Fabulous fantastic foot prints for Ff

Okay, so only the frog is a foot print... you could definitely make Frankie from a foot print too!   If you haven't yet tried painting your child's foot, you definitely should - but maybe I should give you a few tips first.

Number 1: You need wipes handy.  You probably don't want those little feet running through the house spreading paint everywhere.  Gather everything you need before you start!

Number 2: Work over a hard and washable floor surface. 

Number 3: Sit in chairs facing each other.  It's best if your child has a child sized chair (or a step stool or something else low to sit on).

Number 4: Give them a heads up that it might tickle - and be prepared to take the time to giggle and wiggle a little bit!

Number 5: Put the paper you want to print on down on the floor between you and your child, and know that their heel will be towards them, toes towards you.  If you've written "F is for frog" on your page, you want the words to be facing you so the frog is right side up.  Unless your child wants an upside down frog, in which case I say go for it!

Another fun letter Ff activity is to make a fall sensory bin.

It's possible that I am an overachiever, and that I had 15 years of teaching to collect all this junk treasure. Do what works for YOU!  I had several scarecrow and pumpkin crafty looking things that students gave me over the years, so in they went.  The green and orange leaf trays came from the dollar store, as did a giant red felt maple leaf.  I had pompons on hand, and found the tiny pumpkins and leaves at a garage sale... You might have real fall leaves, mini pumpkins and pine cones, you could also use dry corn as a base for your bin. (I use feed corn and do it outside so squirrels and birds eat what we spill and it isn't wasted).  Get creative - let your child help!  

Another favorite activity for Ff is fish hats.

Click the link above to get full details, including the silly backstory, a link to a song you'll never get out of your head, credit for the idea, and a pattern for your own fish hats.

I keep thinking this hat would be a great reward system, if I had the children earn each scale.  Try a new food?  Get a scale.  Cleaned your room?  Get a scale.  Used your manners? Get a scale!  If there's something you've been working on with your little one, perhaps you can entice them to keep at it with a fish hat reward?  Let me know if you try this, and how it goes!

Books

Of course we need books!!  #AllTheBooks #IWantThem #PictureBooks  #NotAddicted .  I'm going to make this a list, because there are always too many for me to take pictures of... but not too many to read!

 

Have a wonderful week exploring the letter Ff with your child, and stop back next Sunday for ideas for Letter Gg!                                                                        Hugs!

                                                                                        Paula

                                                                                         

                 

Hopping and Popping with the good Doctor

Chances are good that if you are reading this, you already know Dr. Seuss' birthday was this week, on March 2nd.  What's a library story time to do, but to celebrate?

Choosing which books to read was hard - there are so many great Seuss books.  I'm sure you have your favorites!  Ms. Debbie finally settled on Green Eggs and Ham and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

Deciding which follow up activities to do was also a challenge.  There's an abundance of ideas on the internet, I've gathered some of them here on my Seuss Pinterest board. 
We knew we had to have something tactile for our families - our kiddos seem to crave paint and sensory play, so we try to include something that will meet that need each week.  We also try to include STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math), because the library is about so much more than literacy!

Looking at my stack of Seuss books, I realized a great math concept to tie in was patterning: just think of the Cat's Hat.  Out came some blocks and unifix cubes!  As usual, some kiddos were inspired by our ideas, and others found their own direction in the materials.  Manipulating the blocks, choosing the color combinations they like, and balancing their creations are just as relevant concepts as making a pattern - and obviously, for some children, those were more important concepts to explore right now.  This doesn't mean they won't learn patterning - there will be many, many more opportunities to explore these materials and others!

Watching and listening to the children interact with the materials and with their caregivers teaches Ms. Debbie and I just as much as exploring the materials we set out teaches the kiddos!  I loved hearing children describe their patterns as zebra pattern (black and white) and bumblebee pattern (black and yellow).

 They don't have the mathematical language to describe these as AB or ABB patterns, but found language that clearly expressed what they saw!  I also watched a 3 year old take a bumblebee pattern and a rainbow pattern, and start to put them together.  He looked at them, and realized that they were very different - and separated them again - and grinned at his mom as he did.

We put out hand painting for the children, with a suggestion of One Fish Two Fish, and an example of red fish and blue fish.  Most of the time we don't put out a model or suggestion of what an activity will look like, because that tends to limit the potential children see in the materials.  We're not looking to have 40 identical craft projects at the end of the day - we're looking for 40 satisfied children who have explored materials and have taken away their own learning from them!  Still, occasionally our grown up friends need help to figure out which direction to go - and I expected that this activity would primarily involve our caregivers painting on the children's hands.

I was wrong!  (Not the first time! :-) )  I LOVED seeing children painting their own hands, and even one painting her momma's hand!  How cool are our parents, that they can not only encourage this kind of creativity, but even let their children draw them right on in to the fun!

