Things are starting to get a little spooky this week at the Mooresville Public Library. Our volunteers did a GREAT job getting all of our decorations up for Halloween, but that isn’t the only thing causing a scare. This week, we covered ghosts….BOO! The letter Gg fell at a great time considering it is almost Halloween and what better way to ring in the letter Gg than with a ghost craft and story! It was GHOULISHLY GREAT and I am GEARED up to show you all about it, but let’s first begin with our flashcard of the week.
I love giraffes! There is something so magical about a creature with an extremely long neck. However, did you know that a giraffe has the same number of cervical vertebrae (or neck bones) as humans? We each have seven, though a giraffes are MUCH LARGER! Just a little tidbit of information in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy! I found an adorable letter G giraffe this week that I just had to use. Although I do like trying to free-hand my letters, this week, in order to make sure it was dead on and looked like a giraffe, I traced it. What do you think? Cute, huh?
Materials: Letter G card, crayons, washable paint, Q-Tip, googly eye
Back Side of Card
1) Color the letter G to make it look like a giraffe. Place the googly eye on the giraffe.
2) Trace the capital and lower case Gg on the back side of the card.
3) With your Q-Tip, paint orange dots on the giraffe to create his spots.
4) Let dry then place on your ring with letters, Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, and Ff.
I had a bit of a hard time finding a good giraffe book this week. Although my library had quite a few to pick from, they all seemed to be a bit long and not very entertaining as read-alouds go. So I went with a personal favorite, Shel Silverstein’s A Giraffe and a Half. Although a bit long, this book lends itself to being cut down just a bit. It was quite easy to cut out a few pages but still keep the drift of the book. I read this to my Tuesday 2s and 3s Class and to say it did not go well would be an understatement. Although quite funny, I think the subtlety in the jokes were a little over the head of my poor 2 and 3 year olds.
So I made a quick change before my Wednesday classes and I came up with Carlo Likes Colors by Jessica Spanyol. This book, though not necessarily a great story, was fantastic for discussing colors and objects that fall into those color categories. This book seemed to go over much better with the 2 and 3 year old crowd. I think they especially liked it because they were able to yell out answers about the colors and let’s be honest, what kid doesn’t like to yell out answers?
As previously mentioned, I went with a ghost theme for my four to six year old class. I knew I wanted to do ghosts because it is so close to Halloween, however, I did not want to read a Halloween book just yet. After a quick little search for “ghosts,” I found the perfect book for my needs. Zee is Not Scared by Michael Gay is a terrific book to talk about ghosts, but not necessarily Halloween. I don’t want to ruin it, but I might add that this book has the potential to give your kids a bad idea when it comes to scaring their parents! J My kids loved this book. It was suspenseful in just the right spots, funny in the right spot, and even has some feel-good parent love at the end. I don’t think it can get much better than that!
Going into a ghost craft I thought it couldn’t be that hard to find something that is easy, mass producible, and fun. Boy was I wrong. Everything that I wanted to make was too messy, too advanced, or not easily made for a class of twenty! That was until I found the PERFECT craft for kids. Wait for it… GLUE GHOSTS! That’s right… GLUE GHOSTS! What kid do you know that doesn’t like to squeeze all of the glue out and make big puddles of it? Well, that was EXACTLY the point of this craft. All you need is wax paper and glue. If you want to get a little more festive, add googly eyes and some felt. For complete step-by-step instructions, go here. Also, take a look at my video too see the glue ghost I created.
As I mentioned in last week’s post, my new goal for this blog is to post two new music videos a week. This week I have chosen a couple of my classes absolute favorites, The Numbers Jump and Open, Shut Them. I don’t know about you, but my kids go crazy when they hear these two songs. I have played them both so much over the past two years that I have slowly been trying to weed them out, however, it’s impossible when the kids come in requesting these songs. I hope you can get as much use from these songs as I have.
The Numbers Jump by Wonder Choir
Open, Shut Them by Hap Palmer
Well, that's it for the letter Gg. I hope I gave you some pretty great ideas that hopefully you can use with your own kids. As usual, feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions, comments, or even ideas! I am always looking for the next great craft! Next week, we tackle Hh!
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