Matthew and Tilly, by Rebecca C. Jones

Matthew and Tilly are best friends, they do everything together. But sometimes even best friends fight. Find out how Matthew and Tilly get their friendship back on track.

Materials

Unsweetened lemonade mix, sugar, pitcher
Grocery or gift bags
Old receipts
Several boxes (liquor store sized)

Vocabulary

Sick of each other (to grow tired of being with someone all the time)

Before Reading the Story

Introduce the book by saying that the story today is about two friends. Attach a piece of paper to the wall and write, ‘Things I do with my friends/Things I do alone’. Talk to the children about how there are many things that we can do and like to do with our friends. Write their responses on the paper. Then ask them about things that they can do alone and write these on the other side.

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

Reading the Story

When you get to the page where the crayon gets broken point out the body and facial expressions, ask the children how they would feel if someone called them stinky and stupid (mad, sad, hurt). Do you think they can still be friends? Then continue reading.

Language Development/Speaking & Communicating; develops increasing abilities to understand and use language to communicate information, experiences, ideas, feelings, opinions, needs, questions; and for varied other purposes.

After Reading the Story

Begin a discussion about friends. If someone is your friend, do you have to play with them all the time? Can you have more then one friend? If you and a friend fight, what can you do? If you want to play with someone, what can you do? This discussion works well with puppets. As you discuss the questions and the problem solving, you can use the puppets to act it out.

Social & Emotional Development/Self-Control; develops growing understanding of how their actions affect others and begins to accept the consequence of their actions. AND Approaches to Learning/Reasoning & Problem Solving; grows in recognizing and solving problems through active exploration, including trial and error, and interactions and discussions with peers and adults.

Discovery

Matthew and Tilly made lemonade in the story. Make lemonade with the children. Before adding all the sugar, let the children taste the lemonade. What does sugar do to food?

Science/Scientific Skills & Methods; begins to participate in simple investigations to test observations, discuss and draw conclusions, and form generalizations.

Music and Movement

Ahead of time, write each child’s name on a piece of paper. Teach the children the song, There is a Friend at My School (sung to BINGO). Hold up a name, point out the letters as you sing, and let the children call the name out at the end of the verse

There is a friend in my class,

Can you guess his/her name-o?

K-e-r-r-y, K-e-r-r-y, K-e-r-r-y

And Kerry is her name-o.

Literacy/Alphabet Knowledge; knows that letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named. AND Literacy/Alphabet Knowledge; shows progress in associating the names of the letters with their shapes and sounds.

Art

Tell the children that you need their help. You have some boxes that you want to use to hold books, store materials in the closet, etc.. You need the children to work with a friend or friends to paint them for you. Put out the boxes, paint, brushes and/or rollers. When they are finished make sure to thank them for helping you.

Approaches to Learning/Engagement & Persistence; grows in abilities to persist in a nd complete a variety of tasks, activites, projects, and experiences. AND Social & Emotional Development/Cooperation; shows increasing abilities to use compromise and discussion in working, playing, and resolving conflict with peers.

Sand and Water

Add funnels, tubing, and tall bottles to the water today. The idea is to use water and equipment that will require an extra hand from a friend to hold or stabilize.

Social & Emotional Development/Cooperation; increases abilities to sustain interactions with peers by helping, sharing, and discussion.

Library and Writing

Talk to the children about something they like to do with a friend. Encourage them to draw a picture of themselves and a friend/s doing it. Write their dictation underneath.

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

Math and Manipulatives

Make a graph of the children’s favorite ice cream flavor. On a piece of paper write chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry across the bottom. Let the children mark their favorite flavor. Which flavor had the most votes? Count how many the strawberry vote had. Write the numbers on the columns so the children can see the results of the ice cream survey.

Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.

Dramatic Play

Bring out the cash register and help the children set up a simple store. You can use tape to put prices on your food and dress up clothes. Bring in some bags so the cashier can put the stuff in for the customers. Bring in old receipts.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops a growing awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them. AND Creative Arts/Dramatic Play; participates in a variety of dramatic play activities that become more extended or complex.

Outdoor play

Bring chalk outside and make a hopscotch board to play on. Make sure to allow the children to use the chalk to make their own sidewalk games also.

