Rooster’s Off to See the World- Activities

Rooster's off to see the world activitiesRooster’s Off to See the World by Eric Carle is a second-grade reading level book.  It is a wonderful read aloud to younger kids, especially when read with other Eric Carle favorites.  It tells the story of a rooster who wants to travel and asks several animals to come along with him.

(Common Core Standards appear in italics.  They correlate with specific standards in different grade levels.  These standards are used in almost every school in the country.  Click the Common Core tab above to learn more.)

  • Practice math- Do verbal or written story problems following along with the story.  1 rooster + 2 cats+ 2 frogs+ 4 turtles+ 5 fish = how many animals in all?  When the animals leave, write the subtraction problems.  (first grade- Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20)
  • Read with voice- This book makes a great read aloud.  Try out different voices for each of the animals.  Pay attention to words the author uses such as purred, snapped, or complained.  (second grade-Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.)
  • Alternatives to said– This activity goes along with reading with voice.  Make a list of all the words used instead of “said.”  Talk about why the author used these different words.  See if your child can use some of the new words in her writing.
  • Act it out- Use puppets or yourself to act out the story.  Maybe you could be the rooster and your child play the part of the other animals.
  • Write the sequel– The story ends with rooster dreaming about a trip around the world.  Where would he go?  What would he do?  Have your child make up the rest of the story and you can write it down.
  • Text to self connection- Ask your child to explain when he has felt like the characters in the story- excited for a trip, lonely, or homesick.  (first grade- Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly)
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Paper Towel Art

paper towel art

Paper towel art is a super easy.  First, draw with markers on a paper towel.  Then, drop water on it with an eye dropper.  That’s it.  Markers alone are enough to get my daughters excited about a project.  Then the water really upped the “wow” factor!  So just give your kids a paper towel, markers, and water and you are free to make dinner without anyone hanging on your legs.*  And for clean-up, you’ve already got a paper towel handy. 🙂

My daughters might have inherited their marker love from me.  I had make some paper towel art of my own:

marker paper towel art

markers paper towels and water

*Results may vary.  I’m not responsible for any burnt dinners or kids that get stepped on.

Puzzle Easter Egg Hunt

My girls love finding Easter eggs, so I had the idea of hiding puzzle pieces in them instead of candy.  This might be a fun way to give kids a new puzzle on Easter.  Or it can just be a fun non-treat egg hunt you can have around your house any day.

Confession: my original idea was to hide regular puzzle pieces in the eggs, but they didn’t fit. 😦  Never fear!  This Melissa & Doug alphabet puzzle worked perfectly.  Plus it had the added learning component of identifying the letter found in the egg and then finding its spot in the alphabet.  puzzle Easter egg hunt

  1. Place puzzle pieces in eggs and hide around the room (or outside).
  2. Bring in the kids and let them look for eggs!
  3. After finding an egg, the kiddo needs to run over to the puzzle and put in her piece before she hunts for another egg.
  4. To make it fair for younger players, you might want to have kids take turns finding eggs and adding pieces to the puzzle.  One kid can’t go find a second egg until everyone has found their first egg and so on.

puzzle pieces in Easter eggs

Animal Sticker Habitats

animal sticker habitats

We have a giant bag of animal stickers leftover from my teaching days.  They are really meant for student papers (note the words like “super star”), but my girls don’t mind.  They can’t read anyway! 🙂  They just like to stick stickers on paper.   I thought it would be fun to do a little learning with our stickers, so I whipped up some animal habitats on construction paper.  Sorry- they are really rough.  I had some eager sticker girls waiting.  I’m sure you (or your kid) can draw better.

Here’s how to learn with stickers…

  1. Draw habitats on construction paper.  Older kids might want to do this themselves.  If no one wants to draw, just use a blue piece of paper to represent water, white for snow, green for trees, and so on.
  2. See if kids can identify the habitats.  Talk a little bit about the features of each habitat (wet and warm in the rainforest, dry in the desert).  Big Sis didn’t believe me that the grassland looked yellow so we we looked at some pictures on the internet.  With older kids, you might want to look at a map or globe to show where the habitats can be found in the world.
  3. Take turns naming the animal on the sticker and putting it in the right habitat.  Some might be found in more the one habitat.  Some might be found in the same habitat, but in different parts of the world (African rainforest vs. South American rainforest).  Of course if you are dealing with a two year old…keep it simple.

 

10 Ways to Play “I Spy”

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One of our favorite car games is “I Spy.”  The traditional game uses colors (at least the one I always played)…

  • Player 1 chooses a color of an object in sight of all players and says “I spy with my little eye something (insert color of object here).”
  • Other players take turns guessing objects that are the given color.
  • Some people allow players to ask yes/no questions  such as “Is it inside the car?  Is it smaller than my hand?  Is on the left side of the car?”
  • A player wins when she guesses the object correctly.  Then it is her turn to say “I spy….”

