Arctic Animals

I had to plan a 2-hour lesson on arctic animals for preschool today. It worked out pretty well, so I was going to share.

I have a gigantic National Geographic map that takes us my whole wall--pretty much. So I hung that up. Then I printed out pictures of various arctic animals and hid them around the room. After the kids arrived and we had some gathering time activities (usually puzzles or coloring), and some circle time stuff (calendar, finger plays http://nwkls.mykansaslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Marco-Fingerplay1.pdf, songs), we played I, Spy and I let the kids take turns finding the animal I had given clues about. For example, I might say "I spy an animal that is white and furry all over. It is very big with four huge paws." Hopefully they would guess "polar bear" and then try to find the picture of it. Then I let them attach the animal to his habitat. Seeing as the topic was "arctic" animals, most of the time we were taping the animals in the north pole. But a few animals live in the sound pole (penguins), and some animals have a range of habitats (like the killer whale). Anyway, the kids had a great time with this game! And I think we all learned a lot!

After we had looked at the animals and identified their habitats, I have a few more facts about each one. Then I let the kids think about which animal was their favorite and we graphed favorites on a prepared graph I had made the night before. The clear winner from our class was the walrus. Who woulda thunk?

Then we moved over to the table to work on our craft. The kids got light blue construction paper and white cutouts of polar bears. They could chose were they wanted to affix their bear on their paper and then glue him on. I had gathered various materials on the table for the kids to use after that. They could glue coconut onto their bear to give him "fur." They could glue cotton balls onto their bear as fur, or use the cotton balls to add snow to their scene. There was white paint they could use with paint brushes or sponges. I showed them how to use their white fingerprints to make it look like snowflakes falling in their scene. Etc. I would say this craft was a hit. The kids really enjoyed having so much choice.

After that was free time followed by snack time. I popped popcorn and we called it snowballs. I cut up poppyseed muffins and we called it dirty snow. We had fishy crackers because most arctic animals eat fish. We had some ice-cream too. 'Cause it has the word "ice" in it.

Then we had some polar races. We pretended to be arctic hares and had a hopping race. Then we were seals and slid on our bellies. We walked on all fours like polar bears. We put potatoes on the tops of our feet and waddled like penguins. We ran like eskimos. This was the kids' 2nd most favorite thing that we did.

But strangely, their MOST favorite thing that we did was a different kind of race. I put a bunch of ice cubes in a bowl and let the kids take turns using tongs to move all the ice cubes from one bowl to another. We even timed each other. The kids totally got a kick out of this race and wanted to do it over and over and over. I thought they might feel overly competitive with each other, but mostly they just wanted to beat their own time.

While we waited for our moms to come pick us up, we sat down on the couch and read "Mama, Do You Love Me?" and "Over in the Arctic"http://www.dawnpub.com/our-books/over-in-the-arctic-where-the-cold-winds-blow/ and spent some time reviewing what we had learned about the animals.

It was an awesome day!

Elephant Day

It was time to start on letter E. I told my son we could watch a Wolf Eel video tomorrow if he did his worksheet today, and he kindly obliged.

So it was worksheet first, then onto a craft. I knew we didn't have much time today, so I found a quick elephant deal on the "first-school" website, which is pretty much the source for any and all preschool stuff. I'm not always a huge fan of the style of ideas found there, but sometimes it's just what I need in a pinch.

The elephants look like this when you're done:







The little head part is glued onto a CD you don't mind donating to the project. The website gives you all the stuff to print out, then you just cut and assemble. Thankfully, we managed to get some shape recognition and a little bit of size differentiation in there. And of course, you do get some practice with the ol' glue stick. We attached our elephant to a craft stick and used him like a puppet for awhile. But the kiddo got pretty sick of it, real fast.

SO, we read a book. It was a crappy book. Don't get it or read it. It's called The Elephant Wish. I'll even picture it for you so no one wastes their time on it's worthlessness.

I tell you what, sometimes I cannot believe what they publish in children's literature. Some of it is completely...a waste of time. My son, an avid story lover, lost interest in the book after the FIRST page. That's saying something. So, yeah, don't bother with it. 

D is for Dracula

I didn't want to spend too much time on dinosaurs because I will be teaching our preschool co-op class about dinosaurs in a few weeks--gotta leave a few surprises for then. So instead, we focused today on Dracula. It's getting closer, every day, to Halloween; so, I figured it was ok.

During my internet search, I had seen much reference to a "Looking for Dracula" activity that has been done in various preschools and kindergarten classes. I had to look into it a little further to find the best medium for introducing the activity to my own family.  What I finally decided on was a youtube video:

My Favorite "Looking for Dracula" Option

It's pretty much--AWESOME! We had such a blast doing this activity. It feels a little strange as an adult, acting out a story while watching a youtube video. But you just have to let yourself go! The kids went crazy for it, and have been singing/chanting the song everywhere we go, every day since. We actually waited until everyone was home to break out this doosy. The story calls for props, too, which I would highly recommend. Improvised blanket capes, cheap glow-in-the-dark fangs, and binoculars aka swimming goggles was what we used, but one could get all fancy and go for the real thing too.

