This past week I had 3 of the children that were here pick the next three books for our summer program mornings. This was the first one. :-) If you remember correctly, we recently did a version of the Hokey Pokey during our large motor activity. I do believe that is one reason why this book became a favorite since then. I just found it at our local library. Had never seen it before...though I do know there are many versions of the Hokey Pokey in book form.
So, obviously, for our "gettin' movin'" activity we did the Hokey Pokey. In this book the song goes...
Put your right foot in,
Put your right foot out.
Put your right foot in,
And wave it all about,
Hop the Croaky Pokey
As we chase a fly around,
Right in the froggy's mouth.
The funny thing is that the frogs always miss and never catch the fly and on the last spread of pages...
SLURP! Right in the fishy's mouth!
It's pretty cute all the way around. So to add a little "extra" to our normal Hokey Pokey, I inflated a balloon as our "fly".
Which, of course, led to some really crazy balloon play later in the morning since (I know, I was asking for it :-)) I let them each choose a color and we blew up balloons for all of them.
Numeral Formation
Children created a graph by sorting by color. They then counted how many flies there were in each color and wrote that numeral on the frog beneath the column. C. was done before everyone (WOW! That's a first!) so I encouraged him to try to write the numeral words underneath the frogs.
Letter Formation
Children practiced writing "stop sign" Ls on the back of their frog on a lily pad picture. Then they laced them for extra fine motor.
Phonological Awareness
Rhyming
A. so kindly created a pond, including cattails and a dock. These logs and frogs were relatively easy to create. I used patterns from www.childcareland.com (from her 5 Green and Speckled Frog felt board activity) in Print Shop and added two pictures to a log and one picture to a frog. Each child went on a frog hunt to find two each. Then we matched them to the logs. Of course we sang...5 Green and Speckled Frogs.
Scissors/Word Family
-op
Another relatively easy activity I came up with last night. Since our little "vacation" at the beginning of July I've been way behind in my planning. Funny how that works. Now we are going on a camping trip this weekend...so, hmmm! Where is the summer going?! Anyway. Created this in Print Shop again. Six lily pads to a page. mop, top, hop, pop, shop and stop. I also provided an origami frog to go along. Here's a site I found when looking for written directions for A. as there was a possibility that he may want to make some frogs and I may not have the time to help him right then.
Easy instructions to follow.
Art
Piet Mondrian
I've always been drawn to this piece of artwork and like to have the children do something similar. Children were provided with white finger paint paper, pencil and rulers. After they got their lines on the paper they were provided with black, red, yellow, and blue finger paint.
Even the wipe became a "masterpiece".
