Pigs and Mud: Getting ready for International Mud Day

Have you heard of International Mud Day?  It's June 29th, but we're going to celebrate at school all week long, culminating in muddy play on Friday, June 27th.

Today we are thinking about pigs and mud, since they go together so very well.  I made a Venn Diagram sorting activity for the kiddos, which we all did after reading Ten Dirty Pigs by Carol Roth.  Here are several other good, muddy, piggy books:

We have a friend with a birthday today, and another child's birthday was yesterday, so some of the kiddos helped to make cupcakes....

 ...and everyone else helped to make "mud dough". 

 This is marvelous dough!  I found the recipe on www.icanteachmychild.com.  The dough is soft and malleable, and made a huge batch - easily enough for a dozen kiddos to play at the same time.  We played with pigs and fences, with a few other farm animals thrown in for good measure.

 Next we added "cooking" props, so the children could continue making birthday cakes, brownies, and chocolate milk shakes.

Today started out very stormy, but late in the morning the rain stopped, leaving us puddles to play in!

 I know it isn't quite mud, but we did get muddy and dirty.  I think our puddle stomping is at least within the spirit of International Mud Day!

While the youngest kiddos were resting this afternoon, I worked with some of the kiddos on sounding out CVC words with a game I created for them this weekend.  We played two rounds of Mud Puddle Stomp!, and I modelled how to sound out when it was my turn.  By the time the game ended, the kiddos were sounding out these simple words too.  This game is also available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Paulas-Preschool-And-Kindergarten.

After snack (those yummy birthday cakes the children made this morning) we headed outside for one more dirty activity.  I put some soil and trucks in one of our play tables, so we could have dirty truck play.  No water in there yet - we'll save the real muddiness for Friday, but we had plenty of fun with the dirt.

What are you doing for International Mud Day?  I hope you can find a way to join in the fun, and get messy!  Come back every day this week to see how we keep the mud theme going!

Happy Pig Day!

Oinky oink oink! 

For those of you familiar with the Elephant and Piggy books by Mo Willems, no translation is necessary, but just in case you have missed the book Happy Pig Day!, "Oinky oink oink!" means Happy Pig Day!

We love Mo Willems, and read all the Pigeon books last week, so this week we read all the Elephant and Piggy books we could find.  I have 10 of them... okay, I had 8, but bought 2 more last week in preparation for this unit.  I had to!  (I have a compulsion about children's books.  I know the first step in recovery is admitting there is a problem... but I like it, and don't want to recover!)

You should know that there are a LOT of websites with awesome ideas about how to celebrate Elephant and Piggy.  Mo Willems' official site is awesome, as is http://www.pigeonpresents.com/.  You can also see the free event kit - designed for libraries and classrooms - for Elephant and Piggy books at http://www.pigeonpresents.com/teachersguides/EandP_eventkit2013.pdf.  I found a lot of my ideas there.

This idea came from Abby the Librarian.  I printed pigeon and duckling pictures from the event kit mentioned above, and the children chose which to color.

We glued a coffee filter onto a foam bowl.  I would have preferred paper, but foam is what we had.  They tore different shades of brown construction paper, and glued them to the coffee filter on the outside of the bowl.  I cut pieces of yarn that were long enough to tie on the children's heads and under their chins.  Cut these longer than you think you need, it's better to have a little more to work with!  I showed the kiddos how to sew the yarn up into the base of the bowl and back down - this created the loop to tie it to their heads.

 We cut out their Pigeon or duckling picture, and taped it in the "nest" we'd created.  I hot glued some Easter grass and plastic eggs around the birds.  Here we are, responding to the book There's a Bird on Your Head!

Another of our favorite Elephant and Piggy books is I Am Invited To A Party! In this book, Elephant and Piggy prepare for a party - and wonder if it is a fancy party, a pool party, or a costume party.  They dress for all three at the same time!  

We prepared for all kinds of parties by mix and matching costume pieces.  The kiddos LOVED having costume play, and I love that it was also tied in to a literature unit.  These kiddos are obviously ready for a fire fighter party...

 ... any kind of costume party...

 ... a mad scientist construction worker karate party....

 ... and a fancy cheer leader party.

 We chose a picture of each child (I also have a photography problem, and take hundreds of pictures of the kiddos each week) dressed up for the party, and made a class book.  The text says: "(Name) is ready for a ______  ______ party."   Here's our cover:

Another class book we made this week was an innovation on I'm A Frog!  The children put the words "I am a...." in order and glued them at the top of their page, then completed the sentence.

 We really like to make class books, partly because the children love to read the books they've helped to make, and partly because I take advantage of this fact by having them order words, complete sentences, and illustrate their writing, so I can bind it into books.  We made a book telling what we want to do for "Happy Pig Day" - which was on Friday.

