the walls and two for the roof. I used Royal icing and they stuck really good. Royal Icing 4 cups icing sugar 3 egg whites 1/2 tsp. cream of tarter Beat about 7 minutes. I made the house and the children decorated them with candy canes, fruit loops, coconut (for snow) and gum drops. They turned out adorable. We also made a giant gingerbread man. We let the children roller paint him and added facial features and buttons. We also made gingerbread cookies from the Jan Brett website - from the book Gingerbread Baby and they turned out good. THE GINGERBREAD BABY by Jan Brett We made and decorated a gingerbread cookie. All the children went with me to put it in the oven. When it was time to take him out, he was gone. The looks of their faces was of such surprise. We looked all over the school and then we made a trap for the gingerbread baby and waited. Before long we caught him and ate him at snack. The imagination of a child is priceless. We also decorated a sandpaper gingerbread baby. I used sandpaper because the first thing they did was rub cinnamon all over the baby so it would smell like a real cookie and then they used buttons, ribbons and whatever else I have in the classroom. From the Jan Brett home page I got these Cookie Award Certificates that I also sent home. It was really a fun day Read 'The Gingerbread Baby' by Jan Brett Make gingerbread baby head bands. Staple brown strips of construction paper in circle to fit each childs head have them decorate their paper gingerbread baby cut-out. Decorate with glitter paint, rick rack or other collage materials attach by tape or staples to head band Cookie Game Have children sit in a circle. Choose one child to wear their gingerbread paper head band. He will be the ginderbread child. He walks around the outside of the circle and taps each child on the head. When he comes to the one he wants to chase him, he says "Catch me if you can." as he taps that child. The chase begins. As they chase each other around the outside of the circle the others chant "Run run as fast as you can." "You'll never catch him," "He's the gingerbread man." GRANDFATHER TANG'S STORY by Ann Tompert Grandfather Tang and Little Soo spend the afternoon sitting under a peach tree in their backyard, making different shapes with their tangram pieces. Grandfather Tang uses his pieces to tell a story about the fox fairies, Wu Ling and Chou. The fox fairies are an important part of Chinese folklore and are believed to be capable of changing their shapes. Activities 1 Have the children make their own tangram pieces out of construction paper. Have the children try to put the seven pieces back together to form a square. (Making Your Own Tangram) 2 As they follow along in the story, have the children make the shapes described with the tans they made. 3 Have the children make up their own designs. They may want to create their own story using the new designs. Have the children make the initial of their first name using all seven tans. 4 Give the students a variety of tangrams. Have them combine the tangrams to make geometric shapes, such as a square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid, and so forth. Individually, in small groups, or as a class, ask the students to make a chart that shows how many shapes were made. 5 Make tans out of flannel for the children to use on a flannelboard. 6. Tangoes is a game that contains numerous designs using tans. Have children work with these. 7. Other shapes can also be divided to make a puzzle. Using the patterns in figures 5.4 and 5.5, cut the shapes into A, B, C, and D pieces. Paperclip all the A pieces together, the B pieces together, and so on. Divide the children into cooperative groups of four and give each person one clipped bundle of pieces. The objective is for each member of the group to try to create a hexagon. No one may take a shape from anyone else, and the person with the shape must offer it to the person who needs it. No talking is allowed. Title: Reading Bag Submitted by Shelley 1. Take a bag and draw a picture of what the book may be about on the outside of the bag. A simple picture will do. Put the book inside the bag. We made several "bags" and set them on a shelf for the children to choose from. BIG HIT! 2. Make a reading hat of some kind and place this in the bag along with a couple of books. We instructed the children that these books were very special (pop-up or other interactive books) and that if they wanted to read these books they had to wear the hat and sit down quietly and read the books. When they are finished with the books they must remove the hat and place it back in the bag along with the "special" books. They can only look at these "special" books when they are using the "reading hat bag". We bring in different books everyday to place in the bag and this has been quite successful in getting the children involved with personal reading. Don't forget to include other books besides children's books in the children's library. Such as cookbooks, how-to books, simple science or social studies books, etc. Book List Submitted by Kris Last year I made a poster where I listed my literature selections all year. The parents could see how many books we had read! I purchased a poster that looked like a piece of notebook paper, but anything would do. I bordered it with a "reading" theme border. I list the books as I read them. It also makes a good reference for me so I know if I have read a book and how long ago I did -- faster than checking lesson plans! HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON Line Art Submitted by Janice Play a selection of music. Have children pick a marker and make a line on the paer from one end to the other as they move to the music (this is done on butcher paper with a small group). Allow each child a turn. When everyone has had a turn, select another piece of music and other markers-repeat. Read Harold and the Purple Crayon. After give each child white paper and a purple crayon. Have them make lines which tell a story. HARRY THE DIRTY DOG After I read Harry the Dirty Dog to the students we take paper plates and make them into dogs by gluing on a nose and ears and drawing eyes and a mouth. Then the students put glue in spots and sprinkle potting soil on to make "dirty dogs". HENNY PENNY Submitted by Gail My 4's loved the story of Henny Penny (aka Chicken Little). Here are some of the activities that did. Ideas are from fellow teachers and Mailbox magazine. HENNY PENNY Read the story aloud, encouraging your student to join in with the repetition. Ask them if they think the sky could really fall. Explain that the sky is "air that surrounds the earth." Have the children discuss what could fall from the sky (or clouds in the sky), such as rain and snow, leaves from trees, etc. Follow up a reading aloud of HENNY PENNY by making a Henny Penny character. Trace the child's hand onto red construction paper and cut out the shape. Have the child glue the hand shape to the top of a paper plate (for her "feathered head", a yellow triangle to the center of the plate for a beak, and two pennies to the plate to represent eyes. Sung to the tune of "Here we go 'round the Mulberry Bush" Henny Penny has a bump on her head, Bump on her head, Bump on her head. Henny Penny has a bump on her head And thinks the sky is falling. chorus: The sky is falling on our heads, On our head, on our heads. The sky is falling on our heads We must go tell the king! Cocky Locky went along, Went along, went along. Cocky Locky went along Cock-a-doodle-doo! Ducky Lucky went along... Quack, quack, quack! Goosey Loosey went along... Honk, honk, honk! Turkey Lurkey went along... Gobble, gobble, gobble! Foxy Loxy tricked them all, Tricked them all, tricked them all. Foxy Loxy tricked them all And took them to his cave. Foxes had a tasty lunch, Tasty lunch, tasty lunch. Toxes had a tasty lunch. Yum! Yum! Yum! The King will never ever know, Never know, never know. The King will never ever know That the sky is falling. IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE Submitted by Amy Counting Chip Cookies 1. Make 10 large round shapes. I found some small cheapo round pillows at a crafts store. You can also just laminate some brown paper, and cut into circles. 