Yertle the Turtle

    
Today’s Dr Seuss book is new for me.
It was a Christmas present this year and this
week is a perfect opportunity to use it.
     
Most of Dr. Seuss’ books are long and it’s
easy to lose the interest of the little ones.
So I tried to think of a way to make the book
more interactive.
  
Meet my story props – 30 blue egg carton turtles.
 
    It was great to have help to tell the story
   (thank you Nicole, our ECE student).  As I started
   to read the story Nicole gave each child a turtle.
   Then when King Yertle called for nine turtles
   the children came up to help stack the turtles.
 
   As the story continued and the king demanded more
   turtles the rest of children added theirs to the stack.
   
 Tomorrow the children can continue reading and
  playing with Yertle and Mack and build a stack.

 
  Meanwhile over at the art table the children painted
  their own egg carton turtle.
 
  Discussion arose about how younger children (3 and under)
  tend to paint in one spot. Do they only paint what they see
  Or is it because their coordination of using two hands
  hasn`t fully developed
       
  This very young one drew a lot of attention this morning
  with her knowledge of painting.  She knew how to handle
  the brush and to apply the paint to the carton.  The mother
  was a great model for others showing that even the littlest
  participants in our program can enjoy the art table.
   
        Meet Myrtle the Turtle and Sara the Turtle.

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

     
Our Seuss inspired book today was Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb.
    
What better way to enjoy the book then by making our own drums.
 
      We covered coffee cans with paper and stickers.
 
      And were ready to hum and drum.
 
           Introducing a future drummer.

Lantern Festival

          
We are so lucky to have a neighbouring community
that brings in this Taiwanese Lantern Festival.  We
visited this morning and spent time exploring the
many colours, shapes and lights displayed in these
wonderful lanterns.
 
We used our Nature bags but we called them Busy Bags today. 
They included the clipboard with plain paper and crayons for
drawing, a paper with a circle and square on it to count how
many of those shapes we could find and some magic paper.
 
As soon as we entered we saw lots and lots of circles. 
There were so many that we estimated instead of counting.
 
It’s great that the lanterns are set on the floor so the children
can get up close to really check them over.
 
Several lanterns were interactive.  This snake has a hole in it’s mouth. 
When you drop a ball in, the body lights up.
 
     A ring toss in the dark looks lovely all lit up.
      
Maybe the fairies will visit to check out the toad stools.
 
  Some lanterns were low and spread out on the floor
        while another was hanging from the ceiling.
 
           Look at all the triangles we saw in this lantern.
    
              Shhhh, it`s a sleeping tiger.
 
The children used their magic paper to help them remember
the wonderful colours they saw in the lanterns.
      
Back at school while emptying some of the bags I found
some tally sheets.  Interesting how each child did it differently.
Some attempted printing numbers, others made tally marks
and someone added a triangle that they saw.
        
       Love this sketch that I found in one of the bags.

Welcome to Our Week of Seuss

      
          I love celebrating the work of Dr Seuss. 
    His creative characters and wonderful rhyme help
   expand our imaginations to think ‘outside of the box’.
      
       He incorporates so many concepts in his books;
       colours, opposites, patterns, numbers and more.

  Today we started with my favourite Seuss inspired book
         “Put Me in the Zoo” by Robert Lopshire.
       
   I was always drawn to the spots – lots and lots of spots.
          
           A ceramic teapot worked great to add
                a dot on a spot on the pot.
 
      Using coloured stickers worked our knowledge
                of colours and our finger muscles.

And finding a new book for some.