Pet themed books and activities

R 's favorite books were "If you give a cat a cupcake" by Laura Numeroff.

And the book "The Best Pet Ever" by Victoria Roberts  is also a nice book with beautiful illustrations. The pictures are so beautiful and wordings are just right for my preschooler. This book also provides an oppurtunity to talk about different pet animals.

After we read some of our pet books we made a cute cat craft inpsired by Makinglearningfun.com. Instead of using paper plates we used body parts cut from black and pink construction paper. And we added the mouth and whiskers with a white crayon. This craft was almost independently done by R. We also glued some of the cupcake stickers which we had bought from Dollar Store and put some glitter glue on it.

R also did a magnet page from Makinglearningfun.com with his Do A Dot markers. Oh ! dont look at the extra dots here and there. He just wanted to do more dots after finishing all on the cat.



Other books which we read were
1. Have you seen my cat? by Eric Carle
2. Cookie's week by Cindy Ward

This theme also provided me an oppurtunity to talk about small three letter words like "cat". R is good at rhyming words so we made many three letter words like "hat", "mat", "rat" with our magnetic letters on a easel.

Since we had done our apple theme so I just introduced him with the apple spelling too.

Apple Themed Activities

1. Playdough - I made some red, yellow and green color playdough for our apple theme by using this recipe and it was a huge hit. he loved making these apples so much. I have also added some cinnamon and nutmeg to the dough.

We also made patterns with different color apples. It was taken out many times afterwards.



2. Pattern- I cut out some different colored apples from the construction paper and made some grids for the apttern to work on.

3. Size sorting - I got this prinout of different sizes and color of apples which I printed from here.

Later we also sorted our apples which I got from Walmart in diffrent sizes of small, medium and large.

4. Dot to dot - This exercise is so good for fine motor skills and the best part R loves doing this. I got the print from here.


5. Counting -  Counting the apple seeds worksheet which I got from childcareland  

6. Whats different - This is a good visual discrimination exercise and I got the print from Prekinders and the inspiration came from My Montessori journey.

 7. Missing letters - A worksheet which I got from childcareland.com


8. Phonics - A worksheet for things that begin and doesn't begin with A from Kidssoup.com

Apple themed books

We read many apple themed books and R's favorite were


1. Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchkins

2. Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington

3. The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall

R loved the Ten Red Apples by pat Hutchkins so much that I made the Flannel board props for him and used the Little People farm sets's animals for the animal props. He enjoyed retelling the story again and again.


R also loved the book Apple Cider Making Days by Ann Purell. He was so curious to learn the diffrent machines and techniques use dto make the cider. He is always so curious to know how things work.


R also looked in detail to the pictures in the Apple Farmer Annie like the weighing machine, the cash register amd the empty baskets after the sell. Later he even noticed a weighing machine in our grocery store and was so curious to know how it works.

Apple themed songs

I made the props for the song "Five red apples" found on childcareland and we really had fun. R really enjoyed it and sang so many times himself and the prop added to the fun.

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Apple themed crafts

We made a paper plate apple by ripping red construction paper and pasting them on the paper plate and then later on we added a stem and a leaf.

We also did a lacing of apple cut from a brown paper bag, painted it red and then stuffed it with newspaper.


                                               

We also made an apple orchard inspired from the craft at  notimeforflashcards.com

Apple themed Sensory bin

We started off our apple theme week with a very simple sensory bin of rice with acorns and apples. I also added spoons, cups and small bowls for pouring and transfering rice. This was the time I discussed the various colors and sizes of apples, and how squirrel love to eat acorn and collect them for winter.