ROAR!

Roar! A Noisy Counting Book by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Summary: A little lion cub just wants to find someone to play with but all the animals get scared away. A cute animal counting book that young children will enjoy.

After reading the book (multiple times), we pulled out our play jungle figures.  We didn’t have all the exact animals from the book, but my 2yr. old pretended she was the little lion cub and she “roared” at the animals asking them to play. It was cute. She came up with that on  her own.
Then we made a lion craft out of craft foam. I traced a circle lid on light brown craft foam. Then I made a slightly larger mane. The girls helped put the lion together using Glue Dots. Then we decided to make it a magnet to place on our fridge.

Next I pulled out some learning activities from a wildlife kit I purchased from Time for Tots. I thought this activity was so clever—I wish I would have thought of it myself! Time for Tots created an animal mat which contained pictures of various jungle animals. My daughter had to match the appropriate animal print to the animal picture. My four year old loved this activity! In fact, one day I came into the school room and found out that she had gone into the file, pulled this activity out and did it correctly (and left it all over the floor-lol!)

This was another activity included in the Time for Tots kit. My 4yr. old used tongs to sort the animal beads into the appropriate section of the sorting bin.

Included in the kit we purchased were a variety of plastic animals. We added our own jungle animal collection and then sorted them by how they move (there was a third card with “swim” included). We could have also sorted by size, whether they lived on land or in water etc. All those sorting cards were included in the kit.

We also reviewed our jungle animals word cards. We had previously did a J is for Jungle unit earlier this year. We talked about the different animals and the sounds they made (if we knew them—what sound does a hippo or giraffe make?—lol)

This actually was an unplanned mini-unit on my part (we did these activities over a period of three days.) My girls found the book and wanted to read it again. Since I had just received my wildlife kit from Time for Tots, it was so easy to come up with activities! I liked having these activities to choose from and not having to spend the time printing, laminating, and cutting them out myself. I highly recommend looking into what Time for Tots has to offer.

For More Book/Craft/Preschool ideas see:
stART : A Mommy's Adventures
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Preschool Corner

J is for Jungle

This week we did a jungle theme for both Totschool and Preschool. I came up with this J is for Jungle letter craft using craft foam. The animal heads were from a stick puppet kit I got on clearance from Joann's Fabric.

Then the little girls played with jungle animals that I picked up from the Target Dollar Spot.

We also counted the animals, named them, and arranged them by size.

Each day my preschooler had a different jungle animal scissor practice page from her Kumon cutting book.

I also picked up this 3-part jungle puzzle from the Target Dollar Spot (though it was $2.50) My tot had fun doing this puzzle. It was a fun addition to our unit.

At the beginning of the week we did our letter J cut and paste page, do-a-dot page, and picture cards.

I pulled out our Jungle Puzzles lapbook I made for Homeschool Share (Homeschool Share doesn't let me direct-link, so you'll have to scroll down to the middle of the page to find the download links)

And I made some jungle word cards to go along with our unit. You can download the word cards here: Jungle Word Cards.

And with the extra craft pieces we made stick puppets.

A monkey for my little monkey :)

Books:
The Umbrella by Jan Brett
The Umbrella Unit-free download from Homeschool Share
Roar! A Noisy Counting Book by Pamela Duncan Edwards
Touch and Feel Jungle Animals



For More Preschool and Toddler Ideas check out: