More Fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Our community library hosted another great family event this week, this time all the activities were based on Eric Carle’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Last year I shared some of the ways I used this wonderful picture book with my Kindergarten classes, check out the link under the Insects section if you are interested.  After this terrific evening I have more great ideas to share.   The kids loved getting to meet the giant caterpillar, and they even got a chance to dance with him!  And I got a shameless opportunity to share a picture of my youngest granddaughter!

One of the children’s librarians began the evening by retelling the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar using a flannelboard, felt food pieces and a wonderful sock type Caterpillar puppet.  The felt pieces all had large slits cut in them so they fit over the sock caterpillar on the librarian’s arm.  Very cute!

After that parents and children were free to explore all the projects and activities that had been prepared and set up around the large community room.  It was very well organized and clear instructions were posted on each table giving directions for the craft or game.  Oh – and one of my favorite ideas – they set out adhesive name tags for the children to wear, and they were all punched with several holes, I heard several parents and children laughing and enjoying how the caterpillar must have nibbled on them!

The first activity my grandchildren decided to do was making Hungry Caterpillar bookmarks.  They used red and green Bingo markers to make their caterpillar on a strip of card stock, then they used a hole punch to make nibble holes, and a hole to tie a ribbon at the end.  I loved having kids use hole punches in Kindergarten, I think it is a great way to help develop hand strength which is so important for fine motor control.  They had a new kind of hole punch for the children to use – they were easy to squeeze and most of the children were able to punch independently.  I am sure I need one of these!

Here is 2 year old Lily’s bookmark!

The librarians had made large cardboard cutouts of some of the foods that the caterpillar ate.  They were cut out of corrugated cardboard and painted.  The parents held them up and the children had so much fun crawling through the holes.

llll

My favorite project of the evening was making butterfly wings!  The project had been prepared ahead of time by cutting open brown grocery bags, they were shaped so they were larger at the outsides and a bit narrower in the center.

On the back of the grocery bag, the inside of the wings, they attached 2 handles, one on each end.

The set out glue sticks and small squares of tissue paper, along with crayons to decorate the wings.  They decorated the sides of the bag that did not have the handles.  Glue sticks are by far the most convenient, but a lot of the tissue paper squares fell off because the children didn’t press them into the glue.  I used to use watered down glue and paint brushes, the tissue paper adhered more easily, but sometimes they had to be left to dry awhile and that would not work for the library program.

But the most fun part was using the wings when they were done!  The children held onto the handles and the wings went across their back.  When they moved their arms the wings flapped in and out!  It was so cute!

Another fun idea was making pompom caterpillars, glued onto a spring clip clothespin.  The jiggly eyes had already been glued onto the red pompoms.

The children had fun “feeding” the hungry caterpillar a variety of colors and sizes of pompoms.  This encouraged even my little ones to recall the food from the story – they called the purple pompoms “plums,” the red ones were “apples,” etc.

The children used dry erase markers for the final activity.  I loved the idea of gluing large pompoms on the ends of the markers as erasers.

They provided a laminated paper with the numerals 1 – 5.  The children needed to remember the foods at the beginning of the story, and draw them.  Then they put on a cute caterpillar glove (another great idea – the caterpillar was made of felt and glued onto the pointer finger of the glove), and pointed to each food as they retold the story.  At the bottom of the page there was a butterfly that was covered with dry erase marker and they had to rub off the marker to reveal the butterfly.

So I see the fruit on this paper were not drawn in the right order – of course that wasn’t done by my grandchildren!  Mostly because I prompted them!  It might have helped to have a copy of the book close by in case children needed to check out which food came next, but it really didn’t matter anyway – the whole idea was to think about the story and to have fun!

It was such a fun time!  Thanks and hugs to the Commerce Township Community Library, and all the dedicated, talented librarians who provide wonderful programs like this for our kids!

Chickens to the Rescue!

I take Owen to story time at our local library.  Today we heard this fun story, it was new to me and I loved it!  It was full of silliness and opportunities for children to join in; but mostly I loved it because it would be wonderful to introduce or practice the story elements – Problem and Solution.

Basically this story is about the Greenstalk’s – a farm family who run into a myriad of problems, but luckily their flock of chickens always comes to the rescue, until the end of the story.  The events take place through a week, so it is another chance to reinforce the names of the days of the week.  This would be a fun story to act out.  You could make headbands for the characters using pictures like these.  You could make as many chickens as you’d like to include more children in the retelling.

