read.explore.learn. Archives - Page 9 of 10

Naughty Toes Activities for Kids- Read.Explore.Learn

September 14, 2012 By Deirdre

This week we explored Naughty Toes by Ann Bonwill is a wonderful book about finding hobbies that you love. The main character Chloe tries to love ballet the way her sister does, but she just can’t. Chloe isn’t even drawn to wearing the classic pin leotard and shoes. She would rather wear red, purple and green.The dance teacher tells here she has naughty toes. She just can’t convince them to point. She tries to float like a cloud, but her cloud is filled with too much gusto. Thankfully the class pianist realizes she needs to follow her feet and her feet are leading her to tap dancing.

Naughty Toes Activities for Kids- Read.Explore.Learn

What did we do to explore Naughty Toes?

JDaniel inherited a lot of shoes. I thought it would be fun to use them to create some learning activities. As you can tell my sisters tend to buy brown shoes for their children.

Shoe Patterning

Shoes really lend themselves to patterning. I created the order the shoes should be in my setting out the first four shoes place. JDaniel had to repeat the pattern.

We also worked on abab patterns by having the first shoe pointing up and the next shoe pointing down. The same pattern could be done by have the first shoe vertical and the second horizontal.

Match the Letters Shoe Game

Naughty Toes Activities for Kids- Matching Shoes

I put Post-It notes on the bottoms of the shoes and JDaniel had to match the uppercase letters. This activity could be extend by matching the lowecase letter to the uppercase letter. It could be made easier for young children by have the matching letter on the other shoe in the pair. I had the matching letters on different shoes.

If you like our Naught Toes activities, here are some more book related activities:

Fire Safety Themed Book and Activities

Activities Based on Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?

Making a Gnome or Fairy House Based on Bella – The Fairy Ball

Bad Kitty (An Alphabet Book)- Read.Explore.Learn.

September 7, 2012 By Deirdre

This week we explored Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel. Bad Kitty really likes to eat foods that are bad for her like chicken cheesecake, jellyfish jelly and nightingale nuggets. When shhe isn’t served what he likes, he does really bad things like overturn her cat box.She really doesn’t want mushrooms, xigua or vegetable stew.

Bad Kitty (An Alphabet Book)- Read.Explore.Learn.

Bad Kitty takes you through words from A to Z. Four times in this humorous book. Once when the good foods are shared. The second time when what bad things Bad Kitty does are shared. Thirdly when the bad foods are pictures and lastly when the kitty does good things to thank her people for the bad food.

What did we do with the book Bad Kitty?

Cat Whisker’s Counting Game

This cat game is a little like the starfish game we played a few weeks ago. JDaniel and I both had a cat who really needed whiskers and toe claws. We rolled a die to see how many we got to add each time it was our turn.

I tried to keep my cat symmetrical and someone else didn’t. The goal was to give the cat a total of twenty. I think we both saw the number twenty differently.

Hungry Cat Kitchen Search

JDaniel and I both had a cat game board. When it was our turn, we pulled a letter out of a bowl. Then we had to find something in the kitchen that started with that letter for the cat to eat. If we found one, we got to move our cat up a square on the game strip.

Remember Bad Kitty liked to eat odd foods and household items. He did in our game too.

More Book Extension Activities

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Mask

Zombie Goldfish Optical Illusion Activity

The Very Caterpillar Activities

Disclaimer: I was sent the book Bad Kitty and an audio cd of the book to review. All information and opinions about the book are my own.

The Awful Aardvarks Shop for School- Read.Explore.Learn

August 24, 2012 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links.

This week I am going to share a wonderful children’s book called The Awful Aardvarks Shop for School by Reeve Lindbergh. It is filled with fun and terrible destruction of mall displays.

The Awful Aardvarks Shop for School- Read.Explore.Learn

The aardvarks head to the mall to search for the items on their back to school list and can’t help break every rule in the mall etiquette book.

