5 Little Bunnies Fingerplay

During circle time the kids and I love participating in some simple rhymes and fingerplays together, and I change them out so that they pertain to our theme or season.  One we are doing right now is 5 Little Bunnies.  You could use your 5 fingers, but I like to use manipulative for the kids to be involved. 

 I made 5 Flannel Knot Bunnies (tutorial HERE) and we keep them tied up in a nice green scarf with "flowers" growing in it--we call it the meadow.  The kids love helping me untie the little bundle. 

Then I read the fingerplay and they help the bunnies hop away.  Through this rhyme they are getting phonemic awareness skills (rhyming words, word endings) and math skills (subtraction). 

I have watercolor cards (again recycled from Q's paintings from school) that I draw on with crayons.  I do simple pictures so the kids will know which rhyme goes with that particular card.  

 On the back I write the words.  This one is not my neatest example of work ever, but pretend you don't notice that, okay?  Thanks. 

5 Little bunnies, brown is what they wore (or whatever color flannel you use!)
1 Hopped away and then there were 4.
4 hopping bunnies, sweet as they could be.
1 hopped away and then there were 3.
3 hopping bunnies with so much to do.
1 hopped to the cabbage patch and then there were 2.
2 hopping bunnies playing in the sun.  
1 hopped into a hole and then there was 1.
I hopping bunny, as cute as a penny.
He hopped under the garden gate, and then there weren't any. 

What Rabbits Do

We are studying rabbits right now.  I made up a game for us to play during our circle time--needed something that could include an 18 month and 4 year old.  I cut some of Q's watercolors (I save them for projects) into rabbit shapes using a cookie cutter.  Then I wrote different things rabbits do on them.  When we play the game, we put on our rabbit ears (headbands with ears that we have).  We take turns drawing a rabbit, then we do what the rabbit card says.  We have fun acting out the different actions.  For example, for "Eat" we "hop" all around the living room to different parts of the garden and pretend to eat beans, carrots, cabbage, parsley, etc.  The kids' favorite is "dig."  Both kids love this game and get very into playing it!  They learn some great vocabulary words, exercise their large and small muscles and use some pretend play!

Beach Theme

We've started back into our school rhythm....which means we eat breakfast (in no hurry), clean up (Q is in charge of spraying/wiping table and chairs and vacuuming up the dust piles after I sweep), and then the "baby lesson."  That involves some songs and music, a read-aloud in the reading tent and then some type of activity if time allows and he is still interested.

We will do a beach trip for Quinn's birthday, so I decided we'll focus on beachy-ness for a few weeks leading up to that.  Yesterday I scoured my bookshelves for beachy books and put them out in the playroom.  I put a couple non-fiction "referency-type" books on our expanding shelf we keep on our kitchen table for our reference library.  Next week we'll do a library trip to check out a few more titles, but I want to start slow and take our time soaking up our learning! 

Today we read a board book about beach animals.  Then we fingerpainted an ocean.  We used two colors of blue paint.  Fingerpaint is a great art medium because it's a hit with any age!  Even older kiddos love it, and it's pretty low maintnance to set up/clean up--just wipe up paint! 

Sidenote, little man painted for all of 2 minutes before signing "all done" and trying to crawl away.  This could be frustrating, but I am remembering that this early "art training" will pay off down the road, as evidenced by Quinn at 3 years of age.  So I will hang in there with the super-fast art experiences, I'll encourage him to try some new things (today I showed him how to "pat-pat" on the paper with his painty hand) to get him to stay with the activity just a little longer, and I'll remember that early art experiences are about the process and not the product.  He learned quite a bit, even in 2 short minutes, about the process of painting and concepts of paint and color.  And definitely how it tastes! 