These directions are to make a mask, I would just staple the chicken head onto a paper strip for a headband.

Here are the farmer, his wife and their two children from the story.   There is also a duck and a cow.

Here are printable versions:

chicken hat

cow duck

Greenstalk’s

After reading this book a few times I would show the children pictures of the problems that occur in the story, and each of the solutions.  After reviewing story elements, I would remind the children that most stories have a problem that needs to be fixed.   I would encourage the children to make two columns of pictures – ones that show a problem, others that depict a solution.

Here are sorting words:

sort

Printable pictures

problem and solution

I put the problem and matching solution on the same page, if you print them just cut them apart.  I always glued pictures like these on construction paper to make them a little more durable.

After sorting the pictures into the problem or solution columns,  I would ask the children to match each problem with the right solution.

I would discuss all the ways these chickens were problem solvers in the story.  I might lead into a writing activity:

writing

Since this book ends with the pigs solving the final problem it would be easy to do a new story as a class, thinking of problems that the pigs might solve.  Of course it would be titled Pigs to the Rescue!

At story time today the preschoolers made this very simple chicken project – it was fast and very cute.  If you plan to display the children’s writing these would look great next to their writing paper.

The comb was made by tracing Owen’s hand, then we folded it in half and taped it to the back of the small (6 inch) paper plate.

One child at story time had read this book before, as soon as the librarian turned to a picture of the group of chickens he started yelling “Chickens to the rescue!”  Soon they were all joining in.  It was so fun!

Delightful Dinosaur Day

Dinosaurs are fun!

I am always on a campaign to bring more fun to early childhood.  I am very familiar with the amount of curriculum and expectations that govern the time young children spend at school, but I just really believe that teachers need to advocate for play and fun.  I shared a book we made about dinosaurs in an earlier post, now I am sharing a parent/child activity day that my kindergartners loved.  I think these parent/child days are one of the most effective ways to educate parents about how children learn and things they can do with their child at home.  If you are new to my blog, please check out other parent/child activities like Cowboys, Outer Space, Transportation, Oceans, and Pirates.

Here is our invitation:

INVITATION

When I planned these special days (or evenings) I tried to include activities from many areas of the curriculum, language arts, science, math, and social studies.  We usually began the day by showing a little of our every day circle time routines, then we did a fun song, story or poem that got parents and children actively involved.   For Dinosaur Day I passed around a basket that contained simple dinosaurs cut from construction paper, and everybody took one – parents and kids.  Then as we sang this song, they stood up and did the motion.

Tune – If You’re Happy and You Know It

Printable version:

If you have ..

Then we did an enthusiastic version of  Dino Pokey (think Hokey Pokey!)  I really encouraged parents to get up and do this with the kids.  I always practiced it the day before with the children.
 Dino Pokey

Here are some very simple clipart pictures of these dinosaurs:

5 dinos clips

Next I quickly went over the activities that were available, passed out a check off list, and gave each child a paper bag to collect his/her work as they went between the classrooms.  We usually decorated the bags ahead of time.

I repeated this parent/child activity many times and usually changed a few activities, but here is a simple description of the activities from one year.

description of activities

I also found a list of things to do in my files, so I thought I’d share that too!

I printed directions for each activity and posted them on 3 sided signs on the tables containing the materials for the project or game.  Here is a picture to show what the 3 sided signs looked like:

I didn’t save all of these directions, but here are a few.

activity directions

Some activities required a recording sheet, like Bronto Boats.  The children placed small dinosaurs in different colored boats, after predicting which boat would hold the most dinos.  They recorded their results on this paper (2 on the page).

Bronto Boats

We also play Dinosaur Soduku

Dino Soduku

The kids made up a dinosaur story with a beginning, middle and end.

Here is an assortment of dinosaur clipart:

dinos clipart

More clipart

 

This boy was tossing beanbags into the swampy basket!

Check out the stegosaurus hat – they glued spikes to a piece of adding machine tape that went down their back and was fastened to a headband.  We put a stegosaurus head on the headband.

Here are a few more resources that I found in my files.  I hope you find something you might be able to use.

dinodictionary[1]

Here are a few songs and poems about dinosaurs!

I hope you find some time to play dinosaurs with your class too!