2. With a permanent marker, write a number (1 to 10) on each cookie. (do this before laminating, if using paper) 3. Attach the appropriate number of scratchy velcro dots on each cookie. (The 5 cookie will have 5 velcro dots, etc.) 4. Make 55 black dots (the chocolate chips!) out of laminated paper or fabric. Attach a fuzzy velcro dot to each. Encourage the children to stick the chocolate chips onto the cookies! Help them count the chips, and recognize the numbers. A nice tactile way for children to work on one-to-one correspondence and number recognition. Submitted by Robin I love the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie! I gathered up all the things that were in the story.....A plastic cookies....a tiny broom,....crayons.....pen....small cloth for a blanket and pillow......a small box to make the bed and so on. I made a pair of mouse ears and attached them to a head band. When I read the story someone gets to play mouse and wear the ears. and the other children select something from the box to give to the mouse. As I read the story the mouse goes and collects the items and when the story is done everything is back in the box and ready to put away. The children like to take the box in small groups and one "reads" the story while the others take turns doing the rest. In dramatic play, we are going to add baking equipment to the dramatic play area. I put a small tray out and am just going to let them stir and line up bottle caps as cookies. Thought I'd have out some construction paper , scissors, etc. and see if they can create some of their own "cookies" and "cheese". In art, I thought we could marble roll and then have the child find one dry spot to thumbprint a mouse (adding ears, whiskers, legs, etc. with an ink pen). Don't you think they would just love going home and asking mom or dad to find the mouse? In the fine motor center, I am going to try to have them try a variety of ways to poke or make holes in pieces of "cheese", (yellow, white, and orange construction paper pre-cut in various shapes). In the Math Center, I thought of creating a counting game with the cookie like cereal pieces. Cookie Poem: Five round cookies as yummy as can be. The first cookie said, "Please eat me!" The second cookie said, "I have lots of chocolate chips" The third cookie said, "I'll taste good on your lips" The fourth cookie said, "I'm right here on the pan" The fifth cookie said, "Find me if you can!" Then "Ding!" went the timer 'Cause the cookies were done We ate all the cookies and had lots of fun! Make a Class Big Book "If you Give a Mouse" On separate large, white paper circles write each child's completion to the following sentence: "If you give a mouse a ________. he will __________." Have him illustrate his page. Bind all the pages together between same-sized tan construction paper covers. Add facial features, whiskers and paper ears to the cover. Mouse Cookies With the children, prepare a batch of drop cookie dough. Demonstrate how to drop three spoonfuls of dough onto a cookie sheet so that it will resemble a mouses head with two ears when baked. The mouse cookies can be frosted or details can be added with raisins, chocolate chips, an dstring licorice. Play Mouse, Mouse, Where's the Cheese This game is played in cicle formation. Arrange the chairs and place one in the center of the circle.Place a block to represent the cheese under the chair. Select one child, the "mouse" to sit on the chair and close his or her eyes. Then point to another child. This child must try to remove the cheese without making a sound. After the child returns to his chair in the circle, instruct all of the children to place their hands behind their backs. Then in unison the children say,"Mouse, "Mouse, Where's the Cheese?" The "mouse" then opens his/her eyes and tries to guess who is holding the cheese. Circle Time (Discussions) Make a story wheel: Have children draw a large circle and include major events from the story. Cognitive (Math Concepts/Critical Thinking) Make flannel board pieces or magnets of different kinds, colors, and sizes of cookies. Several sets, for matching and lotto games. Make paper cookies of a variety of shapes Be sure there are two of each children need to match. Make paper chocolate chip cookies each cookie has a number of chips on them (1-10) Make ten mice each having a number on them (1-10) children match mouse to cookie number Creative Arts & Activities Make a class book- for each page, have each child dictate their response to "If you gave me a Cookie, I would ____________. Let them illustrate their pages. Make paper cookies. Encourage children to draw circles on butcher paper, and then cut out. Let them glue chocolate chips or raisins to their cookies. Fine/Gross Motor Development Put out a container holding chocolate chips and a pan of tweezers. Children use the tweezers to move the chips from container to another container. (Be prepared for children to eat some of the chips) Could use raisins instead of chips = oatmeal cookies! Have children use domino blocks to create their own domino effects; a chain reaction. Science & Discovery (Sensory) Give the children white play dough, rolling pins, and cookies cutters. Encourage them to make play dough cookies. If you use baker's clay, bake them, and then let the children paint their clay cookies. Outdoors Provide a large box for the children to turn into a mouse-house. Give them materials as they ask for them (if possible) to furnish the house with. This may be used to conclude or lead into a discussion about what is in our house and that everyone has the same and different things in their houses. INSIDE THE BARN INSIDE THE COUNTRY Submitted by Maya I read the book “Inside the Barn In the Country” to my Pre Kindergarten kids. They love this book and always remember it. I made headbands with Velcro on them and had all the characters from the book laminated and also Velcroed to stick on to the headbands. Each child gets a character, (if you have many children, you can double up the characters). I then go through the book again, having the Characters now separate on the board, telling the story, pointing to each character as they are awoken. I have the children make the animal noises for each character in the book as they are awoken, for example, when the cat wakes up the cow, the cow goes MOO, and the Cat goes MEOW! The great thing about this game is that every animal is repeated over and over again every time an animal is awoken, so the children are constantly making animal noises. As the book goes on, I read it faster and faster, and the children get so mixed up and laugh a lot. I also like to switch the characters back and forth back and forth, really mixing them up. The faster you go and the more mixed up it gets, the more fun it gets and the more they laugh. When the animals wake up the farmer you can yell “It’s not morning yet!! Get back to bed!!” and all the children lay down on the floor, laughing. And of course, then the whole story starts all over again, when the cat wakes up the owl, “HOO HOO!!” IS YOUR MAMA A LLAMA? Submitted by Susan I did this activity while doing a field experience in a 3 year classroom. The kids loved it. First, find several pictures of animals. One adult and one baby picture of each animal. A few odd animals can make it more of a challenge. Simply color and laminate them if you want. Put the animals up on the board, all mixed up. It is a simple matching game you can use after reading the story. One child comes up and picks an animal and moves the animals of to the side. Another child comes up and has to find the match to that animal, either the baby or the mother. The children love the game and the interaction involved. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK Submitted by Julianne Paint (or use construction paper) a toitlet tissues tube green. Then attach between three and five 1/2" by 12" green strips, twisting them. These are the vines. Also attach some leaves to the vines. Students color and cut a picture of Jack. Staple or tape Jack to a piece of yarn and tie the yarn through the tube. Pulling the yarn will make Jack climb up the beanstalk. JESSIE BEAR WHAT WILL YOU WEAR? Jessie Bear What Will You Wear. Make a bear paper doll out of a brown paper bag. Just cut it like cookie person with ears. Than make clothes for the bag bear to match the clothes Jessie wears in the book. Just use paper and crayons. Snack idea: Teddy bear graham crackers with a bit of honey. JUMP, FROG, JUMP Frog Jumping Number Line (submitted by Time) Using a pattern of a frog. Make multiple copies on green construction paper Cut them up. Line them up one on top of the other. Touching head to toe. Number them. I find 6-7 is about the maximum. I used a pattern of and a real frog length, stretched out from an old Mailbox. But you can us anything. I then run this through the laminator and leave it in one piece. I now have my frog jumping number line.. I teach the children how to frog jump. Starting from a marker. Both feet together, swinging their arms. We Practice. I have a recording sheet for each child. The children take turns jumping and record their 3 jumps. I make a class line graph which records each child's greatest jump. The kids love it. Class Book Have the class brainstorm all different types of movement and ways they can move. Then give each child a large sheet of construction paper and have him or her draw a frog in the movement of his or her choice. For example someone may draw a frog dancing. Either have them write on the page (movement chosen), frog, (movement chosen)----Dance,frog, dance, or have them dictate to you. Put together into a book. When sharing the book pause after each page to allow the children to move like the frog. Frog Float materials needed: paper cups (1 per child) lime sherbert 7-Up or sprite Miniature marshmallows or M&M’s Directions: Put one scoop of lime sherbert into a cup. Pour in 7-UP or Sprite. Add marshmallows or M&M’s to the sherbert for the frog’s eyes. KISSING HAND, THE Materials/Preparation: Put the following items in a book bag or backpack or shoebox: · Book: The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn · Heart shaped stickers · Hand cut outs · Journal book · Pencils or crayons The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn Activity: Read the book at either your orientation, your first day of school, or send home the back pack the first week. Make sure you have 3 or 4 backpacks or book bags made up so the children don't have to wait too long for a turn. When reading the story be very sensitive to your child's custodial needs. If you have a child with an absent parent adjust your story to be generic. Say: "And someone who loved Chester said give me your hand," instead of his Mother. Alternative if you're not comfortable reading story to parents or sending home -- Do this at circle time and give your students a kiss on their hand and a heart sticker. Have laminated hand name tags for comfort. Put a picture of your student with parent on bulletin board. CHESTER PATH GAME Chester Path Game Create a game board. Have a picture of Chester at one end of the board with a crooked path of handprints with hearts in the center that lead to Chester’s mom. Each child gets his own board. Use heart shaped erasers for the marker. And a dice with the #’s 1,2,and 3 on it . Help Chester get to his Mommy. Day and Night Discuss that Chester goes to school at night. Introduce the word Nocturnal. Have different ideas printed and ask if these things happen in the daytime or at night. (‘owls come out, we wear p.j.s’ the sun is out, we eat lunch, wear shoes, bats fly…. Let children come up with their own ideas. Print their ideas out so they can see their words. THE KISS GOES ON sung to twinkle twinkle Here's a special trick I know When I'm sad and scared to go Take my hand and kiss it here the kiss from you I will hold dear Down my hand and up my arm into my heart the kiss goes on I changed it some to sing to my daughter Here's a special trick I know when you're sad and don't want to go I'll take your hand and kiss it here a special kiss to hold dear down your hand and up your arm into your heart the love goes on. More Kissing Hand Ideas If you meet with the parents before school starts, read the book to them and tell them you will read it to the students on the first day. Many parents then give their children a kiss in their hand on the first day. The kids get very excited when you read the story and they have a kiss like the racoon. Give parents a heart to color during testing for their child the first day of school. Before school starts, send each parent a large piece of construction paper.Ask them to trace each family member's hand on the banner and write their name next to their hand. They can decorate their banner with crayons,markers, ribbon, colored glue, paint, stickers, photos, etc. Ask them to send their banner in with their child on the first day of school. The children will have a great time looking at the banners. This also provides them with a sense of familiarity. Adapt this activity for the very first "homework".When I finish reading it, I give each child 2 heart stickers, 1 for them and 1for Mom( Then do a little take home paper that has a little xeroxed pictureof Chester, the racoon and the title/author. The child traces around his/herhand and stamps a heart in the middle. There's a place for the parent totrace his/her hand as well. On the bottom of the paper,it says,"Trace yourmom or dad's hand and tell them about this special story." If you had a stuffed baby raccoon and a stuffed mother raccoon, you could have Chester hunt for his mom. When you found her, she could havehandcookies for everyone. Give the children each a pre traced heart that they will cut and then givethem a pre cut hand to paste the heart on. On each child's hand I will write...______'s Kissing Hand and make a bulletin board out of them. Give each child two hands, have them put a heart on the middle of them and attach to a piece of yarn. Then they can give to their Mom's to wear for a hug and a kiss.I had lip stickers and gave one to the kids to give their Mom's that night. I told them school was a fun place to be... but Mom's need a kiss so they need to tell Mom, the sticker is a kiss from them to help Mom get through thedayGlue "I love you" hand on a painted heart - they could make folded heartblots - take a pre-cut heart, fold, add a few dabs of paint with differentcolors, fold closed, rub all over, open up and you have a nice symmetricalpaint design. Since raccoons have masks, each child could decorate a mask (that you cutout ahead of time) with art materials (or a raccoon mask) Get die-cut hands in different body colors. The children can choose the handcolor they want and use either a heart stamp on the hand or use a stamp oflips on it. They can take this hand home to their parents. Kids put lipstick on and kiss paper to make a collage, or cutting/pasting lips(from magazines or ellison shapes) all over a small heart shape. Make handprints using paint on paper plates. Add the phrase 'These people love me...." and write names suggested by children.First, teach the children the sign for I love you in sign language.... then..... 1 Have the children cut out a pretraced heart (big - on 81/2x11 paper). 2 Have them trace and cut out their hand print. 3 Glue the palm of the hand on the heart (don't glue the fingers yet). Or doit the other way, make the hand bigger and the heart smaller to fit in the middle of the hand. 4 Have the children pull down the middle and ring fingers, and glue themdown to the palm of the hand. The other three fingers glue in place (pointing up). This will be the I love you sign. 5 Write the words I love you on the heart or mount the heart on arectangular piece of paper and write I love you underneath the heart.. As a small group activity, my kids each make a page for our class book We use big washable stamp pads from Lakeshore, and the kids make a handprint in the hand outline. They then dictate to me who brought them to school,and how they felt. I take pictures of the children with our digital camera,and put a heart shaped picture of the child in the middle of the handprint on their page. I then laminate the pages, put on the cover, and bind the book. Night and Day Chart After reading "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn, I talk about how Chester the Raccoon goes to school at night (introduce the term "nocturnal"), but of course, we go to school during the day! I then introduce this chart. In a box, I have sentence strips with Day/Night ideas written on them. As agroup we decide if the ideas happen at night or during the day, and attach(tape) them to the chart After they get the idea, I have the kids give me examples of things they think belong on our chart and write them on sentence strips before attaching them to the chart. Talk about raccoons and tell how they use their front feet like hands. They always pick up their food and feel and often wash it before eating. LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW By Leo Lionni Little Blue and Little Yellow is a wonderful, simple story about two friends who are shown in the illustrations as blue and yellow shapes. They have lots of fun together but when they hug, they turn green! When they go home, neither one of their families recognizes them anymore. A great book to introduce colors and color mixing, as