Five Little Chicks

objective:

a. to answer questions about a simple story

b. to listen to the story on a recorded device with background noise


Points to Remember:
1. Brooke spent time listening and answer questions about a story. Then we started listening to a story on a cassette tape; now we are listening to the story on a cassette tape with background noise. This required that Brooke really begins to focus on her listening skills.

2. Record your voice reading the book. Remember to pause after each page since you will be pausing the tape after each page.


Lesson:

1. Listen to one page at a time without allowing your child to see the pictures in the book.

2. Ask a question. For this book, there was a different object that the chicks were looking at such as: a bug, a butterfly, a strawberry.

3. Ask, what did the chicks see?

4. Once your child answers, show her the page in the look.

5. Rewind the tape and listen again if necessary.


Modification:

1. There are lots of children's books on CD/cassette. Most have background noise such as music or sound effects. These will work great.

2. Extend the lesson into a fun craft or snack. We make a chick out of a left-over Easter egg!

Our New Dog

Our New Dog
It's an exciting day for Miranda, Mark, and their parents. They have just acquired Duke, a playful puppy--and the first thing they need to do is gather all his things together: a leather collar, a water bowl, a food bowl, a leash, a bed, and some toys to keep him amused. Mom and Dad make it clear to the kids that Duke is not a toy, but another family member. Step-by-step, Miranda and Mark learn the many details that are a part of proper puppy care. But most of all, they discover how much fun it is to have a little dog in their home.

We were given this book by a sweet family at preschool. It is a wonderful story and the girls have enjoyed reading it! Since they loved the book so much, I thought we could do an activity to reinforce the concepts in the book. Hmmmmmm, what should we do?
Actually, the puppy can before the book; but he looks like to dog on the cover! Meet our new puppy Tex! And he has encouraged a lot of conversation and new vocabulary for Brooke. She called his Max for a few days and even confused me enough that I started calling him Max. She knows his name now and treats Tex like her baby!

Where the Wild Things Are

In this book, Max puts on his wolf costume in pursuit of some mischief, chasing his dog with a fork and talking back to his mom, and gets sent to bed without supper. Fortuitously, a forest grows in his room, allowing his wild rampage to continue unimpaired.

Activities:
READ THE BOOK
1.Look at the front cover: read the title and author. Look at the picture on the cover: What kind of feet does the Wild Thing have? What is he doing in the picture?

2. Say This is the title page and it says Where the Wild Thing Are? What is a Wild Thing? Look at the 2 Wild Things, what is different/same? Point to the boy in the costume Is he a Wild Thing? How is he different?

3. Begin reading. I would often stop to let Brooke talk about the pictures. As long as she is talking about the book, I will stop and let her ask her questions or tell her story. If she talks about something else, I say We can talk about that when we finish reading the book but that rarely happens if it is a good book.

4. I pointed out the differences between the pictures of the Max in his room and when his room began to grow into a forest. We talked about imagination.
5. I pointed out the expressions on Max's face, Does Max look happy or scared? etc.
6. "Let the wild rumpus start!" What is rumpus? What do you think it means? Jake helped with this question.

7. When we got to the page where the wild things are hanging on the tree. Brooke looked carefully at each wild thing. I asked her How do the wild things look the same (e.g. they all have sharp claws, yellow eyes ...) and how they are different (e.g. one has human feet, one has a beak ...) She thinks the one in front of Max looked like PopPop since his hair "sticks up" and it "has hair all over his face"

8. At the point Max leaves to return home, Brooke pointed the the wild things and gave them voice, "Don't go, I love you, Stay here with me" are some of the phrases she used in her high-pitched Wild Thing voice.



ART Create a Wild Thing together. Use your imagination to create a Wild Thing. Be sure to use detailed descriptors to describe your Wild Thing (e.g. his tail is long; and skinny and looks like a rat's tail, his teeth are sharp, like a lion's teeth etc..)






STORY TELLING Using our wild things and a puppet of Max (made from a photocopy) We practiced retelling the story. I went first to model re-telling since we really haven't done this yet. I retold the story in basic, simple sentences that the kids could also use.