We did have a whole lot of fish looking hand prints - and also pages and pages crowded with little red and blue hand prints.  The sensory element of this painting activity was thoroughly explored, and found to be satisfying!

There was another activity, which I think was the most loved: hopping and popping!  A little bubble wrap goes a long way with the preschool crowd - think about how satisfying it is to pop each little bubble, the sound it makes... and then add jumping and stomping!  Oh yes, our children hopped and popped, and did not stop!  (So did a few of the adults, possibly including me.)

Our final activity was our graph: Would you eat green eggs and ham?  The results were more than a little inconclusive this week: one of our younger siblings discovered the glue stick and paper circles, and went to town.  I watched him at it, and knew he was thoroughly skewing our results - but it just didn't seem important enough to stop him.  Each family still stopped at the graph, and children and caregivers talked about what each child thought.  Everyone had a chance to express their opinion, and add a circle, learning about the process of choosing, expressing themselves, and participating in a democracy by voting.  Sure, one little guy was voting over and again, but at 2 years old, he has time to develop self regulation.  For right now, knowing how to use a glue stick will suffice.

Fish hats, fish hats, roly poly fish hats

 A couple of years ago I had a student who pronounced the letter f with a "b" sound.  One morning she came in singing a new song: "Bish eds, bish eds, oly oly bish eds.  Bish eds, bish eds, eat dem up yum!"  I had no idea what she was singing, but another parent recognized it as "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes, so we all watched it, and it became a sort of class song.

I was tickled to find an idea for a fish hat recently, at www.abbythelibrarian.com, and had to use it for our letter f review day.  The original author even included a reference to "Fish Heads", so how could I resist?

Here is my modified version.  I used 12" x 18" construction paper to make our fish, as I had some on hand.  I drew out a fish shape, making sure the body of the fish was about 12 inches long - I wanted to be sure that two fish bodies would fit all the way around the children's heads.  From all the scraps my assistant and I cut lots of circles to represent scales.

Each child decorated two fish, one facing left, the other facing right.  They glued the scales on in an overlapping pattern.  We needed many more scales than I had anticipated - if you decide to do this project, expect each child to need about 40 - 50 large scales.  

 We stapled a sentence strip to fit each child's head, then stapled on their fish.  **When you staple, be sure to put the smooth side of the staple to the inside so the sharp ends are away from kids' heads.**

 When everyone was ready, we watched Fish Heads one more time, and sang along in our own fish heads.  Aren't they adorable?!

Fun with letter Ff

One of the very important subject to cover for the letter Ff is fire safety.  

Each month, when we do our fire drill, we start by going over the 3 things necessary for a fire: fuel, a spark, and oxygen.  I light a candle in a jar, and then put on the lid, and we count how many seconds it takes for the fire to go out.  The kiddos know that without oxygen in the air, a fire will be smothered and go out.  

Next we practice our stop, drop, and roll drill.  If our clothes ever catch on fire, we would definitely want the fire to go out, so we smother it by pushing it into the ground where it can't get any oxygen.  An adult might help smother the fire with a blanket or pillow, but they might get burned helping out, so kids don't do that.  See how we cover our eyes to protect them?

 We check out our fire extinguisher, to make sure it is charged and ready, just in case we ever need it.

 We practice lining up quickly, ready to exit, and one of the teachers takes the sign in sheet with us, so we can check that everyone is out safely.  This is a time to be quiet, so we can hear any instructions our teachers give us!

 We walk quickly to the mail box - that's our meeting place in an emergency.  Here the kiddos are telling me where they see people.  If there was a real fire, we would need to find someone to call 911 for help.

Another day, I took some of the kiddos on a field trip to the Botanic Gardens.  We saw so many awesome things!  Flowers...

 foot prints...

 we even stopped in a comfy place to draw and write about what we were seeing.

 There is a beautiful fountain in a pond, so we stopped a while to watch the turtles in the water.

 Back at home we heard the story of Rainbow Fish, and even saw a short video of the book, then we painted our own plaster rainbow fish.

 Cleaning the table is as much fun as the painting is when we use shaving cream!

We added silver glitter as a finishing touch.

Here are some of our finished fish.

 

On Thursday, we made Friendship Fruit Salad for snack.  Each child brought a piece of fruit from home to contribute, and we graphed the different kinds of fruit that came in.  We also graphed which day each child brought their fruit.

We all helped to make the fruit salad. The kiddos rinsed...

cut...

(look how we make our fingers into a tent over the knife, to keep them away from the cutting edge.  You have to watch those butter knives, you know!)

...and finally tossed (literally!) the fruit in the bowl. So was it any good?

 Well, we had a first serving... then seconds, thirds, fourths and even fifth servings!  The kiddos LOVED the friendship fruit salad!  Yummy yummy!