 

10 Little Rubber Ducks

I was so happy when I found out that Kohls was releasing more of Eric Carle’s picture books in their Kohls Cares for Kids program.  These are such wonderful hardcover picture books for the bargain price of $5!  If you don’t live near a Kohls you can find them online!

I already owned a copy of this book, but it was one of those that I had not taken time to develop lessons and use.  When I reread it I was so excited about all the possibilities!

1.  I loved the whole idea of talking about HOW AN AUTHOR GETS AN IDEA.  Eric Carle shares a news article that inspired this book on the inside cover.  He read about a cargo ship containing toys that dumped into the ocean, and decided he just had to make it into a picture book.  It would be really fun to look for simple news stories that the children might adapt – or to create a story as a class based on something in the news!

2.  This book is wonderful for RETELLING and acting out.  I found some clipart pictures that you might be able to use, either staple pictures on headbands, or punch holes to wear as a necklace – or even glue them onto construction paper for the children to hold.

Here is a link to full sized pictures:

Necklace clipart pdf

3.  Along with retelling – this book makes great use of DIRECTIONAL TERMS!  You could choose one child to be a duck – or 10, and have them go in the specified directions.  This would be a great time to label North, South, East, West in your classroom – if you can figure it out!  I am a bit directionally challenged myself!  I do have a good concept of left and right though!

Directions

4.  This book would be a good tool if you have children still working on basic NUMERAL RECOGNITION.  I am sharing some pictures of numbered ducks, but it would be even more fun to get small plastic ducks (they come 2 in a pack) from a dollar store or somewhere, and put numbers on them!

Number ducks

5.  COUNTING BACKWARD!  You could also use these pictures or the plastic ducks to practice counting backward from 10 – 0.

6.  When you first read this book it is obviously a great way to introduce or reinforce ORDINAL NUMBERS!  Here are the same ducks labeled with ordinal numbers.

Ducks ordinal

Then I had an idea – you could run off copies of a box for each child and cut a vertical slit in it. Each child will cut out these strips, overlap them and glue them together.  Then they could cut out the numbered ducks and put duck 1 in the box under the word 1st, etc.

This is kind of large – you might just want to use it to demonstrate or play with as a group – you could probably reduce all the pages on the copy machine to make a smaller project for each child!

out of box

7.  In the story they packed 10 ducks in each box.  This would lead right into practice COUNTING BY 10′s!

I had a couple of ideas to use with this story.  You could give each child a copy of the cargo ship and just let him/her glue on 5 boxes labeled 10, 20, etc.

Or you could give them pictures of 5 boxes full of 10 ducks each.  After cutting out the boxes they could glue on the numbers counting to 50 by 10′s on the back, and then glue them onto the boat.  That would give them a more concrete idea of what it means to count by 10′s.

Count by 10s

8.  Of course this book would tie in to an OCEAN UNIT very well because the ducks fall into the sea and met a variety of ocean animals.

9.  There is some great VOCABULARY too!  I loved the  ”Chuckedy-chuckedy-chuck” sound of the rubber duck machine.  I would spend a few minutes talking about “bob” and “drift.”  The more I read this book, the more I love it!!

10.  One of my favorite parts of this book is the wonderful STYLE and VOICE!  A technique that Eric Carle uses is to repeat the last few words of some paragraphs, I would tell the children that when I read this book it touches my heart!

He repeats phrases like “whistles across the sea,”  ”10 ducks overboard!” and “only water and sky.”  It is a very effective way to include emotion in this story!

If you don’t already own this book I hope you get a chance to pick it up at Kohls!  And I hope you love it as much as I do!

Weather Pictures

Allison wrote to ask if I had the masters for the Weather Book I made with my Kindergartners.  I tried to reply to her comment but I guess I don’t know how to add pictures to comments!

Anyway, I do not have the masters for that little weather book, the words were very simple -

The weather today is sunny.

The weather today is cloudy.

The weather today is rainy.

The weather today is windy.

The weather today is snowy.

I changed this text different years to make it simpler or more difficult to read, based on my group of children.  You could just say Today is rainy.  Today is sunny. (etc.) or you could make it longer – “The weatherman said it will be rainy.”

 

And I included small clipart pictures of that type of weather next to the words.  Then we made a little weather forecaster – run off on yellow construction paper with the child’s photo on it.  I am attaching weather pictures and a “forecaster.”  You just need to use white out or cut out the bear’s face so the children can glue on their own photo.

 

Here are printable versions:

weather pictures

I hope your kids like playing weather forecaster too!

 

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I used the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar for a preschool storyhour, and wanted a way to engage the children, most of them had already heard and seen this story.  I used colored posterboard to make story boards of each page in the book.  I cut the posterboard into rectangles about 22 x 9 1/2 – I made these a long time ago, but I think I basically cut each posterboard in 1/3s.  Making a project like this takes quite a bit of time, but I used it with my Kindergartners over and over again for many years.

I used construction paper and cut out the tree, leaf, moon and egg, then I rubber-cemented them onto the posterboard.

On the back of each posterboard I wrote the words from the story so I could hold up the picture and read the words.

Because these pictures were so big and it was a new way to hear the story, it really kept the children’s attention.

I cut a hole – using an exacto knife – through the apple and the posterboard.
I made a caterpillar from small red and green pompoms.

I stuck the pompoms onto a piece of magnet strip – using the sticky side of the magnet to hold the pompoms on.  I have used this caterpillar for 20 years!!  I just keep it in the file with the posterboards, it is a little flattened from all those years of storage!!

This looks quite big here, but  it is only about 2 1/2 inches long.  Then I took a rubber band and slipped it over the caterpillar between the red and first green pompom.  If you don’t have a small rubberband twist it on a few times – leaving just enough room for your pointer finger to slip in under the caterpillar, on the magnet side.

Then you can poke the caterpillar through the hole in the apple, and pretend to munch, munch, munch all the way around the circle.  The kids love it!!

If you don’t want to make a caterpillar, you could just draw eyes and a mouth on your pointer finger and use that.

One thing you have to remember is to poke your finger into the right hole so you are helping reinforce counting from left to right.  I added sound effects like slurping, munching, gobbling, etc. as the caterpillar ate through the hole in each food.

When you are cutting out the strawberries and stems, I folded the paper and cut all 4 at once to make it faster, then I just tipped them a bit as I glued them onto the board.

Over the years we made lots of different projects to go along with this story.  For preschoolers we wrapped a pipe cleaner around a pencil to make it coiled up and called it a caterpillar.  Then we ‘decorated’ a brown paper lunch bag for the cocoon.  We made a butterfly by pushing tissue paper into the legs of a slip on wooden clothespin.  We put the butterfly inside the paper bag and as the children retold the story – they put the caterpillar into the bag, pretended he was nibbling his way out, and pulled out the butterfly.

In recent years I used this near the end of the year in Kindergarten and my children were ready to write phonetically, and reread some text.  We made a book to retell the story.

This is a half page sized book.

 

 

The first letter of the day of the week was already printed on the page.  The children also need to write the number word on some pages.  I provided “helper sheets” for them to refer to if they needed help writing the days of the week or number words.  You could cut these into strips of days/numbers if you’d like.

 

 

To make this book a little easier, the children drew the parts they would glue on first.  Then the next day we made the books, they just bubble cut around their pictures and glued them on.  Most children were pretty independent with this.

There were 2 on this page – each child got 1/2.

I put little picture cues to help them remember each food.  The children could draw with crayons or markers.  I didn’t leave a space for them to write their name – be sure they write their name on the back of their paper!

On this page they had to draw at least 3 things, and write the words phonetically.

They just had to color the cocoon or chrysalis, it was already printed on the page.  I debated over the years over whether to keep using the word cocoon that was in the text, but I used this book with end-of-the-year kindergartners and we had been talking about how a butterfly comes from a chrysalis – so I used that term.

The children created a butterfly – practicing symmetry – but using a folded piece of paper and free cutting the wings, then decorating both sides the same – and glued it on.

Here are the masters for this book – there are 2 on each page so you can xerox, collate and just cut each book in half to make 2.  Sorry about all the separate files – not sure how to put them all together!  I am definitely not a techie person!

cover

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday again

big

chrysalis

butterfly

Foods

helping sheets

I hope you have as much fun with this as I have!

 

Farmer Bob

The school year is coming to an end and I know you are all immersed in assessment and report cards, and all that goes along with this very busy time.  I still have so much I wanted to share!!!!

I just came across a copy of my farm book.  My husband grew up on a farm, and the farmer we made looks suspiciously like him, so I called the book Farmer Bob.

The farmer slipped into this pocket on the front of the book, and the children could take him out to use as a pointer, or just to play with on each page as they read it!

The barn doors open and the children drew farm animals inside, and labeled them phonetically.

Along with this seed page we did lots of seed activities.  We read The Tiny Seed, and This is a Seed.  We sequenced the growth cycle, and planted seeds.  One of my favorite activities was soaking lima beans for a few hours, then having the children examine all the parts of a seed – the seed coat, the stem, the root, the food for the plant.  The lima beans were a great size and easy to examine.   Of course we used scientific tools like magnifying lenses and safety glasses.

I realized that most of the children from our suburban community had visited farms, and had quite a bit of knowledge about farms – but their understanding was that a farmer’s job was to take care of animals.  I tried to give them information about how the farmer’s job really is to grow or produce food.

My brother in law who is still farming usually visited my class bringing photographs and lots of farm toys – like cultivators, hay balers, and all kinds of farm “tools.”

We put the big tractor wheel on with a brad fastener and stuck bits of sticky foam to make heavy duty tread.  The projects and discussions just helped raise the children’s awareness of the jobs that people do on a farm, and some of the equipment they use.  Of course we followed up with a visit to a farm!

 

The Little Red Hen

When my own kids were small I used to tell them to “remember the Little Red Hen,”  any time they needed some encouragement to cooperate or help with a job.  The timeless message of this fairy tale – that everyone needs to work together and help, makes it an essential story for Kindergarten!   I also thought it was important to expose my Kindergartners to classic stories like this.

There are so many versions of this story that are available at libraries and bookstores.  The main difference I found was the cast of characters.  The setting, problem and overall theme was usually the same.  There are a few copy-change books that have been published.  I used one called Who Will Help published by Creative Teaching Press, I bought it from a teacher’s store.

The theme was the same but it was a mouse who asked for help (if I remember right) and he was making applesauce instead of bread.  It was a great step by step story about the process from picking the apples to making applesauce!  It is really interesting to see if your children can make that text to text connection when you read a similar story.

Like most fairy tales, The Little Red Hen is great for acting out.  It was one of the stories that my class acted out for our end of the year program.  I tried to avoid stories with one main character because I didn’t want to have one child stand out as a star – so I took a little liberty and the main characters in my version were the hen and one of her chicks.

Here is the adaptation that I used to act out this story:

The Little Red Hen

I made headbands with pictures of the characters stapled to the front.  Usually I cut out the animals for the headbands, but these pictures would work just as well!
I would copy them onto cardstock – or glue them on with rubber cement (works great!).  Then I would ” bubble cut” around each character, and laminate it,  to make it stiff enough to stand up when stapled onto the headband.

Here are these pictures to print:

Hat pictures to copy

Here are pictures that you can use to sequence the story – or you can enlarge and color them to use when you are telling the story to your class.  You could also have the children write a caption for each picture to retell the story.

These pictures have a pig and duck instead of a cow and dog.  No problem!  It would be fun to make a class story using different animals!  Here they are to print:

sequencing pictures

Check out the post about the Three Billy Goats Gruff too – you might want to change the titles on those projects and ask your children to write about their favorite part of the story, or use the little booklet to sequence and write about it.

We had a big discussion about things that Kindergartners can do to help – both at school and at home.  The children made a cut and paste red hen, then they wrote about one way they could be helpful.  I loved doing craft projects like this with my class – they had to follow step by step directions to make the hens, and these projects gave them lots of great fine motor practice using scissors, tracers, etc.  Developing those fine motor skills really makes handwriting an easier process!

Here it is to print:

Writing

We always did a cooking project to go along with this story too!  Sometimes we made yeast rolls, other times we baked biscuits.  You could even buy frozen bread loaves and the children could form them into rolls.   You could make biscuits with Bisquick, or even just bake the refrigerated roll biscuits!  The important part of the cooking project is including all the children, and finding opportunities to ask “Who will help me …”

Here are some bread machine roll recipes (really yummy!) and the recipe I used for rolls made from scratch.

Bread machine rolls

roll recipe

So, the next time you are looking for a little help around your house, you might want to remind your own family of the little red hen!

Outer Space!

Outer space was always one of my favorite themes in Kindergarten.  It was a way to follow up or tie together our study of the earth; day and night; conservation; air, land and water, etc.  Most of all it was a lot of fun!

We made a book to introduce the basic concepts.

For the cover the children colored the letters with florescent crayons and we did a wash over the words with diluted black paint.  Then we cut out the circle and glued it onto the book cover.

When we made this page we learned about how all the planets go around the sun.  The children had to cut out the squares containing the planets and glue them in order (they are numbered!) around the outside of a white circle of paper.  Then they used a brad fastener to put the sun in the middle, then the white circle, all fastened to the paper with a brad.  Most children are able to use a brad fastener if they put the paper on the carpet to push the brad through – one piece of paper at a time.

We made the earth page by bubble printing!  I put blue (turquoise) paint and dish soap in a margarine dish.  The children blew bubbles with a straw, then set the paper over the top, making bubble prints.  Then they cut out the circle and tore green earth pieces to glue on.

We made this page lots of different ways over the years – it usually involved glitter!  Sometimes we made it with melted crayon.

I wanted our astronauts to look like they were floating in space, with no gravity.  We made a boingie and used that to fasten the astronaut to the page.  The curled ribbon is part of his air tank.  If you aren’t familiar with the technical term “boingie – here is how we did it.

Take 2 strips of paper 1 inch x 9 inches.  For kids it helps to use two different colors.  Glue one end of each strip together to form the letter L.  Then take the strip that is on the bottom of fold it over the strip on the top, keeping the edges very neat.  DO NOT PICK IT UP.  Just keep folding the bottom strip over the top till you get to the end of the paper, then add a dab of glue.  These are great to make “pop-up” books too!  If this isn’t clear please let me know and I will take photos of the steps.

We glued these rockets to a strip of tagboard and then made a slit in the page so it could pull up, as if it were blasting off!  Counting backward was part of our math curriculum, this was a good time to practice!

Here are the masters to make this book:

Space night masters

This is an old ditto activity that I used for the planets that rotate the sun.  I cut off the strip at the bottom and the children glued them around the white circle.  I had to change the numbers because they have Pluto for #8 and Neptune for #9.  A few years ago scientists downgraded Pluto from a planet.  I was very sad.  I talked with the children about how Pluto had not changed, just what the scientists were calling it, we decided to leave Pluto, but we could tell people that scientists now say it isn’t a true planet.  We read a great book written by a 3rd grade class called Poor Pluto!  They will probably remember Pluto long after all the others!

Years ago, before we were really asking all children to read in kindergarten I used to put more text on each page of my books.  At that time I was trying to expose them to print, and to facts about Space.  Basically we read these little poems often enough that most children memorized them.  Now I try to use short, emergent level sentences including lots of sight words in all the books.  Here are the original poems I wrote.

Years ago, my family was visiting the Air and Space Smithsonian museum in Washington DC.  There was a very small room displaying all kinds of children’s art work about Outer Space, and a song was playing called The Family of the Sun.  It gave a couple of facts about each planet, and I loved it.  I went to the Information desk and the gift shop but this song – or the words, were not available to buy.  So I sat in that little room listening to the song over and over and wrote it down!!  I have no idea who wrote it, and years later I saw it in print with a few different words.  Since then scientists have gained information and decided there are more moons, etc. but I love this song and continued to teach it.  Feel free to adapt the facts to be more current!

I changed Saturn’s 8 rings to “great rings” and Jupiter – “we found out it has lots of moons, and a big red spot.”

Here is the original to print:
The Family of the Sun

For many years my class made all 9 planets out of paper mache and I hung them in order from our ceiling.  When we were learning the song I used cardstock “planets” and put them onto a magnet board in the order they are from the sun.  We reviewed the facts often as they learned the song.  After the children could sing the song I would choose a “planet runner.”  That child would stand under a planet as we sang that verse of the song, and walked the length of the room, standing under each planet as we sang – they loved that!!  I also really liked calling the planets the family of the sun – helping them to remember that all the planets circle the sun.

I made fabric vests that slipped over the children’s heads.  They were dark blue, and one had a sun sewn on it, one had an earth, and one had the moon.  We learned about rotating, revolving, orbiting, etc.  First we talked and demonstrated how the moon goes around the earth, and talked about how long it takes.  Then the child wearing the sun vest would stand in the middle while the earth circled around it, talking about daytime and night time – as the child faced the sun and faced away from the son.  Last we added the moon going around the earth, at the same time the earth was going around the sun.  You could easily do this with paper bag vests too – or even just make a sun, earth and moon necklace for the children to wear while they practice these concepts.