Social & Emotional Development/Cooperation; develops increasing abilities to give and take in interactions; to take turns in games and using materials; and to interact without being overly submissive or directive. AND Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.

Transitions

Have each child show you a facial expression as you call out the emotion they are to express. Tell a child to make a face that shows you they are _______. Use a variety of emotions. Some emotions may include; happy, angry, excited, surprised, mad, confused, sleepy, annoyed, nervous, scared, tired, sad, bored, disappointed. If the child say they do not know what it looks like, give them an example of what may cause that emotion. (Disappointed is like when you thought we were having spaghetti for lunch but instead we have something you don’t really like). Have the children watch each others faces so that they can see what the emotion looks like on another person.

Social & Emotional Development/Social Relationships; progresses in responding sympathetically to peers who are in need, upset, hurt, angry; and in expressing empathy or caring for other.

Dentists, by Cecila Minden

This book answers the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of being a Dentist. This is a good book to use for further study of Dentists.

Materials

Vinegar
Baking soda
Small bowls
Old toothbrushes
3-4 dirty pennies per child
Camera
Pictures of foods cut from magazines, off the Internet, or from a nutrition set

Vocabulary

Pediatric (a doctor whose patients are only children)
Cavity (a hole that occurs in your tooth from decay and not brushing)
Explorer (the pick like tool that dentists use)
Operatory (the special room that you see the dentist in that has his tools)

Before Reading the Story

Begin a discussion about the many different kinds of jobs that are in your area. Ask the children what they think they would like to be. If no one says they want tobe a dentist, ask them if they ever thought that a Dentist would be a good job to have. Ask the children if they know what a dentist does? Have they ever been to the Dentist? Let them talk for a moment about their experiences with the dentist.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Community; develops growing awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them.

Reading the Story

This book has a lot of information that might be too much for preschool-aged children. Use this to do a picture walk and touch upon highlights on each page. When the book talks about the education needed to be a dentist, make sure to tell the children that they have to continue to work hard at school and let them know that you are proud of them.

Literacy/Book Knowledge & Appreciation; shows growing interest and involvement in listening to and discussing a variety of fiction non-fiction and poetry.

After Reading the Story

Go back through the pages with the children asking who, what, where, when, and why questions and see which children are able to answer.

Literacy/Book Knowledge & Appreciation; demonstrates progress in a bilities 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. AND Physical Health & Development/Health Status & Practices; shows growing independence in hygiene, nutrition, and personal care when eating, dressing, washing hands, brushing teeth, and toileting.

Discovery

Pour a small amount of baking soda and vinegar into several bowls to make a paste like consistency. Have the children drop 3-4 dirty pennies into the baking soda and vinegar mixture. Show them how to use the toothbrush to scrub the penny. The combination of baking soda and vinegar will begin to clean the penny. Talk about how the mixture is like your toothpaste and the penny is like your teeth. Make the pennies shine.

Science/Scientific Skills & Methods; begins to participate in simple investigations to test observations, discuss and draw conclusions, and form generalizations. AND Physical Health & Development/Fine Motor Skills; grows in hand-eye coordination in building with blocks, putting together puzzles, reproducing shapes and patterns, stringing beads, and using scissors.

Music and Movement

Sing The Toothbrush Song to the tune of Mulberry Street.

We use our toothbrush to clean our teeth, clean our teeth, clean our teeth.

We use our toothbrush to clean our teeth after we eat.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; demonstrates increasing ability to attend to and understand conversations, stories, songs, and poems.

Have the children sit in a circle and put on some lively music. The children can pass a toothbrush around the circle and when the music stops, the child holding the toothbrush must name something that you use your teeth for. Expect children to repeat answers, which is o.k. because they are understanding that teeth are important. If the children cannot think of something that they use their teeth for you can pantomime eating, chewing, talking, smiling, and biting.

Social & Emotional Development/ Self-Control; develops growing understanding of how their actions affect others and begins to accept the consequences of their actions. AND Language Development/Speaking & Communicating; develops increasing abilities to understand and use language to communicate information, experiences, ideas, feelings, opinions, needs, questions; and for varied other purposes.