I Spy is a fun way to pass the time on a long car ride or in the waiting room of the doctor’s office.  As a bonus, kids are also learning!  What concepts could you work on using the game I Spy?

  1. colors- “I spy with my little eye something blue.”
  2. shapes– “I spy with my little eye something square.”
  3. numbers– “I spy with my little eye three of something.”  This would work best if you are in a room where the kids could walk around and easily count objects.
  4. letters- “I spy with my little eye the letter B.”  You could spy letters on billboards while you are driving, or letters on a page while you are reading.”
  5. words- “I spy with my little eye the word go.”  Again, this could work on billboards on the road or in books in a waiting room.
  6. spelling- “I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter C.”  You could just give the first letter, spell out a whole word, or maybe even letter patterns inside the word like “ee.”
  7. phonics- “I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound /s/.”  Same playing with letters, but this time use letter sounds.
  8. rhymes- “I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with bee.”
  9. adjectives- “I spy with my little eye something smooth.”  This is another game that would be best played in a room where kids could feel the different textures.
  10. measurement– “I spy with my little eye something about one inch tall.”  Be sure to review unit measurements before you play.  If you play this at your house, they could walk around and measure things with a ruler.

Stuffed Animal Zoo

We have way too many stuffed animals.  I’m not a fan.  They take up a lot of room, and although they are occasionally snuggled at night…they rarely participate in play during the day.  Until today.  Today we made a stuffed animal zoo.  It was a great indoor activity for a rainy day….and it was free!  And, of course, there was a lot of conversation and learning about animals.  Here’s what you do…

  1. Gather all stuffed animals and cages.  If you don’t have that many (lucky you), use puppets, plastic animals, or even animals on the covers of books.  We used baskets and boxes for cages.  We also used a green blanket for the “grass” and a blue towel for the “water.”stuffed animals for zoo
  2. Sort out the ones that don’t belong in your zoo.  You can ask questions like “What animal is this?  Where does it live?  Have we seen it in the zoo?”  Big Sis had fun asking these questions to Little Sis.  She decided stuffed animals like Care Bears, Thomas the Train, and dolls didn’t belong in the zoo.  However, you can do whatever you want.  It’s your zoo! You can make this a learning opportunity to discuss real zoo animals, or you can make it pure fantasy and have a unicorn section.  Whatever is most interesting to your kiddos.water section of stuffed animal zoo
  3. Match up like animals.  This is a great activity for toddlers and preschoolers.  You can talk about what characteristics the stuffed animals share.  What makes it an elephant and not a hippo?  How did you know that it was a bear even though it was pink?  If you are like us, you will end up with four elephants….and maybe you’ll realize you need to get rid of some stuffed animals. 🙂indoor activity stuffed animal zoo
  4. Decide how to organize your zoo.  This is where it gets fun!  Talk about how you could arrange the animals and plan out the space.  Should all the African animals be together?  What about animals that fly?  Preschoolers and early elementary kids will enjoy thinking about different ways to categorize the animals.  If they are stuck, suggest some of these…
    • habitats
    • continents
    • carnivore/herbivore/omnivore
    • number of legs
    • color
    • patterns- stripes/spots/plain
    • land/water
    • alphabetical
    • mammals/reptiles/amphibians/fish/birds/invertebratesrainy day activity stuffed animal zoo
  5. Put the animals in cages…or not.  It’s easier to see them if they are just loosely grouped.  However, Big Sis is a stickler for “keeping it real.”  Although I need to have a talk with her about animal rights and forcing four elephants into such small cage.stuffed animal zoo
  6. Visit the zoo.  This was my daughters’ favorite part.  One pretended to be a visitor and pushed a baby doll in a stroller.  The other was a zookeeper who took tickets and guided the visitor around the zoo.  Then they switched.  If your kids are too young, YOU be the zookeeper and give facts about the animals as you travel through the zoo.

Extension activities you might want to try-

  • Reorganize the zoo a different way using the same animals.
  • Read a book about zoo animals.
  • Watch a live zoo cam feed online.
  • Write the animals’ names on papers and place them outside the cages.