well as promote discussion about families and friendship. ART Paint one hand yellow and one hand blue. Have children make handprints on the edge of the paper overlapping the edges. Then have them squish their hands together and place handprints in the center of the page. Print "I can make green!' in under the handprints. Snack make yellow lemon Kool-aid (I put a bit of yellow food coloring to exaggerate the color). Every child gets a clear plastic cup of it, and then we add blue ice cubes and watch what happens! Drinking it is the best part. Some children start drinking as soon as they see a hint of green and others want to wait until the whole ice cube melts. Language Arts Give each child a blue and yellow circle. Instruct them to glue the shapes on their paper, and then draw a picture of something they think the friends like to do together around the shapes. Bind all the finished pictures together to make a classroom book called "Little Blue and Little Yellow Are Friends." THE LITTLE MOUSE, THE RED RIPE STRAWBERRY, ND THE BIG HUNGRY BEAR I usually have the kids tear or cut out a red strawberry from construction and glue it onto a white paper on which I have printed at the top "The Little Mouse ____________ _________ ." They write how they would protect it from the Big Hungry Bear and collage or draw what they would do to the strawberry.? For instance, I have had kids try to disguise it, chain it, and other creative ideas that were not in the story.? Then they draw the mouse or you can copy the blackline of the mouse right on for them.? They turn out great and the kids are excited to come up with their own ideas.? I have put them together in a book for the class to read and they love it THE LITTLE RED HEN Submitted by Jan We read the story and watch the video. We make character puppets from the story. We bake bread in my bread-maker. We make a little red hen with red feathers, glitter, and red sequins, and red sand. I bring in stalks of wheat so we can talk about it and then we use the wheat, dip it in red paint, and make a picture. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD Submitted by Jan I do a big theme on Little Red Riding Hood. The girls make little red hoods (we use a pilgrim hat pattern), and the boy make wolf masks (and they really like them, of course!) We make a big brown basket out of construction paper, cut slits, and weave paper strips to finish our basket. Then we cut out food from magazines and glue it on. We also draw and paint pictures from the story. LOOKS LIKE SPILT MILK Submitted by Marilyn At our playground time, I bring out a large sheet and we all lay down on it. We do cloud gazing. Each child takes a turn telling what he/she sees. They love this activity. When we get inside (circle time) I hand out the white, flannel pieces to the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles Shaw. As I read the book, the children bring up the pieces to the flannel board that match to the story. The children stay focused and it helps to distinguish shapes. For the art for the day, I put out white paint and spoons and light blue construction paper. The paper is folded in half and the child places some white paint on one side. Then he/she presses very hard and opens the paper to see what he created. They enjoy this so much. I ask, "What do you see......." and I write their reply on the paper. We hang them in our hallway for the parents to enjoy. this is a big success. LOOK WHAT I DID WITH A LEAF Read aloud excerpts from Look What I Did With a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi. Afterward, have youngsters collect many different types and sizes of tree leaves. Back in the classroom, supply each child with a large piece of construction paper and glue. Review each page in the story, showing the youngsters each leaf creature. Then encourage each student to use his leaves to create his own simple leaf animal. MITTEN, THE Submitted by Marilyn After repeatedly reading The Mitten, I did this activity with my class. I used masking tape to make a HUGE outline of a mitten on our carpet. Then I made stick puppets of the animals in the book. I just xerox copied the figures and attached a craft stick. As I read the book, the child with the matching animal stick puppet got up and sat/laid in the center of the large mitten outline. They loved positioning themselves to allow for the rest of the "animals" to fit in. Then we sneezed and the children rolled and moved out of the mitten shape. Of course, I had to do this a few times to allow all the children a chance to participate. It was a good activity. This past month my "author of the month" was Jan Brett. We had a mitten week where I brought snow in from outside and filled the water table with it. The children had brought their mittens into school for the week. The children had a ball playing with the snow. We also painted with water color paints in the snow. In the end it looked like rainbow sherbet. We measured each other to see how many mittens tall they were which was a good counting lesson. I also did the story THE MITTEN however, I used a huge comforter and the children crawled under it and when the mouse went in I pulled the comforter off them. Of course there was a lot of laughing and silliness afterwards. I also went to the Jan Brett home page where there is many ideas for all her books. Coloring pages, lesson plans etc. can be found there. Submitted by Sandra We are doing The Mitten this week. I am sorry I cannot remember where it came from, but we used the idea of putting up clothesline. We had relays of putting the mittens on and then alternating person would take them off. They were so cute. We just leave the line up and they actually have fun hanging clothes. Another idea was to cut a big mitten out (of card stock) and punch holes around it and then lace (I first prepare the ends with glue and let it dry to a hard pretend needle) and put the animals inside. After the Mitten, we read *The Hat* (also by Jan Brett) Then we read Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing. What a fun week. We also read different authors interpretation of The Mitten. The Mitten Tree is cute and we also read the Three Little Kittens. I have had a fun week for sure! Submitted by Tammy We're doing activities related to "The Mitten" this week too. One of our favorites is to make 2 construction paper mittens, staple them together, and have the kids decorate them. They then get to see how many animal crackers can fit into their mittens. THE MITTEN (tune: Farmer in the Dell) The mitten on the ground. The mitten on the ground. Heigh-ho! It's cold outside. The mitten on the ground. The (mole) snuggles in. The (mole) snuggles in. Heigh-ho! It's cold outside. The (mole) snuggles in. (After the last animal, all pretend to sneeze and fall out of the mitten.) Mitten Music (Where has my little dog gone) by Jean Rogers Oh where, oh where did my NEW mittens go? Oh where, oh where can they be? Oh, I have looked high and I have looked low. Oh where, oh where can they be? sing and replace "NEW" with old, soft, warm, red, blue, etc. Mitten Finger play by Lucia Kemp Henry Here is a mitten, (hold up one hand) A snug, fuzzy one- (rub palms together) With a place for my fingers (wiggle 4 fingers) And a place for my thumb (wiggle thumb) Here are two mittens, (hold up two hands) A colorful sight. (hands back and forth) One for the left hand (hold up left hand) One for the right. (hold up right hand) Here are OUR mittens, (hold up two hands) As soft as can be (stroke the back of one hand) A warm pair for you (point to the neighbor) And a warm pair for me (point to yourself) Puttin' On Mittens (Theme: The Farmer In the Dell) The thumb in the thumb place, Fingers all together! This is the song we sing When it is mitten weather (Tune - "If You're Happy And You Know It") Each mitten has a mate, has a mate. Each mitten has a mate, has a mate. Can (child's name) find the pair? (He/She) is looking here and there. Can (child's name) find the mate. Find the mate? THE MITTEN BULLETIN BOARD We have a paper tree in our classroom. January is hard to decorate the tree. We decided to have a mitten and snowflake tree. The children made mittens and then we punched holes and they laced the mittens together. We then hung them on the branches of the trees. Submitted by Rhonda You could do a lesson on empty and full using the mitten. I am an elementary ed student and I just did a clinical on Jan Brett and I used this. It went real well. You could also use have children predict how many crayons that they can fit inside a mitten and then graph their predictions. MOUSE PAINT Circle Time (Discussions) Read "Mouse Paint" during circle time. Make three mice out of white construction paper. In the middle of the mouse, cut a large circle. On the back, paste some red/blue/yellow cellophane over the circle. The children should be able to see the transparent colours through the circle. Overlap the different mice and ask the children what colours they see. Leave the mice out on the discovery table for the children to play with on their own. [adapted from an idea seen in the Giant Encyclopedia of Circle Time Activities, p. 91] Cooking (Snacks) I did a neat food experience with Mouse Paint once... we gave each child cream cheese and ritz crackers, and then let them decide what colors to make their cheese...