The children all wanted to dress up some more, or eat "pig food" like in the book.  Pig food doesn't sound appetizing to you?  In the illustrations to the book, Elephant and Piggy eat fruit and cookies.  Now you know the attraction!

 We made piggy hats too!  I bought a couple of sheets of neon pink poster board, and cut it into 2" strips.  (Each poster board made 11.)  The children cut out contrasting pink circles, and added nostrils.  I measured and stapled the pink strips to fit each kiddo, and trimmed several inches of extra paper from the ends.  With the extras, we were able to cut triangle ears to add to our hats.  Little piggy eye balls finished it off.  Aren't they adorable?!

Earlier in the week, when we first read Happy Pig Day!, the children noticed the confetti on the end papers, and wanted a confetti party.  I said no, real quick!  Confetti?  It would be all over the classroom.  The children would get wild and crazy and out of control.  No way! 

During the week I changed my mind.  Part of my teaching philosophy is

"When we engage children in rich experiences and make learning joyful, they learn to love learning, and become lifelong learners. To this end we must provide learning materials and experiences that are engaging and meaningful to the child."

That being said, I knew I had to provide the learning materials and the experience, because it was something meaningful to the children.  Yes, it would be all over the place, but a vacuum would fix that.  If we were going to get wild and crazy, we could do it right before heading outside to play... so we did it!  I am so glad I let the children have the confetti! 

I started by seating everyone ready for a group photo.  I showed them the bag of confetti, and told them we would have one chance to throw it for the picture.  If they threw it early, they wouldn't have any for the picture, but if they could wait, we would all have some.  We practiced throwing together (empty handed) on the count of 3, and quickly mastered it.  Everyone held out their hands for a small pile of confetti, we posed, we counted, and.... ta-da!

 The kiddos scooped it all back up, tossed it again and again, rolled in it, made snow angels in it... and I remembered being a kid.

I grew up in Australia, and confetti was a staple at weddings.  I remember my parents trying to keep me out of the used confetti on the ground afterwards, but there were always children scavenging for the colorful pieces of paper, wanting to throw it over and over.  Today my students reminded me of myself at their age, only this time I was the adult in charge, and was able to say, "Yes!"

Here they all are, laying in the spent confetti.  That $1 packet of confetti bought them at least $10 worth of joy.  I'm smiling as I think about it, and maybe you are too.  Awesome value for some tiny bits of paper!

We encouraged good behavior choices this week with piggy stamps, and this afternoon got out elephant stamps too.

We finished the week off with a Happy Pig Day snack time.  We wore our pig hats, and ate the pig food the children were writing about earlier in the day: applesauce, pink cherry juice, and cookies - no nuts (sorry Pigeon!).

 At snack time one of the kiddos asked if I would get out the corn for them to play in outside - because, he said, Piggy would like it.  What could I say.  Now the children are as happy as pigs in... corn!

Oinky oink oink!

Baa Baa Colorful Sheep, The Very Busy Spider, and a pig book.

 This week I posted my first item to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store!  It's a remake of a class book I've been doing with my class for several years, Baa Baa Black Sheep.  It's a FREEBIE, so teachers, please go download it here.  If you find it useful, I would appreciate you rating it! 

Here's the cover... and some samples of the pages the children made.

 Don't you love the crazy, jumping sheep?  Not what I envisioned, but several of the kiddos made their sheep jumping sideways!  They painted the sheep body with their finger tips, then glued on a construction paper head and eyes, and drew on legs.

 Like anything else they have a part of creating, they are eager to read the books we make as a class.  They have been singing variations on Baa Baa Black Sheep a lot this week.  One afternoon we over heard one child singing as she washed her hands, "Baa Baa yellow fish, have you any... eyebrows?  I don't know, I don't know, if you have wool."  Sometimes they crack me up!

Another of the stories we've been reading for our farm theme is Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider. 

We watched a short animated video of the book on youtube.com: (see it here) and I made a flannel board for the children to retell the story and act it out.

 I cut notches into the sides of some small paper plates, and the children threaded brown yarn through the slots to create a web effect.  Construction paper scraps and a little glue, and we had spiders in our webs too.

We also made a pig book this week.  The kiddos cut out circles, rectangles and triangles that I'd traced on pink, tan and brown paper, and then assembled their shape piggies.  I was inspired by this craft, which I found via pinterest.com.  (I've also made a printable version, if you'd like to do this too!)

 I offered several different short sentences for the children to assemble on their piggy page: My pig is _____ (cute, in the mud, pink, brown, tan).  The children had to use their beginning reading skills to find the correct words and construct their sentence.

Check them out, aren't they adorable?  The children were very proud of their piggies, so I recorded each child reading their own piggie page, and made this youtube video  to share with their families. One mommy told me she listened and thought they sounded like angels!

With all these fun farm activities completed, we're ready for our grand finale - a trip to the farm!