Art

Show the children how to form cubes with play dough by squeezing a ball on the sides and top. Encourage the children to make a row of play dough cubes and gently stick them together. Give the children Popsicle sticks or toothpicks and tell them to pretend that these are the “explorer” that the dentist uses. Poke between the teeth, on top of the teeth, underneath the teeth.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary. AND Mathematics/Geometry & Spatial Sense; builds an increasing understanding of directionality, order, and positions of objects, and words such as up, down, over, under, top, bottom, inside, outside, in front, behind.

Library and Writing

Remind the children that Dentists have to be good readers and writers. On index cards write the word Dentist and tooth. Encourage the children to copy the words onto a piece of paper.

Literacy/Early Writing; progresses from using scribbles, shapes, or pictures to represent ideas, to using letter-like symbols, to copying or writing familiar words such as their own name.

Make a book titled, “Whose Teeth?” Take two pictures of the child. One will be a picture of the child’s face as he/she is smiling. The other will be just of the child’s smile so that you can see minimal amount of the face. On the front page put the picture of the smile only and write, “Whose smile?” On the back of the page put the picture of the child’s smiling face. Ask the children to tell you something that makes them smile and write it under their picture. (I smile when my Mom makes me pizza! I smile when my Grandpa comes to my house).

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

Blocks

Challenge the children to use the blocks to make a letter T for tooth and a letter D for Dentist. Encourage them to try to make letters in their own names.

Literacy/Alphabet Knowledge; shows progress of associating the names of letters with their shapes and sound.

Dramatic Play

Give the children some of the materials that you use at large group time (dry erase board, flannel board, an attendance sheet, etc.) and let the children play school.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them. AND Creative Arts/ Dramatic PLay; participates in a variety of dramatic play activities that become more extended and complex.

Math and Manipulatives

On a piece of paper draw a tooth and give it a happy face. On another piece of paper draw a tooth and give it a sad face. Let the children use the pictures of food that you have brought and sort them by food that is good for your teeth on the happy tooth and food that is not good for your teeth on the sad tooth.

Mathematics/Patterns & Measurement; shows growth in matching, sorting, putting in a series, and regrouping objects according to one or two attributes such as shape or size. AND Physical Health & Development/Health Status & Practices; builds awareness and ability to follow basic health and safety rules such as fire safety, traffic and pedestrian safety, and responding appropriately to potentially harmful objects, substances, and activities.

Outdoors

Look for small rocks on the playground that look kind of like teeth. Collect them in a bucket. At the end of your outdoor time, help the children to count the number of ‘teeth’ that you have collected.

Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to use one-to-one correspondence in counting objects and matching groups of objects.

Transitions

As children leave to go to the next center, ask them if they think they might like to be a dentist, make a graph of yes and no.

Literacy/Early Writing; develops understanding that writing is a way of communicating for a variety of purposes. AND Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to use language to compare numbers of objects with terms such as more, less, greater than, fewer, equal to.

As the children go to brush their teeth today say the following poem from the Colgate web site.

(Kerry’s)/_______ off the brush his/her teeth

The front, the sides, the back

He’ll/she’ll clean away and move away

The yucky, yucky plaque.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; demonstrates increasing ability to attend to and understand conversations, stories, songs, and poems.

Dear Parent-

Today we learned about what it takes to become a Dentist. Ask your child if they think they would like to become a Dentist. If they say yes, ask them why. If the say no, ask them if they know what they would like to become.

Millions of Cats, Wanda Gag

What happens when only the prettiest cat can stay? And how is it decided which cat is the prettiest?

Materials

Cat head
Pictures of cats from magazines or calendar
Turkey baster (or sponge if you do not have a turkey baster)
Stuffed cat and box big enough to go inside of.

Vocabulary

Lonely (feeling sad because needing a friend)
Fuzzy (to have fluffy hair/fur all over the body)
Quarrel (to fight)
Homely (not pretty)
Kitten (a baby cat)
Whiskers (cat whiskers help them to see in the dark by feeling what is beside them)

Before Reading the Story

Bring in a picture or pictures of cats for the children to look at. Talk with the children about cats, who has a cat at home? How many feet does a cat have? Do they know what whiskers are? Talk to them about how to care for a cat and how to be safe with a cat. Talk about how cats do not like to be handled roughly and may bite if you try to hold them or restrain them. Most cats do not like to be pet on their lower back and abdomen. Cats will bite or scratch if they are scared.