Here are some of the books I used with this unit:

Of course Roxie Heart had to make an appearance to share facts about stars – here she is in her star dress!

At the end of our space unit I told the children that we were going to take a trip into Outer Space.  We made flight bags:

I ran these off on construction paper, they were folded in half and stapled on the sides.  Then I cut paper about 3 x 3 inches.  The children drew and labeled what they would take along on a trip to space and put these inside the flight bags.  We also made astronaut helmets:

Sometimes I gave them flag stickers, stars, etc., or they just decorated with crayons or markers.  Some children added a microphone so they could talk with Mission Control while they were out in space.

I got the pattern for the astronaut helmets from a reproducible hat book that I no longer have.  Here is a sketch to give you an idea of how we made them.

I began with 18 x 12 inch construction paper, and cut 3 inches off one long side.  Then I traced the shape of the helmet onto the paper for the children – usually they traced for themselves, but when it was this large they often had trouble centering it on the paper.  I cut the 3 inch strip into 6 inch segments,  we stapled one of these to the 2 sides to make it fit around their heads.  These fit loosely, not like a hat – because they have to go on and off over their face.  If you are trying to make a tracer yourself, it might help to fold it in half as you work on it – so it will be symmetrical.   I don’t know if this will help at all, but here is a printable version of my sketch.

Astronaut helmet

At the end of our unit I played An Adventure in Space by Steve and Greg – it is on their CD – On the Move with Steve and Greg.  It takes you through acting out putting on space equipment, getting into the space ship, blasting off, landing – a space walk, meteor shower, and the return to earth amid crowd fanfare.  Of course we wore our helmets for this (I tried to do it when no parents would be in the classroom – I don’t have much dignity but you really have to get into this!)

I also turned my playcenter into Mission Control.  My husband built a 3 sided board for controls and added an old telephone dial, switches and buttons to push, and a count down spinner from 10-0.  I added old headphones from a listening center for the NASA scientists to use.

We also made a big cardboard rocket ship – it was only 2 dimensional, but I put a milk crate behind it for a child to stand on to peek out the window.  The astronaut wore a helmet made of an old ice cream tub, connected to two 2 liter pop bottles that were tied together and worn like a backpack for air packs.

The best part of this was that we had all 9 planets suspended from the ceiling.  The language was amazing – I loved listening to the Mission Control astronauts asking the rocket person if he could see the red spot on Jupiter yet, or how many rings they saw around Saturn.  They used so many of the facts we learned about the planets while they were playing.  The only disadvantage was that they couldn’t gauge their voice levels wearing those headphones, and they often were pretty loud!  After playing space for a short time all the children easily counted backward from 10-0.

I spent quite a bit of time creating this center, but I used it for over 20 years!  This is one of the things that makes Kindergarten fun and memorable, and also creates a natural environment to encourage oral language, vocabulary development, problem solving and lots of other social skills!

Outer Space was one of the themes that I developed into a Parent/child activity night.  I alternated between Cowboys, Pirates and Space for these special evenings where children were invited to come back to school for dinner and thematic activities.  One of the main reasons I did this was to educate parents about our curriculum and how children learn best through hands on activities.

This is a list of the activities we did one year, sometimes we changed and did alternate projects.

An important part of these evenings was dinner – it had to be easy and cheap, here is the menu from one year:

Obviously this year we served hot dogs, sometimes we had sloppy joes (bought in a can at Gordon Food Service) or pizza.

I am going to share lots of projects and masters that you might like to use.  I really tried to include activities that spanned the curriculum, math, language arts, art, large motor activities, fine motor projects, etc.  I know that some of them are seriously outdated, please pick and choose – or feel free to just ignore!!

Here is an example of a math activity – using coins to “buy” stars:

We also loved weighing Milky Way candy bars in a balance scale – I bought the mini ones, of course they had to eat them too!

Space night masters

more directions

activities

alien

menu

money stars

Space invitation

Here are some Language Arts activities.  One time we made an alphabet book of Outer Space things:

I used this sheet to assess my children’s phonetic spelling.  I made sure each child worked on this independently and they had to stretch out the sounds and write what they heard.  It gave me great information!

