Read.Explore.Learn. Archives - Page 9 of 9

Read.Explore.Learn- Things in the Dark

October 29, 2010 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-In of the Week

We read The Fox in the Dark by Alison Green. A fox is sighted by many animals in the dark forest one night. One a time they each end up at rabbit’s house seeking refuge and a place to sleep for the night. Rabbit’s bed gets crowded. Animals are shoving and pushing for space. Still, there is knocking on the door. A small fox wants a place to stay. He is lost and can’t find his mom. Finally, Momma knocks on the door looking for him. The animals surprise her by letting her and her little one stay for the night. This book scared JDaniel a little the first time we read it. When he realized the fox wasn’t looking for a midnight snack, he relaxed and enjoyed subsequent readings of the story.

What did we do?

Craft

It has become a tradition for JDaniel and me to visit his Aunt Jane at the high school she works in costume and deliver her a treat. This year I had him decorate an old shoebox with Halloween stickers. We put cookies we baked into the box and took it to her school on Wednesday. She loved the box and I bet she inhaled the cookies.

Writing a Poem

Shape Poem interactive tool

Read.Explore.Learn. – Fall Harvest

October 22, 2010 By Deirdre

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week

Tractor by Craig Brown describes how each of the tractor attachments can be used to help a farmer with his crop throughout the year. The pictures in this book are amazing. I have to admit that I looked in the glossary in the back of the book to find out what some of the farming terms meant. JDaniel loved watching the fieldwork throughout the planting and harvesting season.

Hello, Harvest Moon by Ralph Fletcher beautifully describes a night filled by the light of a bright harvest moon. I love the wonderful rhythm of the words that describe the night time activities that can now be clearly seen due to the moon. The pictures in this book are amazing. If it weren’t for the fact that JDaniel would probably not sleep well, I would love to have a harvest moon here soon.

Autumn Harvest by Alvin Tresselt shares with its readers the things that can be found in a farm community in the fall. This book contains a lot of words and JDaniel’s attention seemed to wander when I read him this book. I loved the weaving together of wonderful word pictures like “.. the gossipy birds strung along telephone wires, waiting to start their autumn flight.

What did we do?

Farm Equipment Sensory Box

I placed some rice and several types of noodles in a plastic tub for JDaniel to explore. I showed JDaniel the glossary at the back of the Tractor book and the noodles I had selected to represent each tractor attachments. He loved playing with it. He played with it for a long time and made very little mess. The next few times the rice and pasta tub was taken out it made a huge mess. I am still finding rice. My husband mentioned that maybe he was too young for this. I am not sure if he will get neater with age.

Painting Pumpkins

JDaniel got to paint his pumpkin from the pumpkin patch at playgroup this week. The mom who hosted playgroup this week, Jennifer had the children use washable finger paint. It was an awesome idea. The paint stayed on the pumpkins and not the children.

Catching Fall Leaves

JDaniel loves to be outside. He loves to play with leaves. I thought it would be fun to try to catch leaves in a butterfly net. The wind hasn’t been blowing here much lately so, I decided to throw leaves in the air and have him try to catch them. Later he decided to catch leaves out of piles of leaves I had raked.

Read.Explore.Learn- Pumpkins

October 15, 2010 By Deirdre

Steps:

Link your activity below.

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Please try to visit as many of the other links as you can. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

My Book Tie-In of the Week

We read Five Little Pumpkins illustrated by Ben Mantle. This wonderful version of the book has light hearted pictures that didn’t scare JDaniel. I love the happy pumpkins and fun characters in the book. It is a padded board board which I have found helps books last. That is really important when it comes to this book. We will be reading it for a long time.

Craft

We painted egg carton cups with orange bingo markers and placed them on a fence. It was fun to use the egg pumpkins to retell the story. The green strips were left over from a Sunday school lesson I taught two weeks ago. They are lick and stick.

Experiment

Orange food coloring was created using red and yellow neon food coloring. JDaniel and I mixed the colors using cotton balls. This was fun, but very messy.

Disclaimer: I review books for Tiger Tales. Five Little Pumpkins is a book I was sent to review. The thoughts about the book are my own.

Read.Explore.Learn.-Fire Safety

October 8, 2010 By Deirdre

Steps:

Link your activity below.

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Please try to visit as many of the other links as you can. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

My Book Tie-In of the Week

We read Chief Rhino to the Rescue by Sam Lloyd. Chief Rhino thinks he sees a fire in the window of a nearby apartment building. He mobilizes the fire crew only to find out that Great-Granny Wrinkle is having a 100th birthday party with a cake full of candles.

We also read Miss Mingo and the Fire Drill by Jamie Harper. Miss Mingo’s class is afraid of fire and each animal student reacts differently to just the discussion of fire. The proboscis monkey honks loudly and his nose grows big. The elephant stomps his foot and trumpets his nose. Finally, Miss Mingo and a visiting fireman teach the class about fire safety and getting ready for a fire drill.

