There’s a Wocket in My Pocket

One skill I have been working on with my toddler and preschooler is being able to hear when words rhyme.  I pulled out There’s a Wocket in My Pocket this week for some rhyming word practice.

During the week my daughters were able to listen to the story again on their own at our  iPad listening center (aka kitchen table.) Oceanhouse Media has many of the Seuss books available on the iPad as omBooks. This means they are more than just a book--there are some interactive qualities added.

There are Three Reading Options:

• * "Read to Me" — listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read
• * "Read it Myself" — read the book in its traditional form
• * "Auto Play" — plays like a movie, automatically reading and turning pages. Great for younger children!

 

 

After listening to the story, they completed several activities.

First they worked on matching rhyming word pictures. I printed out rhyming word picture cards from Homeschool Share. Then I placed them in a divided dish.

 
Each stack contained one of the rhyming word cards. My daughter picked up on stack and would try to find the card that rhymed with the top card on the stack still in the tray.

 
Once she found the rhyming word matches, she put those pairs in the pocket.

Fun in First Grade did a similar activity, but created a vowel sorting activity. She included a free printable of the words.

 

Next we created our own Wocket to put in a Pocket.

We had a fun time working on rhyming words this week.

There's a Wocket in my Pocket
And an iFrad on my iPad.
Silly words that sound the same,
Make for such fun rhyming word games.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake

Rumor has it that today, July 14th, is Laura Numeroff’s birthday! So in honor of this special occasion I thought I’d share what we’ve done with one of our favorite books of hers--- If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff

Summary: A little girl gives a cat a cupcake, which makes the cat want to add sprinkles. From there a mess occurs and the girl and the cat have several adventures which end up with the cat being reminded of sprinkles and cupcakes. 

We made this cat out of a soup can! Isn’t it cute?

We used the cat along with a cupcake poem. We also used the cat for a counting game.  My daughter would roll a die and then “feed” the cat that amount of cupcakes.

We made our own paper cupcakes.

And we made a water color cupcake version.

We had our own cupcake birthday party with our favorite cupcake and cookie toy set.

   
We did some cupcake patterning with cupcake foam stickers and a cupcake pan.

And made some playdough cupcakes too.

We played some of the games and activities from the cupcake unit made by 2 Teaching Mommies.

Of course it would also be the perfect reason to bake and eat your own cupcakes too!  (For birthday printables and ideas check out what we did during my blog birthday bash. There’s a  cupcake and candles game and more!)

You can download the cat craft pattern and cupcake patterns under Letter C.  Harper Collins also has several book activity ideas and other printables on their site that go along with this book.

For more Laura Numeroff book fun, see what Ana from Ingles 360 came up with for the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Happy Birthday Laura Numeroff!

Salt Dough Necklaces

After reading the book Immi’s Gift with my girls, I immediately thought of a craft that we could do as a book extension. We would create our own necklaces, just like in the book. Using salt dough and cookie cutters, my toddler, preschooler, and elementary-age daughters made their own unique craft creations.

First we mixed together all the ingredients for our dough. I used the recipe in Jimmie’s Salt Dough Map article. I cut the recipe in half though.

Then the girls practiced rolling out the dough. We do have child-size rolling pins, but they wanted to use the big one.

Then they used cookie cutters to cut out some of the shapes we saw in the book, Immi’s Igloo. We placed the cut-outs onto a cookie sheet. Then we used a straw to cut out a hole in each figure. I placed it in the oven at 200 degrees to dry for several hours. You could let it dry over-night on the counter too.

After the cut-outs were dry, the girls painted them.

We placed them on a string and added some fabric flowers. A fun craft for all ages.

Little Gorilla Craft

 
Letter G was the letter of the week, and we read Little Gorilla by Ruth Bornstein. This is a cute book about a little gorilla who is loved by everyone in the jungle, but when he starts to grow big, he isn’t sure if everyone will still love him.

We made a craft to show Little Gorilla growing up.

Supplies:
washable brown paint
brown yarn
gorilla face printable
banner paper or white cardstock
glue
piece of colored cardstock or craft foam


First get your student’s foot full of brown paint. I covered the bottom of a plastic shoe-box with paint and had my daughters step in it and then step onto banner paper.

 
Next, cut out the footprint after the paint has dried. I had three of my children do this craft so that we could have 3 different sized gorillas.


After the footprint is cut-out, adhere onto colored cardstock or craft foam. Cut small pieces of brown yarn and glue onto the top of the foot.

 
Print and cut out the gorilla face and ears and glue onto the top of the foot.

 
Here is Little Gorilla growing up!

Check out what else we did for letter Gg week over at Totally Tots.

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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
Read. Learn. Explore.
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