(we ended up with a lot of gray cheese, but it was fun and delicious!) Creative Arts & Activities Purchase several cat-toy mouses, those made from rabbit fur are especially realistic. Have the children dip them in paint to paint their paper. Make a mouse shape, or have the children cut their own "mice" out of fingerpaint paper. Using finger paint or ice paints in red, blue, and yellow, let the children see what colours they can make. Make little mice shapes out of blue, red, and yellow cellophane. Let the children glue these "mice" onto a white sheet of construction paper. Watch them as they explore making new colours by overlapping the mice! Fine motor: Have the children use scissors to cut colored sheets of acetate into smaller pieces, and use them to make a collage on clear contact paper. The colors will blend and create areas of see-through and opaque. Punch a hole in each child's color creation, and attach string for hanging. Sensory: Do no-mess fingerpainting. Put out fingerpaint paper or wax paper, and tape to the table. Drop on a few blobs of thick tempera paint or fingerpaint. Cover the paint with a sheet of saran wrap, and tape down the edges. Encourage the children to move the colors around with their hands to mix. When they're done, take off the saran wrap, and invite the children to press sheets of white paper over the wet paint to make prints. Fine/Gross Motor Development a.. Movement/Listening: A variation on "Freeze Dance". Tape different colors of construction paper to the floor. (the kids love to help do this!)Start out with primary colors. Make sure there is the same number of particular colors as there are children (6 kids, so 6 red, etc.)Play music, and invite the children to dance. When the music stops, call out a color, and the children must find one of the color papers to stand on. Do again and again. As they gain familiarity with color blending, you can make it harder by calling out "yellow and red", so they need to find orange. Social/Emotional a.. Have sheets of acetate in each of the three primary colors. Give one to each child, and let them look through the sheets to see the world tined different colors. Encourage them to trade colors. Then, invite them to put their color sheets together with other children to look at the new colors they create. Make sure everyone changes partners to see all the different colors. Science & Discovery (Sensory) a.. Sensory: Make color blending bags. In a saucepan, pour 1 cup cornstarch, 1/3 cup sugar, and four cups water. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. The mixture will start to turn lumpy, and then thicken into a sort of vaseline-looking product. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Divide into 4-6 small strong ziploc storage bags. Squirt in a few drops of food coloring in primary colors, aiming for different areas of the bags. Press out as much air as possible, and seal the bags. Fold a piece of duct tape over the top for added security. Now- give to the kids, and let them squeeze and press the colors around. The colors will blend beautifully, and the bags will last for quite a while. MRS. BINDERGARTEN Submitted by Melissa As me and my assistant were getting ready for the beginning of school we took pictures of each other and then using word I created the start of the book "Miss Melissa and Miss Nancy get ready for kids connect". Then after reading "Miss Bindergarten gets ready for kindergarten" the children acted out what they did to get ready the first day. Then we put together a class book that the children love to read during choice time. Also we did another one called ABC zoo. the characters in Miss Bindergarten are all animals that match up with their names. We had the children choose an animal that matched their name like Lakisha the lion and then drew themselves as this animal. We made up names of friends for missing letters. MRS. WISHY WASHY Submitted by Vicky We just had the most fun in our 5's class the other day, we made "clean mud". You need 3 small bars of ivory soap, 1&1/2 cups borax, water, and 6 rolls of toilet paper (Like Charmin, not cheap kind). The kids unroll the TP and put it in container like a dish tub, and add water so it is all wet and fits in. Grate the soap and add, add borax, mix well with hands, and play in it! It will keep for weeks if you seal it, and it smells so good. We made mud pies with ours, and decorated them with pebbles and colored toothpicks. The kids also wrote out their recipes for mud pies and illustrated them. They are very cute! We read "Mrs. Wishy-Washy" to go along with all this. Try it! MY MANY COLORED DAYS I read this book to my kids last week. Here's what we did....First we talked about what feelings we feel when we see different colors. Then during center time, I had my kids trace and cut out a person shape. They took different colors of tissue paper that had been cut into small squares. They placed one square at a time on the person shape and painted over the tissue with water so the tissue color would bleed onto the paper person. They removed the tissue paper after they painted it with the water and were amazed to see how the color was left behind! I showed them how to overlap different colors to make new colors like in the book. Later, the children explained why they chose the colors they did or what feelings the colors reminded them of. I typed their dictation and we glued their person and dictation onto construction paper. After reading this wonderful book, I give each child a cutout of a boy/girl cut from oaktag (an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet). On the table I have plates of paint (colors from the story) and small sponges. I have them think about how they feel in certain situations. Then I demonstrate how to put a very small amount of a color on the sponge (wet the sponges first and squeeze out so that they're damp but not wet, then put in paint), dab some off on paper towel and sponge paint an area with the color that represents that feeling. They come out beautifully! By the way, we put up a chart showing what feeling represents each color with a little drawing for happy, sad, mad, etc. MYSTERY OF THE MISSING RED MITTEN, THE Submitted by Diane "The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten" by Steven Kellogg. This is the story of a little girl who loses her mitten while playing and can't find it. After searching with her little dog, she finally finds inside a melting snowman's chest where it looks like his heart. A very cute story and we then make a snowman with a mitten heart to take home. I also usually poll my class as to who likes gloves and who likes mittens and then chart it cutting their hands out in the color of their choice in either a mitten or glove shape. We hang it for the month of January. MUD by Wendy Cheyette Lewison In Mud by Wendy Cheyette Lewison the boy and girl end their muddy tale by leaving a trail of marvelously mucky footprints. Choose a warm spring day and let your youngsters make muddy footprints, too. Have each child in turn take off his shoes and socks and sit in a chair outdoors. Carefully paint the bottom of the child's feet with brown tempera paint. Have him stand on bulletin board paper to leave one set of footprints. Then help the child dunk his feet in a shallow pan of warm water and rinse and dry them. When the footprints are dry, use them as a border for a springtime bulletin board. NAPPING HOUSE, THE Submitted by Amy My House Finger play My house has a roof, so big and wide (use hands to form a roof above your head) With a window like this, to look inside. (make window with hands) Here is my door (hold handup straight) And here is my key ( use other hand to pretend to unlock the hand door) Come knock on my door, and play with me! (use