Cooking Project

JDaniel helped me put together this graham cracker fire truck. I put on the icing and he helped with the wheels and windows. The icing got all over everything.

Field Trip

The storytime JDaniel attends focused on fire trucks and firemen this week. The librarian read Meeow and the Big Box by Sebastien Braun. She walked the children through the steps Meeow used to create a fire truck with a cardboard box.

First, he painted one side of the box red. Then he cut a hole in the box. Finally he added wheels, a ladder, and lights. We also got to see a fireman in all his fire gear and climb on his truck.

Read.Explore. Learn- Signs of Fall

October 1, 2010 By Deirdre

Steps:

-Link your activity below.

-Please try to visit as many of the other links as you can. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

My Book Tie-In of the Week

That’s When I’m Happy is a wonderful book about activities a little bear loves doing with his family in the fall. He collects leaves with his dad and picks a special one to bring home. The leaves are also used to play soccer. Mom knows the special place on a little bear that will bring out the largest laugh. With dad, he picks out a star and mom picks out a book. She knows just which one is his favorite. Mom teaches him to read the words that start with the first letter of his name.

The parent bears in this book really take the time to play with and know their little one. I love how many ways they find to play together.

We created a sculpture of leaves falling based on one I saw in a post by No Time For Flashcards and hung it from the kitchen curtains. It looked pretty for a few minutes.

Then a small boy decided to tug on it and the leaves and the branch they were attached to fell to the ground.

We gathered bits and pieces of nature from around our yard. JDaniel and I were able to use these wonderful found objects in sorting activities. We sorted them by color, size, and texture.

I have also linked this post to stART found on A Mommy’s Adventures.

Construction Books and A Crane

July 16, 2010 By Deirdre

We have read about twenty books on construction equipment. I am only going to highlight three today.

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Dig by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha is a wonderful book with rhymes about the five jobs Mr. Rally and his dog Lightning do in one day. They did up rock! They did up clay! They dig up dirt! They dig all day.

Dig Dig Digging by Margaret Mayo has a great repetition of words. I loved reading the book to JDaniel.

Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia is another book full of repetitive words. I love that the machines come to do something with the mess they find in a lot. What do they make? They create a nature playground.

We printed out a picture of a crane. JDaniel aggressively colored it with markers. I cut out the outline of the crane so that you could see that it is indeed a crane.

signature

Books on Summer and Craft

June 25, 2010 By Deirdre

We read a lot of books this week most of them about construction equipment and trains. We did fit in two books about summer.

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It’s Summer by Jimmy Pickering is a fun book about a girl and her dog enjoying the season. They love all the aspects of summer from when it’s hot finding a cool water spot to selling lemonade, meeting a crustacean on the beach, and so much more. We love rhymes at my house and this book is all in rhyme.

The second book we read is called Alaska’s 12 Days of Summer by Pat Chamberlin-Calamar. This wonderful book could be sung to the 12 Days of Christmas literally. The sheet music is the back of the book. JDaniel loved looking for the animals on each page. As your progress from one to twelve, the animals move all over the page to make room for new animals. I loved the facts that were on the bottom of the page about each animal.

Art Project

After reading the books, JDaniel painted a paper plate with an orange bingo marker. The sunspots are where he got a hold of a blue bingo marker and added a little blue to the project. On the outside of the plate, we glued tracings on his hand.

Retelling or Reenacting Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

May 20, 2010 By Deirdre

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JDaniel and I read the book Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming about three rabbits that use their cunning to outsmart Mr. McGreely who is trying to keep them out of his garden. He puts up a wire fence and then a wall. Then he makes a moat and a huge structure. While they can’t get over the huge structure, they outsmart him by entering the structure in his harvesting basket.

I decided it would be fun to try retelling and reenacting this fun book with JDaniel this week.

Retelling Activity

I made a flipbook for JDaniel on the Read Write Think website. If you haven’t been to it, you really need to. You can create a book that is designed and illustrated completely online or you can create the pages online and use the print outs to illustrate your book. I put in the name of each way the rabbits outsmarted Mr. McGreely at the bottom of a flipbook page. JDaniel helped me look for fruit and vegetable pictures in magazines to place on the garden page. I cut out pieces of construction to represent each of the structures Mr. McGreely used to try to restrict the rabbits and then set JDaniel lose with his crayons. Once the pictures were done we could retell the events in Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! as we flipped through his book.

Reenacting Activity

JDaniel and I gathered up three of his stuffed rabbits and then started building structures that Mr. McGreely used to try to keep them out of his garden. I took JDaniel’s plants and put them a construction paper fence about the casserole dish that contained them. Then we lifted up the dish and put a shoebox to represent the wall. Next, we put blue paper under the shoebox to represent the moat. Finally, we put all of it into a cardboard box. JDaniel had a lot of fun trying to help the rabbits get to the garden.