Max put on this wolf costume and acted like a Wild Thing. His mommy told him to stop and Max said, I'll eat you up. Mommy said, go to your room without any supper. In his room a forest grew and grew and grew. Max got into a boat (had a boat puppet) and went far away to where the Wild Things live. Max and the Wild Things swung on trees and marched and danced. Max said, Be Still. The Wild Things went to sleep. Max was sad and lonely and went home. The Wild Things said, Stay here, Don't go, We will miss you. But Max went home and his Mom put his supper in his room. The End


Brooke told some basic parts of the story. It was difficult to understand her from behind the puppet theater but I could make out parts of the story in sequence. For instance, Max was naughty. Go to your room, Don't go, Max went home and lots of phrases I couldn't make out in between but a great accomplishment for re-telling the story.




KIDS IN THE KITCHEN

Make a Wild Thing to eat! We gathered raisins, almonds, dried apricots, dried apples, coconut, dried cranberries, and mini-Reese's Pieces from the cabinets. On toasted English Muffins, I spread peanut butter and let the kids create an edible Wild Thing.




Brooke looked in the book and chose a Wild Thing to create. We talked about the vocabulary: horns, claws, toes, sharp teeth, whiskers, and much more.



I think it looks really good! Kate and Jake's Wild Things are below.







WILD RUMPUS: Of course, we had to turn on some music and have a wild rumpus of our own.

Little Cloud by Eric Carle

This tale introduces a little cloud that changes itself into a handful of shapes. Calling upon memories of objects it has seen, Little Cloud becomes a plane, a shark, trees, a rabbit and a clown before rejoining the other clouds. At this point they do what clouds are apt to do when they get together: "Then all the clouds changed into one big cloud and rained!" The text is very predictable and gives Brooke an opportunity to listen and answer questions. This is how we read the book:

Mommy reads while not allowing Brooke to see the picture: " Little Cloud changed into a sheep. Sheep and clouds sometimes look alike."

Looking at Brooke I ask, "What shape did the little cloud turn into?"

Brooke replies, "a sheep" and I show her the picture.

Then we turn to the next page without letting Brooke see the picture and I read, " Little Cloud changed into an airplane. Little cloud often saw airplanes flying through the clouds."

Looking at Brooke I ask, "What did Little Cloud change into?"

Brooke replies, "a airplane" and I show her the picture.

Using the predicable structure of the book, she is able to answer correctly. She knows she is listening for what Little Cloud changes into and is able to answer correctly most of the time. Listening for one part of the story is much easier for her. If I start to ask different questions such as "What sometimes looks alike?" or "Where were the airplanes Little Cloud saw before?" Brooke would struggle and since she didn't know the answer would try to repeat the entire page instead of answering just the question. So to make reading fun and enjoyable, I try to find repetitive books to practice this Learning to Listen skill.

Now for the fun:
We made some Little Clouds to eat! The clouds are meringue and so, so, so yummy

You'll need:

• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• dash of salt
• 1/2 cup sugar

To make:

1. Separate egg whites and let stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes
2. Add egg whites, pinch of salt, and cream of tartar to a bowl. Beat at medium speed until soft peaks begin to form
3. Slowly add 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Beat on high speed until soft peaks begin to form
4. Drop onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper to form "clouds"
5. Bake at 225 degrees for an hour and 15 minutes. Remove from rack and let cool.
   

While our yummy cloud were baking, we did some art in the style of Eric Carle. Using blue construction paper, white paint and cotton balls, we paints clouds.
Brooke's Little Cloud was a boat.

We then read the book again! Now we'll head outside and look at the clouds seeing if we can find Little Cloud up in the sky.

This week we are reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Matrin Jr. We try to read it every day and do an activity or craft based on the book. It is a great letter-learning time. Yesterday, we made our very own coconut trees out of green construction paper, paper towel tubes, tape, stickers and crayons. Brooke and Kate put alphabet stickers on the tree trunks and even wrote some of the letters with crayons.