hand to knock on hand door) What do we know about houses? At a chalkboard or using a large piece of paper taped to the wall, help children brainstorm about houses. Draw (or ask children to draw) the children's ideas. What do we need to build a house? What parts does it have? Where should we put the door, windows, etc. Why do we need a roof? What would we like to have inside? Outside? Who would we like to live there? Shoe box Houses Give each child a shoe box, and let him paint it and then furnish with dollhouse furniture and dollhouse dolls. Make sure to have little "blankets" and small boxes for putting doll children to bed. Build a Home Give children glue, and various shapes, sizes, colors and textures of paper to build paper houses with. Make sure you have many small squares available for windows! Block Houses Encourage the children to use the blocks to make homes for the baby dolls, the stuffed animals, each other, etc. Have masking tape available for making streets between the houses. Go visiting! OLD BLACK FLY We use fly swatters and dip them in paint and do swat paintings so they match the artwork in the story. When dry add a plastic fly or a fly that the kids make out of const. paper and wax paper for wings. HINT: Do the painings outside :0) OWL BABIES I love this book. Actually, I have 3 copies and put it in my Listening Center. Afterwards, the children make a paperbag puppet. Children can draw two LARGE eyes and triangle for beak. (Always cute to see how some rotate the triangle or make a square as their attempt). Next, comes the fun part. Children take construction paper and "listen" for the ripping sound as they make l-o-n-g stips of paper. They, then, attach these long strips just under the flap of the owl's head (do not glue the entire strip). The paper will curl at the bottom somewhat and look like feathers--if they make enough. Very cute and 5 year olds can do this independently. 3 and 4's may need some additional help. Cross Curriculum Ideas To introduce the story, ask the children "what do you think the story will be about?" Discuss that the mother is called an owl and the babies are called owlets. How many words do you see in the title? What letter does owl begin with? What letter does babies begin with? Literacy: In a large group, use a tree with an owl attached to a piece of yarn to position the owl in, over, next to, in front of and beside. Let each child choose to illustrate their own picture with a tree, owl and preposition. Use the sentence frame ____________'s (child's name) owl is ______the tree. Assemble the book and place in the class library. Art: Make a feather collage. Make an owl baby puppet using a paper bag, a pattern for the owl's head and whiteconstruction paper. Science: Compare the remains that are found in several owl pellets. Encourage children to sort the bones and make a list of possible sources. Since owls have keen eyesight, use magnifying glasses to examine the owl pellets. Math: Make an Owl Number Book. Since this project needs to be done in two days, the children will glue chinese noodles onto each page for the owl's nest and copy a numeral onto each page (1-5). On the second day, the children will use their thumb print to make the appropriate number of owls in each nest. Add eyes, nose and toes with fine-tip marker. The teacher and child should assemble the pages and staple. Little Hoot Owl (sung to the tune of "Six Little Ducks") Who flies around in the dark of night? Who glides on wings o'er silent night? Who eats his dinner by late moonlight? It's a little hoot owl with his owl eyesight! Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl. Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl. Who-who, who-who, little hoot owl. It's a little hoot owl with his owl eyesight THE POLAR EXPRESS Material: sleigh bell (wrapped in small box) drawing supplies Introduction Activity : Show the small gift wrapped box (containing the bell) to the class. Ask them to speculate what's inside. After everyone has had the opportunity to guess, select a child to open the box and show its contents. Tell the children that they will hear a story about a boy's exciting nightime adventure and the very special gift he receives. Body : Read the story "The Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg. Pause to discuss the illustrations (How do they make you feel?)Also, pause to discuss things that children might see on the way to the North Pole, as well as, what they might see when they arrive.At the end of the story, review the happenings of the boys very special evening. Note: I always end the story with the sentence, "It made the most beautiful sound my sister and I had ever heard." It seems a more appropriate ending for children of this age. Conclusion Activity : Children draw pictures of what they might be seen on the way to or at the North Pole, on cloud shaped pieces of paper. To use for a bulletin board display, make a Polar Exprees train and use the cloud shaped pictues as the puffs of smoke coming from the engine. Submitted by Kozan When I read this book, at Christmas time, to my Kindergarten class I also set up my class to represent a train. When the children enter the room, Christmas music is playing while they select a seat to sit in to ride the pretend train. In each seat is a cup of hot chocolate/marshmallows to drink and a candy cane to eat while they are listening to the story. I also have a very large gold bell that I ring at the appropriate times in the story. Some children don't see the bell and they really belive it is ringing from the book or the story!! This year my class asked me to reasd the book three times!I have also done this with third graders and they enjoy it as much as the Kindergarteners do. I have a friend who mails her students a bell during the Christmas break. Many think it could have come from Santa. Submitted by Michele Usually this is book I read over the Christmas holiday season. I get the children geared up for a train ride to the North Pole aboard the Polar Express. Prior to this I print up a ticket that they will need to board the train. I use each childs name, date and destination, sprinkle silver glitter over it and laminate it. On the day of our trip, I blow a wooden train whistle that I purchased a long time ago for my young son and "All Aboard." The children line up at the door where tickets are taken and they board the train. The train is made up of classroom chairs in 2 rows with long pieces of tagboard that I have painted to look like train wheels. The lights are all off as they board the train and we are off. I read the story to the children and upon returning back home they are each presented with a silver bell. The children love it and is always a highlight of the holiday season. Submitted by Barbie We started a polar express day last yr. and the kids loved it. Our students are required to wear uniforms, so we had everyone bring their pajamas and change or some just put over their clothes. The teachers wore matching flannel pj's. (We are in central Florida so the air conditioner was being used) There are 4 k teachers in our wing so we had activities in each room and the kids rotated around every 30 minutes or so. Christmas CD's were playing in each room. Each teacher read the story in her own room before we started rotating. One room had hot chocolate and Christmas cookies (we kept hot in 2 large crock pots) and watched the video of polar express that our librarian was able to find from another school in our county. One laced up and decorated stockings, one used ribbon to make a bell necklace and played hide the bell, last one did a coloring activity. We took pictures of each child in front of their class Christmas tree in their pj's for the memory book. We realized that we needed more help to get kids around to each class, so we have already enlisted some volunteer moms to take classes around while the teachers stay put and direct activities for each room. The moms will wear pj's also. THREE LITTLE PIGS Read the story and then talk about what happened to each little pig and why. Have 3 groups of children and have each group build one of the homes like the little pigs did. Straw- raffia Sticks-pretzel sticks and marshmallows bricks-blocks or 1" wooden cubes. Have one student be the big bad wolf and try to blow the houses down. What happened? Why? What good the litte pigs have done differently when building their houses? Hopefully they will come up with they should have worked together as a team, etc; THE RAG COAT by Lauren Mills Minna proudly wears her new coat