O is for... Owls and Octopuses!

     First, let me start by saying yes, the plural form of octopus is octopuses according to the dictionary.  I thought it seemed a bit funny, so I looked it up, just to make sure!  Just for your personal information, the second plural form listed is octopi, which I like much better!  OH well!

     As you can see this week was all about the letter Oo, OKAY?  OBVIOUSLY, we focused OUR attentions ON OWLS and OCTOPUSES!  Look at all those Oo words!  OUR letter craft for this week looked like this.

Materials:  Index card with capital O, googly eyes, orange foam beak, and crayons

Front of card

Back of card

1)    Color the capital O.

2)    Trace the capital and lower case Oo on the back of the card.

3)    Peel and stick the googly eyes and orange beak on the owl.

     The second craft this week for my older kids was a lot of fun!  With my older kids, I like to try to add something new and different.  This week, our challenge was scissors.  That’s right, I let 4-6 year olds use scissors.  I have a bit of a luxury in my classes because their parents remain in the room with them.  Thus if something like scissors becomes too difficult for the child, their parent is always there to help out if need be.  I must say, however, that only one or two of my kids needed help.  As mentioned previously, my kids are all about their independence!  You can find out octopus craft here.  As you can see from the picture below, we changed ours up just a bit.  Instead of paint, we used markers.  However, I think they still turned out pretty cute!

This isn't the one we made.  Mine has gone missing!
But ours did come out looking like this!

     So, what fun books did we read this week?  The first book I picked was Frank Asch’s Bread and Honey.  When I first picked this book, I wasn’t quite sure how my kids would like it.  However, the premise of the book is quite funny and my kids laughed the whole way through it.  There is also a great underlying moral to the story!  I love when that happens.

     For the octopus book, we read My Very Own Octopus by Bernard Most.  Have you ever wanted and octopus for a pet?  In this funny book by Most, he goes through the best parts of having an octopus.  Can you imagine having a pet that can brush your hair, brush your teeth, and help you get dressed all at the same time?  I think I would like a pet like that!

    The last thing I always try to do is introduce “new” music to my kids.  The week, I took the plunge and introduced a new alphabet letter strip song.  For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, in my classes we do an activity called the letter strip.  This is just a long strip of paper, laminated, with clip art pictures of the letter and then a picture.  My kids LOVE IT!  When I don’t do it, they whine and groan and moan, so I have to!  I have been using the same song for a little over a year, but I felt it was time to move on.  You can see the old song at my YouTube channel here.  The new song is the Richard Scarry Alphabet Song.  It is a little bit different than my previous alphabet song, but after a couple of weeks, I think my kids and their parents will begin to love it as well.

     As for other music, I also like to introduce my kids to kid-appropriate popular music.  I am a HUGE fan of the oldies.  I think playing the oldies is great because it gets both kid and parents engaged.  This week’s blast from the past came in the form of “I’m Walking on Sunshine,” by Katrina and the Waves.

     That seems to be all for this week.  Next week we tackle the letter P.  However, its Q that I am really worried about!  EEK!  Stay tuned in to see what we do!