Using Children's Literature as a Vehicle for Curriculum

Why are all the preschoolers putting on lots of hats?  They were imitating the Peddler in the classic story, Caps for Sale!

We engaged in many activities surrounding this story about the peddler who kept all of his (17!) caps balanced on top of his head.  He takes a nap under a tree and some monkeys steal his caps...

So, we painted our own Caps for Sale Tree...we learned how to make brown for the trunk by mixing all of the primary colors together.

Later we colored some monkeys and practiced with
our scissors - we have some interesting scissor-grips
(typical for this age) so we will work on this again in the
future!


We then glued our monkeys to the tree! Just like in the
story...


We also made personal trees out of salt dough to take home.



We drew the caps on the peddler.  Below, Summer made her own peddler - we are working on creating faces in preschool...



We did a LOT of block building this week.  We took turns, below to add a block at a time - the tallest we made was over 20 blocks.  This took patience in taking turns and a steady hand to balance each block...

Bridget also made a train for the dinosaurs.

Jane had fun modeling to the M/W group how we took turns making a structure with our blue blocks.

I took the picture below because the whole group was sitting nicely, criss-cross applesauce, and singing AND clapping their hands - this has taken a long time to coordinate, so I was proud of them!!

I got out my sorting bears Thursday to get ready for reading The Three Bears next week.  The bears are different colors, but also three different sizes.

Summer enjoyed sorting by color...

Jane sorted by color and size.  Good job, girls!

We realized the T/Th group all have an E in their name, so we practiced E's everywhere - below, Summer did one with watercolor on the easel.

Noe and Anders played nicely with the cars then worked together to put them away.  The kids are learning to lovingly take care of the things in our room!

More, kid-initiated block building...nice!

A fun picture with the girls ALL painting happily together.  Great conversations here too.

A VERY productive week!

Solidifying our learning through a wide variety of related activities . . .

We began our week making pumpkins in a wide variety of ways.  Below, paper bag pumpkins required us to stuff a paper bag, get help tying it shut and then mixing colors to paint it.

Above, Summer and Anders were very thorough in painting their pumpkins.

Bridget and Joy enjoyed painting with their hands.

Since Summer missed a day last week, Jane helped her remember our 5 Little Pumpkins song.  As the days go by we sing the song, look at the sequencing cards for it, read a book about the pumpkins, make our own book and play act the song with our own play dough pumpkins and our plastic pumpkins.  I think everyone knows the song pretty well now!

And we had the opportunity to color our own book of the song to take home.

Look how diligently the kids worked on their books!

We each also got our own little pumpkin to paint and decorate.

Pretty Pumpkins!

The children asked to get out the doctor stuff the other day (below).  Jane and Noe played for a long time as patient and doctor.

This then turned into, "let's get cozy on the 'train'.  Anders joined in, too.

Summer is great at "reading" stories to herself.  She said, "When I don't know what is says, I make something up."  Great Summer!

Below, Jane and Anders made a house for the dinosaurs together.

 

Later, Anders cleaned up the blocks so neatly!! 

 

Thursday we had fun checking out our first snow.  Our favorite tree looked pretty snowy (left).

Below the kids liked to "hide" under the tree . . .

Thursday we read the Eric Carle story, Papa, please get the moon for me and then painted our own moon!

 Colin loves to sing "This Old Man" so we found the book and read it together!

A very busy and productive week!  They are growing so much!