to school and shares the stories sewn into its patchwork design. This uplifting story was inspired by tales from the Appalachian Mountains, a song by Dolly Parton, and the author's own childhood. A reading of The Rag Coat is the perfect springboard to a discussion of values such as friendship, kindness, respect, and self-esteem. Follow up your class discussion with this art activity. Request that each child bring in a scrap of cloth. Then have her share a story about the cloth. Cut each child's scrap into smaller pieces, and then combine all the pieces. Provide each child with a tagboard coat shape and encourage her to cover the shape with assorted fabric pieces. Have her glue the cloth on the coat and then trim around the edges. When the coats are complete, everyone will have a rag coat like Minna's that is "full of stories." RAINBOW FISH Color in fish template using chalk. Glue fish on blue construction paper. Glue a recycled cd to the center of the fish and finish off with reinforcers for eyes and a tissue paper fin. Click here to see a pic. Take a card board box open on one side and have the children paint the inside blue and then give each child a precut fish (or have them design their own) have the children decorate the fish with glitter, sequins, feathers, whatever is on hand. Then suspend the fish with fishing wire from the fish tank. It will look like the fish are swimming. Allow the children to add things to the tank like rocks, plants etc. Easy Rainbow Fish Here's a school of fish your youngsters can create in a flash! To make a fish, cut a triangle from a colored paper plate. (If time permits, paint a white plate the color or colors of your choice, and allow it to dry before cutting.) Glue the tip of the triangle to the opposite side of the plate. Glue on (or draw) a black circle for an eye. Suddenly you've got a school of fish for a special summer display. Add foil for shiny scales! RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE Submitted by Mrs. Joan Green This year during our "Rumble in the Jungle" (This is also the title of the book I use, I can't think of the author, but it is a fun book to start the theme off with); We studied animals from within the jungle with names that began with the letter of the week(s) we were studing; for instance "m"... we learned about Mcaw's. Very fasinating birds. For Art we took TP tubes and wraped a water painted(by the children) picture of a McCaw around it. We added long lengthes of colored creepe paper for their long tails, and colorful feathers for wings. The picture I used (from High Reach) Place the wings in such a manner that they were glued above the TP tube as if they were flying. I hole punched these and hung from our classroom ceiling. They were quite a hit! We also make camera's from Macaroni and cheese type boxes painted black, dried, and then painted details as the children wished. Next, on 3x5 index cards we glued pictures we cut out of magazines of jungle animals for our "photographs". Then we went on a "safari". We played "animal freeze". Just like "The Freeze" by Steve & Greg, but the children had to freeze into a position of a jungle animal and we all took turns guessing what each other was. Show N Share time consistated of only jungle animals from their toy boxes; with a story of how they "captured" their animal and in what part of the world would they replace the animal? We listened to rainforest music in the background, which turned out to open the mind to many a question to real vs pretend. Using babyfood jars we placed some dirt and ivy and watched as the dew would gather and go away. Finally using the shape of a girrafe we made journals and told our own stories of what we learned during our jungle month. RUNAWAY BUNNY Class Book Submitted by Amy Here's something I've done with older preschoolers- Have the children think of additional ways for the little bunny to hide and the Mother to find him, to make a class "Runaway Bunny" book. Invite the children to dictate their ideas, and illustrate. Pita Cake Snack Submitted by Amy Make a cute rabbit out of pita bread (they call it "Pita Rabbit" - groan!) Carefully slice through the pita so you have 2 circles. Cut one circle in half for the ears. Spread all with pb, then cover with marsmallow fluff. Mix a bit of red jam with some fluff to make it pink. Use for nose and inside of ears. Put 2 dollops of jam for the eyes. Use pretzel sticks for whiskers Foot Bunnies Materials: Construction paper - brown, pink, blue and green Black markers Scissors Glue Cotton balls Pipe cleaners Curling ribbon Pink pom pom Blue beads Directions: Remove one shoe; leave sock on. Bunny's head and body are made by tracing your foot onto brown construction paper with a pencil. Cut out. Cut green construction paper to look line grass. Glue to bottom of blue construction paper. Turn foot tracing upside down and glue to the blue piece of construction paper on the grass (fat part on bottom). Cut out 2 long ears from brown and pink paper. Glue pink pieces onto brown pieces. Then glue on top of heel outline. Glue on beads for eyes, a pink pom pom for nose and a large cotton ball for a tail. With black marker, draw in mouth and whiskers. Growing Flowers Materials: Styrofoam or paper cups (decorated as desired) Popsicle sticks (painted green) Flowers made from construction paper, wallpaper scraps, or fun foam Stick the popsicle stick carefully through bottom of cup. Glue the flower to the stick inside the cup. (We made our Crocus out of construction paper and glued it around the stick so the stick tip didn't show). The stick can now be raised and lowered through the cup as if the flower is growing. We put a fun foam bunny in each of our flowers and pretended it was the little bunny in the story. Tying Shoes with Runaway Bunny submitted by Joyce I like to connect the runaway bunny with learning to tie our shoes. We have two bunnies, one runs around the other, through a hole and away from the other. A fine motor skill, beginning to teach tying and just something fun the kids love to use as a filler. It is amazing how many will remember how to do this skill because of the connection between the theme and the skill. Bunny Hide and Seek Game Submitted by Amy Take turns being the Mommy bunny finding the little bunnies Science Submitted by Peta Carrot Tops: Provide carrot tops, plastic containers, potting soil, spoons and a watering can. Invite the children to plant the carrot tops. SILLY SALLY For Silly Sally we take a picture of the children standing with arms over their head and hands straight up. When the pictures are cut out they can be turned over so it looks like the children are walking upside down. We have them stamp a field of yellow flowers on the bottom of a piece of paper with the sentence Silly ___________________________ went to town walking backwards upside down. Then the child's picture gets glued on so it looks like they are walking upside down. Fill in each child's name in the sentence and put together into a class book titled Miss/Mrs./Mr./Ms. __________________________ Silly Class. STELLALUNA Math After reading stellaluna, make a venn diagram comparing bats and birds. Compare the largests bats in the world with the smallest bats. as a class we measured 6 ft the wingspan of the largest bats. i drew a bat that fit in the wingspan. then give each child a 5 in strip of paper and have them draw, color and cut out a bat to represent the smallest bats. (although i read somewhere later that some bats are even smaller than that, so the papers, possibly should have been smaller) Taste mangoes like Stellaluna. Graph who likes/dislikes this fruit. Snack Make a fruit salad from mangoes, banana and dates to represent the types of fruit that fruit bats eat. Use a bat shaped cookie cutter and make bat shaped french toast to eat with the fruit salad. STONE SOUP Submitted by LeeAnn Cooking Stone Soup (Tune: The Farmer in the Dell) Cooking Stone Soup Cooking Stone Soup Stir the pot, It's getting hot, We're cooking Stone Soup. First, we add potatoes, First, we add the potatoes, Stir the pot, It's getting hot, We're cooking Stone Soup. Additional verses could be sung for all the other ingredients in your particular version of STONE SOUP. OTHER SOUP BOOKS Growing Vegetable Soup Lois Ehlert Pirate Soup Erica Farber and J.R. Sansevere Tomato Soup Thacher Hurd Mouse Soup Arnold Lobel Submitted by Margie Read the story...Stone Soup. Talk about the different vegetables you could add to a soup. Make a list of what each child would like to contribute to a "classroom soup". Send