The last two weeks, we have been focusing on the theme "bugs." My house backs up to a small wooded area, so we see a lot of different bugs in our backyard.
Literacy
We focused on four different books for this theme. The first, "In the tall, tall grass," by Denise Fleming. This book has vibrant verbs, which makes it easy to engage the children. After doing my first reading, I had the children act out what was happening on the pages of the book.
The next book was, "There was an old lady that swallowed a fly." This book is based off an old folk tale and we read the version by Simms Taback. The illustrations in the book are wonderful and make it easy for children to predict what animal the old lady will swallow next. We also listened to the Pete Seeger rendition of the story in the form of a song.
The third book was, "10 Little ladybugs," by Melanie Gerth. This is a board book that has plastic ladybugs on it, which is fantastic for infant and toddler exploration. It also has engaging rhyming text and is also a counting book, which you could probably tell by the title, which makes it easy for one to sneak mathematics into literacy.
The last book was, "the very hungry caterpillar," by Eric Carle. Luckily, we had a toy that worked as a perfect retelling tool for this book. The toys were made of different textures and made different noises, which helped keep the infants engaged during story time. You can find it at toys r us.
Also, as a fun little side note, my daughter, Ripley, celebrated her first birthday last week and her theme was, "The Very Hungry Little Caterpillar."
Mathematics
This week in math, we focused on sorting bugs. I made a file folder game called, "bug sort." I found this while doing a google search. Unfortunately, after saving it as a pdf on my computer, I havent been able to find the original source of the file folder game, but if you are interested in the bug pack, please let me know because it included many other activities for preschool aged children. I would be happy to send the pdf to you via email.
Explore, explore, explore, is what I had the girls do this week. They explored the backyard and looked for bugs. They were certainly not afraid to get dirty while they looked under rocks, around the trees, and dug in the dirt.
I tried to get out of my Head Start mindset this week, and come up with projects for the children that had a little more structure to them, yet at the same time allowed them to create there own thing. So instead of simply placing art tools on the table and letting them make whatever (which is a wonderful thing to do), I gave them supplies and gave them a theme or told them, use these materials to make a ____. This isnt something I would do all the time, but it does help when teaching children how to follow directions or steps.
The first art project the children used dot a dot art paint and insect foam stickers. The girls didnt have any instructions while doing this, it was more of my typical open ended art.
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| Leia made, "the sky for all the bugs." |
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| Leia is showing her sister, Ripley, her finished butterfly. |
The last art project was the paper plate ladybugs. This project had the most step by step instructions for the girls. The first task was to paint there paper plate. I allowed the girls to chose what color they wanted, they both chose red. The next step was to place a strip of black paper on the plate and finally the spots on the ladybug. Leia also wanted her lady bug to have legs, so I made these for her and had her tape them on the back of the plate.
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