After little man got a sinkbath and went down for morning nap, Q and I added sea creatures to her paper.  She chose animals, asked me to draw them, and then she cut them out (she only wanted to draw their eyes today) and we glued them onto her ocean.  Then we labeled them (talking about the sounds in each word briefly) and she wrote the word Ocean by watching me write it.  We put our titles next to our finished artwork on our little clothesline in the window of the breakfast nook for all to see!  More ocean exploration planned tomorrow. 

Baby Spring Literacy Basket

This simple basket has Beck's items for spring. Song and fingerplay cards (details here) and corresponding manipulatives--ducks, rabbit and lamb. These were just rounded up from our toy collection. We can sing the song/recite the finger play and hold/manipulate the item!

Syllable Clapping Song

(tune: Fere Jacques)

We like to use this song during circle time. We double up by using the names from our "Who's at school" poster. I may need to make some more sentence strips with family member/friend's names soon to add a bit of a challenge.

Q still does not have the hang of clapping syllables, so this is a great song to practice!

Syllable awareness is an important early literacy skill because syllable segmentation is vital for reading (decoding) and writing (spelling).

I wrote the words and Q colored some pictures of clapping hands to give her a little ownership of the poster. ;)

Who is at school today? Poster

(definitely click to view larger size!)

To go with our "school" unit, we made a poster to show who is at Quinn's school. We started by taking a picture of each of her babies (I limited it to her 5 favorite and also her). Then I wrote out each one's name on a sentence strip.
Q helped with this by telling me each baby's first letter, and she wrote her own first letter. Then I had her match the names to the printed photos and glue the photos on the strips.

I laminated the sentence strip names. We made a poster that says, "Who is at school today?" and I printed a picture of a little bus that Q colored (not that nicely since she was in a bit of a tooty mood at the time...).

We then put velcro on the sign and on the name backs.

During circle time, we go down the row and put up names of who is at school.

Q practices:
-talking about/recognizing the first letter of names
-following sequence--we always go down the row in the order the babies are seated and do a lot of talking about first, second, third, etc.
-matching velcro pieces (which is actually a lot harder for kiddos than you'd think. My first graders often still struggled with it!)
-completing the chart in order--not skipping any spots when adding names
-learning to work with a simple graph--believe it or not, Q is learning some very basic graphing skills--Graphs have titles, graphs record information, when adding information to a graph you don't skip any spots, etc.
-counting--we count how many friends are on the chart and write the number on the chalkboard.
-letter writing--I've started inviting Q to write each baby's first letter--I model or use hand-over-hand assistance to help her.

We sing:
Honey's at school today,
Honey's at school today,
Hip-hip-hip hurray,
Honey's at school today!
(tune= Farmer in the Dell)

This activity promotes so many great skills--math (counting and graphing) and prereading (recognizing letters, point at the title of the graph), most importantly!

Two new movement songs

Two songs we added to our movement ribbon/song basket today:

SHAKE IT

Shake it, shake it, shake it

Shake it like it's hot!

Shake it, shake it, shake it

Give it all you've got!

(give different directions for shaking it)

-switch hands

-behind your back

-big circles

-tiny circles

LET'S GO FLY A KITE

Let's go fly a kite

UP to the highest height.

Let's go fly a kite

and send it soaring!

UP to the atmosphere

UP where the air is clear

Oh let's go fly a kite!

For this song, right before the word "up" we pause and lower the ribbon to the floor, then as we sing "up" we pop up and raise the ribbon high. During the rest of the song we wave the ribbon high in the air.

Toddlers and preschoolers enjoy both of these songs--preschoolers always love any song sang extra fast, so if I want to add a little bit of difficulty for my older ones, we just repeat the song, going faster and faster!

For infants, help them hold the ribbon stick and do the movements. Or you can do the movements and let them watch you!

From these songs children acquire important positional words (up, around, high, etc.). They use their large muscles, exercise their wrists, follow directions, move to the rhythm, and practice crossing the midline. All of these movement skills are actually so important for acquiring reading and math skills later on! And the songs are oh-so-fun!!

