If You Give a Moose a Muffin

By Laura Numeroff

www.amazon.com

Side note:  I was looking for some moose clip art and I find the best way to find what I want is to search "coloring sheets".  I'm not big on coloring sheets at the preschool level but I do like them to make activities out of.  Here's a nice website I found recently in regards to coloring sheets that can be used for so much more then coloring.  http://www.animaljr.com/

Large Motor

Moose Antlers

 Children created moose head bands and we checked out a couple of you tube videos about how they moved, what they looked liked when they moved.  Then children moved through our home similar to a moose and as they passed me each time I told them a moose fact.  Most enjoyed wearing their antlers throughout the morning.

 

Numeral Formation

How Many Muffins?

Excuse the horrible picture. 

A simple sheet I created to allow for children to practice 1:1 with their counting and number writing.  Each child stated their favorite type of muffin and chose a pencil accordingly.  They then placed a mark on the top of the muffins as they counted it, writing the numeral at the end of the line. I find placing the space for the number at the end of the line naturally encourages them to count from left to right.  C. here chose to put a blueberry at the top of each of his muffins.

Letter Formation

Ww

 

One fact we learned today was that "moose are great swimmers".  Our letter Ws became waves today.  We did them with oil pastels because we were told that they would be bolder-resist watercolor better.  Then we "washed" our paper with blue water color to make water...and added our moose swimming in the water. 

Scissors

-am family 

I created this in print shop using a jam coloring sheet.  Placed one at the top and flipped the other so that when the children cut it out they would be able to fold it up.  We stapled the sides and voila! a jam jar.  It was strawberry on our jam jar so I created strawberries with words that belong in the -am family.  Note in the first picture, I had highlighted around where I wanted them to cut.  Otherwise they tend to cut all lines if there isn't a bolder cutting line.

Phonological Awareness

Sequencing and Word Chunks

We sequenced the story and checked our work with the book.  Then I choose the main word on the sequencing squares to say and the children clapped out the word telling me if there were 1, 2, or 3 word chunks.  The following website has many If You Give a Moose a Muffin activities and printables you might be interested in.  www.homeschoolshare.com/IfYouGiveaMoose.php

Art

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas lived about 200 years ago and liked to draw things that moved.  Two of his main focuses were horses (horse racing) and ballet dancers.  Monday we worked on a lesson about breaking animals into shapes to make them more simple to draw.  Today we drew a lot of horses on big paper.  Colored them with their choice of media and cut out.  In The Art Garden's (www.theartgarden.info) lesson she encouraged the children to paint a background and then add the paper cutouts.  I chose not to as time is short so we just had the children choose what color construction paper background to use. 

5.5 yrs

"The horses are resting after the race."

6 yrs in Aug.

"The horses are eating supper and getting ready for bed."

8.5 yrs

"In the desert.  The horses were running away from a hungry bear and they ran into my picture and the bear stepped on it.  The horses turned into a piece of paper."

 

5.5 years

"The horses were at the circus." 

(The green animal is a monkey :-))

Here I was quickly showing them how they could possibly show different "poses" for the horses all using the same basic shapes or triangles and rectangles.  I'm not much of a drawer so no fear of it being "too perfect" and the children feeling like they can't do it.  On a general basis, I don't usually show an example but in lessons like this one it's almost necessary for them to able to get the idea. 

Moveable Letters

Just wanted to share the variation we did today as it might work well for your child(ren) also.

After they sounded out the word and put the letters there they were encouraged to put their finger under each sound once again stating it and then "say it fast" sliding their finger underneath the word.