This is an older activity, the children drew and wrote about good reasons to be an astronaut, AND why they would not want to.  I liked helping them think about both perspectives.  In more recent years they chose one or they other because they were writing sentences and needed more space.

This ditto could easily be turned into a file folder game or partner game.  The focus is on rhyming.

Here are the masters for these activities:
language arts

Here are some fun math activities:

Practice writing numbers.

Here are a bunch of masters, including outlines for pattern blocks.

more activities

Finally, here are more activities that I had in my files that I collected or used over the years.  Hopefully you can find something useful!
projects & clipart

Even going through these old projects and files makes me smile!  We had so much fun with this unit, I hope you do too!

Cowboys!

I loved to play with my Kindergartners!  Along with our Farm unit, I loved including some lessons about Cowboys!

We started out making a Cowboy book.

We spent several days making the cowboy on the front cover.  His name is Cowboy Dan, and I found a poem that describes all of his clothes, and why they were important to his job.  The poem was an easy way to talk about how his clothing helped him do his job.

This barn opens up and the children drew themselves inside – wearing Cowboy apparel.

We learned cow facts – and also the difference between cows and cattle.

Each child created their own brands, using their initials.

The white paper is taped at the top and when you lift it up the children drew food cowboys might eat underneath.

Here are some masters that you might want to use:

cowboy book masters

Cowboy Dan

I turned our dramatic play area into a jail.  We used 2 bracelets tied together for handcuffs.  We had serious classroom discussions about “bad guys” and how to play here safely.

Every spring I had an evening parent/child activity with a theme that might especially appeal to Dads – who often don’t get to be part of our classroom during the day (I know that is stereotypical, but it was true in my school.)  We alternated between Outer Space, Pirates and Cowboys.  One of the activities was a simple dinner, and the parents and children were free to do the activities in any order they liked.  Many of these activities could be used as a regular center or project in your classroom too.

Here is our invitation:

Here is a list of the activities for the evening:

Here are some pictures of the parents and children enjoying this special night!

I provided triangles of unbleached muslin and fabric crayons.  The children drew designs and the parents ironed them on – then tied on the bandanas!

This Grandma was helping her grandson make a chuckwagon from a milk carton.

She was “roping” a chair by tossing a hula hoop around it.

These little cowpokes were using an overhead projector – I provided pieces of cowboys – a variety of heads with hats, bodies, horses.  They picked some and put them together on the overhead, then traced them onto a large black paper and cut them out.

Here you can see the vests we made – I had a bunch of felt and made up a pattern that only had to be hot glued together at the shoulders.  This Mom happened to be a First Grade teacher, and after her daughter quit playing with the vest she brought it to her classroom and used it during Reader’s Workshop.  The child wearing the vest was the “Go-To” person, so they wouldn’t interrupt the teacher.  She conducted a little training class for children who wanted this job, showing them how to rewind the audio player, use the electric pencil sharpener, etc.  – things that she would often be interrupted to help with.  Each day  one of those “trained” volunteers would wear the vest and the class would go to them first before interrupting her instruction of small groups.

This family was “milking a cow” using a rubber glove!

One of the highlights of the night was riding Sunshine and Tumbleweed!  Sometimes I was able to borrow real saddles – other times we just sat on the hay bales!

Here are some of the masters for the activities:
invitation

activity list

reminder

directions

more directions

Chuckwagon

Colorful Cow Pies

Cowboy Vests

clipart

Here are some masters that I found in my old files from when I first did a Cowboy Night – maybe you can find something useful here!

older masters

Here are some songs and projects that you might be able to use too!

songs and projects

I guess I didn’t save most of my cowboy books, this Elmo book was fun to read, and explained a few things about cowboys and rodeos.

I hope I gave the rest of my cowboy books to Owen, he has quite a library!  But I always used a wonderful resource that was available at my public library – it is called From A to Zoo, Subject Access to Children’s Picture Books.  You could look up just about any topic and this book lists trade books on the subject.  It provides ISBN numbers too, so it isn’t too hard to find the books you are interested in.  I know that tons of stuff is available online, but I used this resource so often I finally got our school library to buy it – new versions come out regularly, or at least they used to!!  SO – if you are looking for more cowboy books – try to find a copy of From A to Zoo!

I guess I’ll mosey along now.