Friday, February 3, 2012

P is for... Penguins and Parachutes!

     For those of you that didn’t know this already, there are TONS of words that start with Pp.  My kids were able to come up with easily 20 or so.  Some of my favorites included Poppa, Popsicle, pineapple, polar bear, and Penelope!  It wouldn’t be Story Time if one of my kids didn’t throw out a name!  This week, though, I chose to play it safe and went with penguins and parachutes!
     Our P letter craft this week was rather fun, it took the shape of a penguin.  I love penguins!  When I was a kid, they were my absolute favorite part of the zoo.  To this day I can sit and watch the penguins for hours! They are absolutely mesmerizing.

Materials:  Index card with capital P, googly eye, white foam belly, orange foam beak, orange foam feet, and crayons



Front of card



Back of card



1)    Color the capital P to look like a penguin (black works for the best effect).


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



3)    Glue the white foam belly to the P.  Add the google eye, orange foam beak and feet!  TA DA!  A pretty penguin!



     The second craft this week for my 4-6 years olds was a recycled craft.  By that I mean, we have done it before!  But, who cares!  I gave each of my kids a parachute man to color.  The parachute man had holes punched in his hands.  I then gave each kid two pieces of yarn to tie to the parachute man’s hand.  The other end of the string was tied to a plastic grocery bag (parachute.)  WARNING:  I know that it is not safe to give children plastic bags.  In my case, the kids’ parents are in the room.  The bag was given to the parent with a general warning to not let their children play with this craft unsupervised.  The parachute man craft looked like this!


     As I mentioned previously, I like to challenge my older kids who come.  This week’s challenge was manual dexterity.  Tying those little knots was hard for me 4-6 year olds.  I encouraged each of them to try it on their own, and then ask for help when they needed it.  This is a practice I always like to use in class because encouraging independence is really important to me, especially for my 4-6 year olds.  Although many of these kids are in preschool, it won’t be long before they move into elementary school.  It’s a good practice for the kid and their parent as well!
     As I continue on my quest to ensure that my kids are loving the books I read, I think this week, I would get a barely passing grade.  Tony Baloney by Pam Ryan is a great book about a little macaroni penguin that seems to always be getting into trouble.  I picked it not only because it went with the theme, but also because I thought my kids could relate.  Perhaps it was a bit too long for a read-aloud or maybe they just didn’t get it, but my parents seemed to be laughing more than the kids.  That’s why I give it barely passing.  At least someone enjoyed it, right?


     Do you know how hard it is to find a good read-aloud about parachutes?  Well, my library didn’t have one and I was kind of in a pickle, so I went a different route, airplanes!  That’s right, airplanes!  The kids and I first talked about how parachutes are an important part of airplanes and why airplanes need them to make passengers feel safe.  This, however, segued nicely into my book, He Saves the Day by Marsha Hayles.  A good little book about imagination, adventure, asking for help, my kids really enjoyed He Saves the Day.


    It seems I always like to finish my blog posts with the new music we used that week.  This week, I chose a really fun and exciting song that I have used in the past.  If you have not heard of the Disney show “Phineas and Ferb” that you must be living under a rock!  Phineas and Ferb are everywhere and I love one of the songs they sang on their show, “Gitchie Gitchie Goo!”  It’s fun, upbeat, and catchy!  Trust me when I say this song will be stuck in your head for days if not weeks!


     The other song this week was more of an educational song.  I have been using this song for a few weeks and decided it was time to create a video!  Everyone knows the Addams Family theme song, right?  Well, some GENIUS created a Days of the Week song to go with it! I love it and I hope you do too!


     That's it! I'm done! I hope you enjoyed it!  Next week is the letter Q.. oh boy!  What am I going to do!?

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