home notes to the parents to have them bring their vegetable in on Soup day. You provide the stones...use chicken/beef bouillon to toss in the soup. Have children wash, cut up, etc., the vegetables and simmer soup from morning until snack time. CLASSIFICATION GAME: "Vegetable, Fruit or both" Label 3 medium boxes (Or grocery bags folded down) on the sides...the 1st "VEGETABLES", 2nd "FRUIT" and 3rd bag "BOTH". Using the classroom plastic vegs. or vegs. cut out from magazines/newspapers...classify them. VARIATION: Turn the bags around so that the opposite sides are labeled: "VINE", "TREE", "UNDERGROUND". Now play the same game, classifying which grow on a vine, tree and underground. THE SNOWY DAY By Ezra Jack Keats Submitted by Staci Today we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and then the children got a chance to paint (onto black paper using white paint or white paper using black paint) using a stick to make a trail just like Peter did in the snow. We also finger painted and let them draw a trail in the snow using their fingers or the sticks. This classic story of a little boy's adventures in a snowy city won a Caldecott Medal in 1963. Peter wanted to keep a snowball as a remembrance of the snowy day. Help your youngsters create their own snowball keepsakes with three-inch Styrofoam balls, white and blue one inch tissue paper squares, glue brushes, and thinned white glue. To make an imitation snowball, place a Styrofoam ball in the bottom part of an egg carton to prevent the ball from rolling. Brush the upper half of the ball with thinned white glue; then place tissue paper squares on the glue. Brush glue on the tissue paper and add additional squares so that they overlap the others. Sprinkle silver or clear glitter sparingly over the wet surface. Allow the glue to dry and repeat the process to complete the other half of the ball. Hey, it's a snowball to keep! TEN BLACK DOTS I had my pre-k class make our own class book of "Ten Black Dots". Each child took 10 black dots and then created a drawing around them. We had a train, balloons, dalmation, ice cream cones, flowers, etc. The book was really cute and their creativity was amazing. I simply wrote what they said the drawing was but for older kids maybe they could write their own story. Marilyn Burns has a wonderful book entitled Math And Literature (K-3). She uses Ten Black Dots and suggested doing the following with students: Each student creates a book with 10 pages over a period of several days. The format is similar to the piece of literature in that on page one the child draws a picture and uses one black self-adhesive dot, two on page two, etc. When the books are done, the students have to figure out how many black dots are in their books and they must show how they figured out the answer. Every child had to complete these sentences: We each needed ___ dots. I got my answer by _______________ . Some of the children had to count all the individual dots; some did an addition problem 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10; some used tally marks. This was done in a first grade classroom and was used to assess what students can do with numbers and how they think. THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR UNDER MY BED We like the story"There is a alligator under my bed", Mercer Mayer. I have them cut out pictures of food from magazines with their parents at home. They brought these pictures in to feed our alligator, I let the kids make footprints in a alligator shape by painting on a heay tagboard, then we made a trail with these footprints leading to the food. We also have alligator shape sponges that they sponge painted on a large letter A. The alligator (FINGER PLAY) The Alligator snaps his jaws(lay arms flat together) Snap, snap, snap, hands open and shut The alligator smacks his tail(hands on thighs) smack ,smack, smack. The alligator crawls away Tap tap tap(Stomp feet.) Hope this helps. Alligator We have made an alligator out of a clothespin. Paint the clothespin green, add wiggly eyes on top and then put small yellow poms poms on down the nose (or snout)I'm not sure what you would call it on an alligator. I found that the clothespins that do not clip on but rather slide on (all wood no metal) work the best. Hope this is easy to follow! WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE PJ PARTY Host a wild rumpus. Have children wear blanket sleeper pjs or sweat suits. Put on wild dancing music and let the wild rumpus begin! Monster Masks 1).Precut or have children trace pattern and cut out mask. Decorate with seqins, feathers, stickers etc. Wear the masks for the wild rumpus. Hint: to keep the headband from ripping so easily...attach paper strips to either side of the mask. Thread the open ends thru a rubber band, fold back and staple to the paper strip. The rubberband stretchs so the mask can go over pontails, braids etc. 2). Materials: paper plate, or pizza wheel, or poster board circle, glue, scissors, various colors of tissue paper, sequins, butttons, or other art supplies. Have each child glue the entire surface of their paper plaet, pizza wheel, or poster board circle. The glued surface should then be covered with pieces of tissue paper. Add facial features, horns, teeth, manes, beards, etc. with the other art supplies. Display on bulletin board with a cut out crown near the lower edge of the board and caption "Be Still Wild Things". 3). Give each child a paper plate with eye holes cut out. Put out a variety of art materials- paper scraps, crepe paper, tissue paper, sequins, beads, cloth scraps, yarn, etc. Have each child look at the wild things in the book and make his/her own wild things mask. When all are made, put on the music from the story tape or some other wild music. The children hold their masks in front of their faces and "let the wild ruckus start"! 4. Using brown paper grocery bags cut out holes for the eyes,nose, and mouth. Provide the class with a wide collection of art materials. Have them create wild thing masks. Have a wild rumpus! Art Project For a follow up to "Where the Wild Things Are", I have my students make their own monsters by ripping paper. I put a variety of colored construction out and the kids get to select what colors they would like to use. They then must rip the paper to make their monsters. NO SCISSORS ALLOWED!! They then glue the monster together. We usually display their monsters in the hallway for everyone to see. Everyone succeeds with this project...(even those that struggle with cutting). I like to do this for Maurice Sendak's B-day (June). Snack and Chant If your wild things are getting restless, the following chant will give them something to roar about! Provide each child with ten Bugles corn chips to slip onto clean fingertips to represent claws. When the chanting is done, sit down for a snack that finger-lickin' fun. Teacher: Wild things, wild things, Look at you! Wild things, wild things, What can you do? Class: We can roar our roars! (Roar) Gnash our teeth at you! (Show teeth) We can roll our eyes! (Roll eyes) Show our claws, too! (Extend fingers) Repeat teacher's verse Class: We can eat you up, 'Cause we love you! Music and Movement Material: a recording of lively instrumental music 1. With the children seated around you, reread the part of the story where Max controls the "wild things" by staring them down, and the part where the "wild things" are having a wild rumpus as they play. 2. Ask the children what they think a wild rumpus might look like. Discuss the characters' actions in the story. 3. Tell the children that they can be the "wild things" when the music is playing, but when the music stops they must act tired and gently sit or lay down down on the floor. Be sure to give them guidelines before beginning about what behavior is appropriate in a wild rumpus. WILL I HAVE A FRIEND? by Miriam Cohen Use this reassuring story as a springboard for discussion about youngsters' feelings during the first days of school. Ask students to predict whether or not Jim will have a friend and if so, how he will meet his friend. After reading Will I Have a Friend? aloud, discuss the idea that everyone can be a friend to someone else in the class. On a chart, write several positive traits about each child that would make him a good friend. Then provide each child with a crown or an award ribbon cut from sturdy paper. Have each child personalize and decorate his item. Then write several positive words from the list on each child's crown or award

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