Lessons in Learning

Categorizing
We borrowed this puzzle from the library for Brooke to practice Classification. The puzzle had 3 items that grouped together to create a category. This is great vocabulary practice for her. For example, as she was learning words we called every vehicle a car; now we use the words "car", "truck", and "bus". These are all vehicles. Also, instead of using the word "boat" the puzzle helped to introduce words such as "sailboat, canoe, and ship" which are all boats.


Letters Here Brooke is gluing buttons on a capital B....we practice and reviewed the sound.


Literature
We borrowed this book bag from the library as well. Using the puppets as we read helps to make the book much more fun. Brooke was one of the little pigs.



Numbers
We played "Cookies on a Plate" game. The girls rolled the dice, recognized and named the number and used one-to-one correspondence to put the correct number of cookies on the late. The dice only has numbers 1-3 which was great for Brooke. Then we counted all the cookies on the plate. We also used flower buttons and numbered cups to work on number correspondence this week. Brooke does 1-3 independently and then I help with the counting up to #6.



Sorting and Categorizing
Brooke sorted circles and triangles and then glued each into the correct category.

Colors
A fun puzzle from Confessions of a Homeschooler to sort colored paintbrushes and put them into the correct paint can.

For this activity, which was yummy, we sorted Froot Loops into their colors and then created a patterned necklace to eat. Brooke's patterns was pink, purple, pink, purple.

Lessons in Learning

Language Experience

Brooke made tea for the Tea Party. She helped measure, pour, and count tea bags.

We planted a few flower seeds in this activity. We focused on the words: water, soil, push, seed, sunshine; as well as counting the seeds.

Jake found a caterpillar which spurred a literature lesson on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We read the book multiple times and made some lacing cards to use during the reading. As the caterpillar eat, we added the card to the string. It was a great vocabulary lesson (caterpillar, hungry, days of the week, fruits, counting, cocoon, butterfly, and many more words). We also had some sticker sheets we received as a birthday gift that I finally got out to use. I introduced the idea of graphing as we counted the food the caterpillar eat during the week. The girls really surprised me how well they grasped the concept of graphing as well as the vocabulary of MOST and LEAST. We used watercolors to paint a caterpillar and the food. Sadly, the girls gave the caterpillar a little too much water and he did not survive....not to worry, we went looking for another (great vocabulary) and found another.

Letters

We did some letter searches using paint dot bottles. Jake helped Brooke to find the letters.

We focused on Letter Ll this week. Here is Brooke making Ll using the magnetic pom-poms.

Numbers

We focused on the number one. Brooke is putting one sticker into each square that I drew on the paper. Then we counted the total number of stickers.

Here is an umbrella with the numbers 1-5 on it. I let Brooke paint each section of the umbrella and then Brooke used dot stickers to put the correct number of stickers into each section. This was an activity left from last week's theme of umbrellas that we finally got to this week.

Number Match: here we counted hearts and drew a line from the number of hearts to the actual number. Brooke needed a lot of help with this so we only did numbers 1-5.

Brooke and Kate are doing the Ladybug Counting Clips. The girls count the number of dots on the ladybug and add the same number of clothespins to the edge of the clips. You'll notice the 6-10 Number Match that Brooke didn't get too in the tray.

Shapes

These shapes sheets have been laminated and we use dry erase markers to practice drawing the shapes. This activity allows us to review the name of the shapes, the number of sides, and also work on fine motor skills.

This is a ladybug shape puzzle

ColorsThis was a lot of fun. The coloring sheet has numbers 1-6. We took turns rolling the dice and colored that section of the picture. This focused on number recognition as well as colors.

Categorizing

Sorting "Things We Eat" and "Things We Play With"

This sheet is "What's Different?" This was hard so we will need to practice some more with the vocabulary of "different" and "same."

Here we sorted "Bugs" and "Animals."

This week we sorted "Forest Animals" and "Farm Animals" too.

Patterns and Sorting

An easy introduction to patterns using ladybug colors

This Discovery Toys Busy Bugs has a variety of pattern cards for sorting the bugs

Kate sorted the ladybugs by size.