They run. They pull things off the shelves. They play with the toys and don’t put them back on the shelves. They stress out the shopkeepers.

The book isn’t just filled with terrorizing the mall. By the end of the book with the help of a bagel boy employee tells them to clean up. Guess what they do! They really do.

I am not advocating tearing up the mall, but I love the humor in the book and I love the idea of cleaning up messes.

What did we do with the book The Awful Aardvarks Shop for School?

Aarvark Tracking Activity

A simple tracking practice folder can be made by drawing straight dotted lines and connecting them with straight line ramps.

Children can practice the tracking movement they will use in reading using the simple tracking folder. I added a cutout of an aardvark for JDaniel to push along as he practice tracking.

Clothes Pin Spelling Practice

ABCs of Exploring Books with Children: R-Z

A simple picture of an object with its name placed beneath it can lead part of a very simple spelling activity. The only other thing you will need are clothes pins with the letters of the word written on them.

A child can simply clich the clothes pin with a letter underneath the letter it matches.

Here are some of my favorite Posts from last week’s Read.Explore. Learn. link up:

Biting the Hand That Feeds Me has an amazing tribute lunch to the book The Pigeon Find a Hot Dog that I am in awe of.

3 Dinosaurs created an amazing craft based on Kevin Henkes’ book birds that I really loved.

How have you been exploring books this week?

The Pout-Pout Fish Themed Recycle Fish Mobile

August 17, 2012 By Deirdre

This week I am going to share a wonderful children’s book called The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen. The pout- pout fish has a mouth that looks down turned. He decides that it means that he needs to be dreary all the time. The other sea animals try to get him to smile. He just won’t. He says he can’t he doesn’t have a choice. By the end of the book he finds he does have a choice and a wonderful smile if he will only swim upside down. (Spoiler Alert: A kiss helps make him smile too.)

This wonderful book is filled with rhyme you will love reading it all of the time.

How did we explore the book The Pout-Pout Fish?

Recycled Bottle Fish Mobile

JDaniel has been asking for mobiles for his room for along time. I made him an American flag mobile earlier in the summer and decide to add a fish one to his room too.

We have a lot of sticks that fall from the trees in our backyard. JDaniel stores them in a beaver dam area behind some bushes. Whenever we need a stick, we just head into the dam and look for the right one.

Once we had found the right one, I spray painted it white and red to look like coral.

A simple wash of water and glue was applied to multi-colored tissue squares. The squares were then placed all over water bottles that had the back third of them twisted to form a fish tail.

When we had applied enough tissue, we added giant wiggly eyes to the fish. Later when they had dried I added a piece of fishing line to each fish and hung the fishing line from the branch.

One night a few day later we put glow sticks in the fish to make them bioluminescent. JDaniel love having his Pout-Pout Fish glowing fish mobile in his room.

Starfish Math Game

We are trying to work on some basic math and reading skills this summer. One of the skills we have been working on is counting to ten.

To practice JDaniel and I sat down with some starfish game boards, pom poms, and a die. We each got to take turns rolling the die and adding pom poms to our starfish. The first person to get to ten was done and had to help the other person fill up the circles on their starfish.

Here are some of my favorite Posts from last week’s Read.Explore. Learn. link up:

I love this Nemo fish created by Colorful Imaginations.

Make Way for Ducklings is one of my favorite books. I love everything School Time Snippets did to explore and extend the book. The math lesson below looks like a lot of fun.

If you like these Pout-Pout fish book extension activities, you will like these fish activities for kids:

Fish Flop Painting

Shark Games -Fish Hockey

Zombie Goldfish Optical Illusion Activity

Polar Ice Fish Science Experiment

Read.Explore.Learn.- That’s Not How You Play Soccer, Daddy!

June 15, 2012 By Deirdre

I love the dad in the book That’s Not How You Play Soccer Daddy by Sherry Shahan! The dad in this wonderful book realizes his son is taking his job as team captain and his playing of soccer over seriously. He wants him to enjoy the game the way the other kids do.

