Tell Me a Tattoo Story, by A. McGhee

A father shares with his son the back-story on the tattoos that he wears. This is s sweet book about a conversation between a father and child.

Materials

Sticky backed blank name tags
2-inch paintbrushes and several buckets
Manila folders or shirt type cardboard
Ask parent to send in a picture of the child’s family. Make sure you tell the parent that you will put it in a project protector and that you will give it back within the month.
Pictures of mother and baby animals

Vocabulary

Be Kind (nice and caring towards others)
Evaporate (fades, disappears, vanishes).

Before Reading the Story

Ask the children if they know anyone who has a tattoo? Let them share any information they might have in regards to tattoos. (My Mommy has a tattoo on her back, it’s a feather. My uncle has a tattoo right here. My grandpa has a ugly lady on his arm. He says it’s grandma). After the children have been able to share what they know about tattoos, introduce the book.

Approaches to Learning/Initiative & Curiosity; grows in eagerness to learn about and discuss a growing range of topics, ideas, and tasks.

Reading the Story

On the “Be Kind” page, make sure the children understand what being kind means. What is the boy doing in the picture that is kind? When the child is in the bathtub and asks if he has ever met the pretty girl, ask him if they can guess who that pretty girl was? On the page where there is the heart with numbers on it, ask the children if they can guess who’s birthday those numbers stand for?

Literacy/Book Knowledge & Appreciation; demonstrates progress in abilities to retell and dictate stories from books and experiences; to act out stories in dramatic play; and to predict what will happen next in a story.

After Reading the Story

Ask the children why the boy and Father thought the heart with the numbers was the best tattoo? (It’s the boys’ birthdate). Ask the children if they know when their birthday is? Help them to understand the season or the holiday that it might be near. (Roger your birthday is December 23, that’s just right before Christmas. Angel, your birthday is in June, that’s when the weather is really getting nice outside).

Social & Emotional Development/Self-Concept; begins to develop and express awareness of self in terms of specific abilities, characteristics, and preferences.

Discovery

Pictures of Mother and Baby animals to sort and make pairs.

Mathematics/Patterns & Measurement; shows increasing abilities to match, sort, put in a series, and regroup objects according to one or two attributes such as size or shape.

Music and Movement

Sing People In a Family to the tune of Frere Jacques . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC6rvbxdywg

People in a family, People in a family

Eat together, eat together.

People in a family, eat together

All day long, all day long.

(Ask the children what other things they do with their family and make a verse for it).

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; progresses in understanding similarities and respecting differences among people such as genders, race, special needs, culture, language, and family structures.

Blocks

Add Family People to the blocks today. Watch to see if the children develop an family themes or conversation in the center today.

Approaches to Learning/Initiative & Curiosity; grows in eagerness to learn about and discuss a growing range of topics, ideas, and tasks.

Art

Give each child a half of a manila folder. Use a glue-stick to stick the items from your nature walk to the manila folder. Once everything is tacked down, take a piece of aluminum foil and drape over the manila folder covering all the entire folder and objects. Show the children how to rub the foil gently with their finger to reveal the objects underneath. Tacking cardboard shapes to the manila folder could also do this. https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2016/08/in-art-room-texture-relief-with-second.html

Approaches to Learning/Engagement & Persistence; shows growing capacity to maintain concentration over time on a task, question, set of directions or interactions despite distractions and interruptions.

Sand and Water

Library and Writing

Tell the children that today they are going to make their own tattoo by drawing or writing on a blank name tag. When they are finished let them peel the paper off the back and put their tattoo on their body.

Literacy/Early Writing; experiments with a growing variety of writing tools and materials, such as pencils, markers, and computer.

In the story, the father told stories about each of his tattoos. Ask the children to draw a picture about their family and then tell you the story which you can dictate onto another piece of paper.

Literacy/Early Writing; begins to represent stories and experiences through pictures, dictation, and in play.

Dramatic Play

Hang the pictures of the children and their families in the dramatic center. The children can use these to talk about family structures, similarities, and differences.

If you have a dollhouse, set it up today.

Creative Arts/Dramatic Play; participates in a variety of dramatic play activities that become more extended and complex.

Math and Manipulatives

Use you teddy bear counters or other animal counters if you have them. Put out two groups of teddy bears and ask the child which family is larger? Put out a family with 5 members and ask the child if they can make a family with less members. Play along with the child/ren making sets that are larger than, equal to, has fewer or more.

Mathematics/Number & Operations;begins to use language to compare numbers of objects with terms such as more, less, greater than, fewer, and equal to.

Outdoor Play

If it’s a nice day, fill buckets with water and let the children use the 2-inch paint brushes to water paint the sidewalk, the building, the tree. Help them to notice that the water evaporates as it sits out in the sun. (Evaporation is when the sun heats up water, turning it into a water vapor (gas, which then evaporates into the air to become part of the rain cycle).

Science/Scientific Knowledge; develops growing awareness of ideas and language related to attributes of time and temperature.

Go for a nature walk and collect any small-thin interesting nature objects (sticks, leaves) for today’s art.

Transitions

Ask the children to name the people in their family before they go off to the next activity.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Family & Communities; develops ability to identify personal characteristics, including gender and family composition.