Rainbow Ribbons

To go along with our current "Rainbow" unit, I made a new movement wand--I went through my ribbon box and found ribbon/yarn in all the colors of the rainbow. I threaded them through a large wooden bead, and then jammed the bead onto a pair of chopsticks that haven't been broken apart well. I shoved the bead down as far as I could get it to go, and voila! We will have lots of fun waving our ribbons as we do movement activities and dancing!

Oh yeah, I also took a lighter and gently burnt the ends of the ribbon by running the ribbon NEAR the flame so they would melt a little bit and not unravel.

Infants would love playing with this colorful wand! Older infants could wave and shake it themselves as they work on grasping skills and hand-to-hand transfer of objects. For younger ones, you could wave it for them as you sang songs to them. You could also take it outside, hold it up and watch the wind move the ribbons.
The bead has never come off for us, but you could squeeze a little superglue, elmers glue or hot glue into the bead top before you slid it down the chopsticks if you want it to be extra secure.

If you don't have chopsticks you could buy a dowel at a hardware store or Hobby Lobby that fit inside your bead.......

This wand can be used to encourage movement, especially movement across the body (crossing the midline--for more info click here) which is a necessary skill to master before children can successfully read and write. The wands can also encourage rhythm awareness, body coordination, and imaginary play. The movements used to move the wand also develop the wrist muscles necessary for writing.

We'll be jamming out to this next week...

I am thinking we'll be having lots of fun with this ole classic and our tambourines next week in circle time.

Calendar

Keeping a calendar is a great way to follow the rhythm of days and months and also to practice simple observation and recording skills. Here's the type of calendar I find appropriate for 2 year olds.

We first talk about the month. I have a cute set of month labels, and of course January is the only one that's been misplaced (it was gifted from a friend and she had lost it), but typically the name of the month is written with beautiful illustrations of different objects and activities that go with the month. We talk about the first letter of the month and also the pictures on the sign and, of course, who we know that has a birthday that month. We also sing the "Months" song. I believe the version I use is from Dr. Jean.

Next we talk about the days of the week. We sing the days of the week song and hold up seven fingers, lowering them as we say the days. Then I lay out 3 days and ask Q to find whatever day it is currently. I prompt her by saying, "Today is Thursday. Thursday starts like Trent." She then clips Thursday up on the front of the yellow pocket, and puts the remaining days inside the pocket.

At this point we don't focus on the days of the month--her attention span is limited and she isn't ready for the numbers and counting portion yet. One thing I love about doing calendar this way is that if we don't get to calendar every day, it doesn't matter. When you put up the numbers for the days of the month, if you miss a day, it doesn't work as well. We try to do calendar every day, but sometimes we do our singing and talking about the month, days, weather in the car or on a walk and don't get around to actually putting up the cards.

We sing "What's the Weather" and observe the weather out the window. Q puts up a card that shows today's weather--sunny, cloudy, rainy or snowy (ha!). She puts the others back into the pocket.

We also practice counting during Calendar time. First we count to 10 in a BIG HUGE voice and pump our muscles. Then we count to 10 in a TEENY TINY voice and touch our pinkies together. Q loves this! Then we count how many "friends" are present for Calendar that day (of course the majority are stuffed animals and dolls, and sometimes even our dog and cat). We put up a number card to show how many friends are here.

Calendar lasts about 5 minutes in all and is a part of our Morning Circle Time.

Here's a picture from a December Circle Time (excuse the jammies--we were on vacation!) so you can see my prettier month signs and also our "friends" who come to Circle Time. We are singing the Days of the Week song.
Sidenote: I always request that Q sets out a chair, pillow or rug for each "friend" attending circle time. This requires her to practice one-to-one correspondance by putting one animal/baby in each chair/rug/pillow. It also limits the number of participants to a reasonable number--when the spots are gone, no more friends can come till tomorrow. Otherwise she'd love to bring every stuffed animal and doll she owns. Yikes!