SOoooo....backing up, since we couldn't do this one during the day, we decided on another activity that was also a hit. Dracula lollipops. Yes, you read that correctly. And here's what they look like:

Sure, there's a witch in there too. These were pretty fun. Mostly, for my son, it was just a chance to do some assembly. He did break out the scissors and try cutting a few dracula heads. He tells me he only knows how to cut straight lines, so...some of the dracula heads are square. It's all good. We did some experimenting to try and figure out a good way to make his body/cape. We never really decided which method we liked the best, so I guess they are all equally cute/pathetic :-) Mostly, this was just a pleasant activity; it wasn't teaching too much, but that's ok sometimes.

D is for Dinosaur

I was getting sick of underwater animals, so we took a break for letter D. As always with a new letter, we first completed a worksheet:

I'm actually really happy with doing these worksheets. My older son learned to write letters just out of curiosity, but my younger son seems to need a little more parental push. It's fun to sit down and work on these worksheets together. It's not like I just leave him with it--we talk about the letter and what it looks like, we draw it with our fingers, and often I hold his little hand in mine and we write some letters together; then he might try a few on his own. I don't know why I enjoy this time together as much as I do. It's just fun to see the glimmer of recognition come into his face...it makes me feel like we're getting somewhere :-)

Next, I drew a big letter D and gave my son dinosaur stickers. Of course, we talked about how "dinosaur" starts with the letter D, and the sound of it and all that too.

I thought he would just decorate the letter D and be done with it, but he surprised me by making up a big dinosaur story as he went along. The letter D became the land and the middle became the water. The dinosaurs grouped together in packs and either protected each other, or helped each other hunt for prey. Some of the dinosaurs jumped across the water to escape their predators, and some of them just liked to swim across. Mostly, I played the role of listener...a welcome change :-) We had a great time. It's amazing what a simple piece of paper and a few stickers can do!

Handprint Crab

It was time to do some art-ish-ness for our letter C stuff. A google search helped me out with an idea: handprint crabs.  Honestly, I thought it was pretty adorable, but I never expected our own version to turn out as totally cute as it did, pictured below:

I got the idea from the link, but I used a few variations of my own. We just used blue construction paper for the background, as opposed to making it out of watercolor paints. I let my son make "pinchers" and a smile, etc. with a Sharpie. Finally, we painted on some glue with a kid's paintbrush and then sprinkled corn meal over the top to get a sandy effect. That's the part little guy liked the best. He loved watching the corn meal stick to the glue and he's way impressed that it "weely DOES yook just yike SAND!"

We had to work on this craft in stages throughout the day as we were waiting for things to dry--but it was a big hit!

Ghost Crabs

Once upon a time, I introduced the idea of having to earn an underwater-animal-related video by completing a worksheet. I think it is becoming the way of things around here.

That's why, when we went to start our discussion of letter C, my son said, "what worksheet can I do to earn a crab movie?" Ve-ry nice. Therefore, I found a letter C worksheet and he practiced some writing skills.

Of course, after that, it was time for the main event: the ghost crab video, which I found somewhere near the bottom of this website:
http://brilliantbundles.blogspot.com/2012/02/preschool-ocean-themed-lesson-plan.html

I think the author has many brilliant ideas on this site if one is looking for more ocean stuff, but I was pretty much just interested in the video.

After watching the video a few times (it's only about five minutes or so), we had just enough time to go over a few facts about crabs. I ended the discussion talking about the way crabs move. It seemed only natural that we then move to the ground and practice the crab walk. Kids are so much better at this than adults!

I had found some little ditty about crabs that we chanted while acting like and walking around like crabs. It was ok, but honestly, my kiddo wasn't too into it. The ditty part. I wish I would have thought to have a crab race. That would have been way more fun. Oh well--coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Next time.

Measuring Belugas

To round out our discussion of beluga whales, and to teach a little in the way of standard measurements, my son and I decided to represent the size of a beluga on our floor with painter's tape.

I found some rulers and we talked for a very brief moment about what a ruler is and how it works. Then we started marking off 15 feet (according to my research on the size of an average beluga whale), foot by foot, on my floor. For every foot we put a small piece of tape, and when we got to 15 we stopped. I was thrilled that my son was counting the increments as we went, and that it gave him lots of practice in counting up to 15. Next, I had to spend some time making an outline of a beluga whale that encompassed all of the 15 feet we just marked off. Good thing it didn't take that long. Less than five minutes.

It was impressive to see how big a beluga would really be if it was swimming around in our house and my son was pretty excited about it. I made him lay down next to the whale and I measured him with tape and we looked at the difference. We then found other things to measure ourselves and the whale with--for example, we have a wooden gravestone as one of our halloween decorations, so we used that for measuring. We learned that the whale is 7.5 gravestones, and my son is about 2.5 gravestones. It was pretty cool to get some non-standard measurement ideas in there too.

I'm happy with this activity.  The method of measurement, in various forms, has been successfully explored. AND, it was a lot of fun!