Actually, the other kids would gather explore an anthill rather than plays soccer. Mikey thinks every rule should be followed.

After practice, his dad takes to a different part of the park for lunch and to play. Mikey just wants to practice.

Mikey’s wise dad thinks he should play shoeless, with the family dog and with his hands. After a tickle fest with his dad, Mikey agrees with his dad.

Sometimes you just have to have fun.

What did we do with this book?

Created a Game with Tomato Cages

I planted two tomato cages across from each other in the yard imagining we would play a game that combined soccer and basketball.

JDaniel looked at the cages and decided that one cage was the starting line. You then had to run around two bushes and a tree before heading across the yard to drop the ball in the far tomato cage.

My game was a little simpler, but his game turned out to be lots of fun. Sometimes it is fun to just take out some materials and see what fun game you can create.

Made Ice Tea Playdough

Sun Hats & Wellie Boots, Nurturestore, & The Imagination Tree are asking bloggers to take the PPlaydoughPledge this week. What is the pledge? It is to try to make a new kind of play dough this week.

JDaniel and I started with the basic no-cook play dough found on Sun Hat & Wellie Boots using flour, salt, oil, and boiling water. We added to it a packet of ice tea powder. JDaniel’s dad loves sweet tea and since we had read a book about a dad, I thought it would be fun.

The play dough we made turned a tan color, but really didn’t smell like sweet tea. I didn’t dump in a full packet of Lipton’s Tea and Honey and that may have kept the full scent of the tea from coming to the surface of the playdough.

We had fun playing with it anyway.

What adventures have you had with books this week?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Tweak Tweak (An Elephant with Many Questions)

May 4, 2012 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 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-Ins of the Week:

The little elephant in the book Tweak Tweak by Eve Bunting reminds me of JDaniel. His mama tells her to tweak her tail when she has a question and just like my guy she is filled with questions.

Does she want to know what the frog is doing? She is jumping says his mom. The little elephant wants to know if she can jump. Her mom tells her that she can’t but, she can stomp.

As she goes on her walk with her mom she wants to know if she can do the same things monkeys and many other animals can do. Each time her mom points out that he can’t do what they can, but she can do special things that elephants can do.

Her mom also tells her she can walk with her mom, ask questions and learn. Oh! and remember the way home.

What did we do to extend concepts from the book?

Elephant Puppet for Retelling

An old cd with felt ears and wiggling eyes makes a perfect elephant puppet. After reading Tweak Tweak, JDaniel stuck his finger through the hole in the center of the cd to add a trunk to the puppet.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Tweak Tweak (An Elephant with Many Questions)

This is so much fun to play with!

It was a lot of fun to watch the elephant’s nose wiggle up and down while he retold the story. I like pretending to be the elephant too.

Elephant Foot Letter Searching

JDaniel used this elephant’s foot to search for letters in his favorite book.

The toilet paper tube was really too large for isolating letters. I will need to think of a smaller tube for this activity.

Sandpaper and Yarn Letter Practice

JDaniel had fun trying to place pieces of yarn onto sandpaper with the letters of the alphabet written on them.

Here is the E for the elephant he used.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Celebrating Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

February 24, 2012 By Deirdre

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. JDaniel and I will be heading to the celebration of his birthday at Target tomorrow. I think Target stores everywhere are having a celebration. In honor of his birthday, I decided we would read three Dr. Seuss books.

Dr. Seuss Books We Read

This post contains affiliate links.

The Lorax

We started with the The Lorax . It is all about saving the trees and an awareness that we have to give back.

What did we do?

I made JDaniel a Lorax sandwich with his favorite cheese rolls. I think it came out well. JDaniel announced that he was not into cheese rolls anymore. That meant I got to eat the Lorax sandwich minus his eyeballs. It turns out he still likes those foods.

The Tooth Book

Then we read The Tooth Book. JDaniel is big into grouping things right now. He loved that this book is all about teeth.

