March 2nd is Dr. Seuss's birthday! So, we celebrated by reading The Cat in the Hat and making his hat! :) We went a little further and made 'rainbow' streamers and danced to spring music with them! The boys had a great time and we learned a lot about spring (the time with rain, rainbows, flowers, thunderstorms, etc.) and got out some energy! :)
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A firefly in the fireworks! The Very Lonely Firefly In keeping with the Eric Carle theme, we bounced from the hungry caterpillar to the lonely firefly. While we were reading it, I honestly didn't have anything in mind as far as a lesson plan, but it sure came easily! As we read, I loved the look of the fireworks in the book, so I found some black paper and some oil pastels, and we made the fireworks scene! I loved all the sound effects the boys made as they drew their own fireworks exploding in the night sky! We talked about the fact that the fireflies come out mostly at night/in the evening and they could be classified as nocturnal (a new word for the littles) and we discussed what other animals would be considered nocturnal (owls, bats, koalas all came up). We talked about how the caterpillar was hungry and the firefly was lonely; then we picked another little critter (a spider) and thought up a problem for it (it lost its' web) and made up a vocal story about our spider and how he searched for his web and what he found along the way. It was a very enjoyable little lesson time! Leap!! Also, since today is Leap Year day, we made a jumping theme! I taught the boys to play Leap Frog (a big hit!) and then we talked about some animals that jump/leap/hop: Frogs, rabbits, kangaroos, grasshoppers were the big ones. We ran around the house and collected books about those animals and read them and did many actions to the books--I certainly got a workout from 'flying' in circles (Grasshopper on the Road), jump-roping 100 times (Days with Frog and Toad), Jumping and Running with kids through seasons (Run, Jump, Whiz and Splash), and looking at all sorts of things in The Eye Book (there's a rabbit). We've leaped through the day and enjoyed pretending to be hopping animals. A very fun way to celebrate Leap Year! Andrew's Amazing Creation! The Very Hungry Caterpillar I found this amazing lesson plan for Eric Carle's 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', so I thought I'd give it a whirl with my boys. It was a hit! They loved all of it! We read the story, did a little quiz, then painted tissue paper just like Mr. Carle does! We cut out different foods from a Good Housekeeping magazine, laminated them, punched holes in it and strung it on a piece of yard as a caterpillar food necklace. When the paint was dry on our tissue paper, we cut out circles to make a hungry caterpillar--and they turned out so great! Andrew loved it! I think the best part of this lesson, aside from creating a super cool painted tissue paper caterpillar, was acting out the life cycle of the butterfly. Why hadn't I thought of this before? We crouched down in a ball (the egg), then we popped out and squirmed on the floor (larva/caterpillar), next we wiggled inside a sleeping bag (cocoon/chrysalis), and then we made our way out of the sleeping bag and flew around the room as butterflies! The boys loved it and they jumped inside their cocoons often throughout the day and turned into beautiful butterflies over and over again. What a lovely way to teach science! And they didn't even know they had learned something awesome! :) (Oh, and if you go to the link for the lesson plan, make sure you click on the link to learn about painting tissue paper! It takes you straight to Eric Carle's website and you can watch him do his amazing creations step by step! Very cool! Ok, so I had to link it here, too. He is just so awesome!) Our Projects from this Unit:
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