 

Writing in Shaving Cream

shaving cream writing

I am a little messophobic.  That’s a word, right?  I love to give my kids new experiences and it is fun to watch them get messy…but the clean-up.  The clean up.  Sometimes I don’t know if it is worth it.  Sigh.  Despite my messophobia, I got out the shaving cream one day.  I remember playing with shaving cream on the table when I was little and I loved it.  And of course, so did my girls.  Although Little Sis did not like to get it on her hands, so she used stick.  Maybe messophobia is genetic?

learning with shaving cream

Shaving cream might be the “fun factor” your kid needs to practice writing letters, numbers, or words.  Even toddlers can practice straight and curved lines that they will need to make letters.  Little Sis made lots of lines, while Big Sis did some writing.  She might need a little more practice on her numbers….

writing numbers in shaving cream

And the clean up was not as bad as I expected.  Luckily no one started throwing shaving cream, so it was just the table to clean up.  I could wipe most of it off the table with my hands and then wash it off in the sink.  Then a wet towel did the rest.  Shaving cream is officially approved for messophobes everywhere.

Here’s a round-up of 67 art and learning ideas for shaving cream from The Artful Parent.

Make a Number Activity

how many ways can you write a number

How many ways can you write a number?  I did this activity with my second grade students, but it would work for a wide range of ages.  Kindergartners can practice writing math facts, words, and pictures to show a number.   Older elementary kids can show off their math skills by doing multiplication, adding decimals, or fractions.  How do you play? Just pick a number and then take turns writing different ways to show the number.  All you need is a pen and paper, so it is easy to do while you are waiting at a restaurant or office.

See if you can write the number using…

  • words
  • pictures
  • Roman numerals
  • addition
  • subtraction
  • multiplication
  • division
  • fractions
  • decimals
  • money
  • time

Make Your Own Puzzles

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This morning Big Sis was working on a project out of her Thomas magazine.  It was a cutting activity with all the different pieces of Thomas and then you glued on all the pieces to make a train.  Little Sis was feeling a little left out, but she isn’t proficient with scissors yet.  Then I had an idea!  Every magazine has a pull-out poster of Thomas and other trains, and we never do anything with it.  So I cut it out and made my own puzzle pieces out of it.  Then Little Sis could glue them together to make her own Thomas.  (Don’t ask me why she is dressed as a zebra today.)

make your own puzzle from magazines

Here is the finished product.  She couldn’t be convinced to turn the bottom piece around so that the tracks would be on the bottom.  Long ago, I learned you can’t reason with a two-year-old, so I let it be.

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Making your own puzzle pieces would be easy to do with any large magazine or calendar picture.  In fact, I’ve already made puzzles with calendars but I used the traditional puzzle piece shapes.  I think I like this way better.

Great Day for Up- Activities

Great Day for Up activities

Great Day for Up by Dr. Seuss has a kindergarten reading level.  It has short sentences with lots of repeated words and picture cues.  Reading it to babies and toddlers will introduce lots of new vocabulary.  Preschoolers, kindergartners, and first-graders will appreciate the humor at the end of the book.  Here are some activities that go along with Great Day for Up

(Common Core Standards appear in italics.  They correlate with specific standards in different grade levels.  These standards are used in almost every school in the country.  Click the Common Core tab above to learn more.)

  • Go on a sight word hunt–  Of course this book is a great way to introduce and practice the word “up,” but there are other sight words repeated in the book.  Find the words and, for, on, great, and day.  (kindergarten- Read common high-frequency words by sight)
  • Count the “up”s– Every time you read “up”, make a tally mark.  Then count them up by practicing skip counting by 5’s.
  • Make flashcards- Pick out the more difficult words in the story and make quick flashcards.  Go over these words before you read and hopefully, they will be able to read them in the story.  I wrote a word and a picture to illustrate it on a small piece of typing paper.  If I did this for my classroom, I would use cardstock and clipart.
  • Sort the words- Using the word flashcards, ask your kiddo to put them into groups.  What things go together?  Maybe there is a group of animals, sports, or people.  You’ll be surprised at kids’ creativity.
  • Explain exclamation points-  This book would be a good introduction to exclamation points since there is at least one on each page.  Point them out and talk about why the author would use them in this book.  Practice writing them.  (kindergarten- Recognize and name end punctuation)
  • Make plurals-  Show how adding -s  or -es to the end of a word means more than one.  Make a list of plurals in the book.  Make plurals out of singular words in the story like “wire” or “pup.”(kindergarten- Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/)
  • Find the rhymes-  Can they identify the rhyming words on each page?  Take a close look at words that rhyme, but have different spellings like  “wire” and “higher” or “waiters” and “alligators.”  (kindergarten- Recognize and produce rhyming words)
  • Make your own “up” book–  Brainstorm things that go up.  Make a book together by writing a word on each page and illustrating it.  Depending on the age of your child, she can color the pictures, come up with the “up” words, or even write it all herself!