What did we do with this book?

JDaniel and I searched in magazines for pictures of people with teeth showing. After gathering the pictures, we put them in a roasting pan and covered them with Moon Sand.

JDaniel then used an old toothbrush to uncover everyone’s teeth. This fine motor activity gave JDaniel the opportunity practice the motion used to brush his teeth. It was fun to clear off green Moon Sand and see the pictures that had been covered up.

If you like these Dr. Seuss activities, here are some more that you will enjoy:

Cat in the Hat Math Mats

Green Eggs and Ham Activities

Lorax File Folder Math Game

Truffalo Tree Sight Word Game

Thing One and Thing Two Shape Craft Activity for Kids

How to Create a Fox in Socks Sock Puppet

You will also find wonderful Dr. Seuss activities on my Seuss board on Pinterest.

What did you do that tied in with books this week?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Curious George and Valentine’s Day Flowers

February 10, 2012 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.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

There is just something wonderful about Curious George! We love him at our house. We loved Happy Valentine’s Day George too.

Curious George decides to celebrate Valentine’s in a big way for those he carries for and they with him. There is crazy cooking. There is wild decorating. There is card making with a small mess.

What did we do?

Craft- Flower Arrangement

How did I make it?

Materials:

Detergent bottle top
Decorations
Green Pipe cleaners
Buttons
Hearts cut out of tag board with holes punched at the narrow end
Styrofoam ball

Directions:

1. Decorate the outside of the detergent bottle cap.

2. Pull a pipe cleaner up through the top of a button so that it extends about three inches

3. Beneath the button push 5 hearts onto the pipe cleaner.

4. Pull the top end of the pipe cleaner back through one of the remaining holes in the bottom.

5. Fan out the hearts into petals around the button.

6. Twist the end of the pipe cleaner you pulled through around the long end of the pipe cleaner.

7. Twist the end tight enough to hold the heart in places.

8. Push the flower into the styrofoam ball.

9. Place the styrofoam fall into the detergent lid.

Read.Explore.Learn.-If You’ll Be My Valentine

January 27, 2012 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 ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

- Link your activity below.

- Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. a 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-Ins of the Week:

JDaniel is very much into rhyming words. He loved the rhyming poems in

I love how the card is shown on one page of the book and the memory that inspired it is on the opposite page.

What did we do?

Craft- Valentine’s Day Cards

We received tons of political mailings right before the South Carolina primary. I decided they would be great for creating Valentine’s Day cards for JDaniel’s sleepy-time friends and robots.

I put out the mailings, markers, stickers, and crayons to make the cards.

Pretend Play- Valentine’s Day Post Office

While JDaniel was a preschool, I converted his McDonald’s counter into a post office. I placed post office signs on most of the McDonald-related ones and put some stamps (stickers) into the register.

One of our reusable bags was labeled as a mailbag. JDaniel was able to use the bag to deliver his cards to his toys.

Read.Explore.Learn.- An Orange in January

January 20, 2012 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 ways you have learned with and explored books.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

This wonderful book An Orange in January follows the travels of an orange as it makes its way to a boy’s home. I love the warm pictures in this book and the opportunity to share how food gets to our table.

We really loved getting to read about how one of JDaniel’s favorite foods gets to our house. We also loved the boy’s brainstorming at the end of the book as to what you could use an orange to do ie: juggle with one.

What did we do?

Mapping

We took out our atlas and looked for Peru. Peru is the homeplace of the oranges we purchased from the grocery store

Craft- Making Orange Circle into Something

I put out paper with orange circles glued on them and had JDaniel transform the circles into something else.

Orange circles for the An Orange in January book extension

Orange circles randomly glued onto blue paper

JDaniel then was asked to create drawings with the orange circles. I loved hearing him tell me about what he was coloring while he colored.

This picture is a bouncy ball with green spikes on it. Besides the ball is a robot with his legs tucked up under him so you can’t see them. It is such fun to see what kids crate.