Reading the Story

Emphasize the quantity of cats. A million fills the whole page; a million would not even fit in our classroom!

Mathematics/Number & Operations; demonstrated increasing interest and awareness of numbers and counting as a means for solving problems and determining quantity.

After Reading the Story

Bring in pictures of real cats cut from magazines or calendars. Put them up on the wall and let the children show which cat they like best. Give each child a sticky note with their name on it to put beside their favorite cat picture. Literacy/Print Awareness; develops growing understanding of different functions to forms of print such as signs, letters, newspapers, lists, messages, and menus. Then count with the children how many children liked each cat. Take another sticky note and write the number on it and put beside the cat. (Look, 4 children liked this cat best).

Mathematics/Numbers & Operations; begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.

Discovery

Put pictures or a non-fiction book of cats in the center today for the children to be able to examine. As you look at the pictures with the children, use words to describe cats; calico, striped, furry, whiskers, paws, etc).

Language Development/Listening and Understanding; understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.

Music and Movement

Sing or chant Naughty Pussy Cat

Naughty Pussy Cat (Hold up pointer and move back & forth)

You are very bad. (Continue to shake pointer finger)

You have butter on your whiskers

(Pretend to pull on your whiskers)

Naughty Pussy Cat-SCAT! (When you get to SCAT! pretend to shoo cat away)

Creative Arts/Music; participates with increasing interest and enjoyment in a variety of music activities, including listening, singing, finger plays, games, and performances.

Blocks

Give the children a basket of counters (bears, unifix cubes, insects). As they build encourage them to add the counters to their construction. You can then talk about millions, many, or lots.

Mathematics/Numbers & Operations; begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.

Art

Give each child a cathead to cut out and paint with watercolors. These can be attached to a sentence strip to make a cat hat. On the cat hat, ask the child what they would name their cat and write it out for them. Then use your finger to point out the name and/or the letters.

Literacy/Print Awareness & Concepts; shows progress in recognizing the association between spoken and written words by following print as it is read aloud.

Have the children draw a house on a piece of paper. Then let them use a stamp pad and their finger to put “cats” in the house. Ask them to put four cats in their house, then two more. Ask them to put hundreds of cats and millions of cats in their house.

Physical Health & Development/Fine Motor Skills; progresses in abilities’ to use writing, drawing, and art tools, including pencils, markers, chalk, paint brushes, and various types of technology. AND Mathematics/Numbers & Operations; develops increasing ability to count in sequence to 10 and beyond.

Library and Writing

Ask the children to make a self-portrait and then tell you something that they like about themselves. (My grandpa says he likes my freckles, I got pretty hair, I am strong and can beat up my big brother).

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

Sand and Water

The cats drank up all the water in the story. Show the children how to use a turkey baster to suck up the water in your water table. They can then fill up a bowl or transfer the water from one container to another. If you do not have a turkey baster you can use a clean sponge.

Physical Health & Development/Fine Motor Skills; develops growing strength, dexterity, and control needed to use tools such as scissors, paper punch, stapler, and hammer.

Dramatic Play

Make several cat head hats by stapling the heads onto a sentence strip. The children can use these to act out the story in the dramatic center. Invite as many children into the center today who want to join in the play. Talk about how millions of cats would be very crowded! Bring in cat props; a can of cat food, a brush, a ball, a stuffed cat, etc.

Literacy/Book Knowledge and 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.

Math and Manipulatives

Put out a bowl of small counting objects (bears, crayons, pom poms). Ask the children to grab a handful. Before they put it down, ask them if they can guess how many they have picked up. Then have them put the items down and count them. Did they guess more, less, or correctly?

Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to make use of one-to-one correspondence in counting objects and matching groups of objects.

Outdoor Play

Play Cat and Mice. The teacher is the cat/it and chases the mice/children. The children can run to their home (a safe area/tree) but if the cat catches them they are eaten and must sit out for several minutes.

Social & Emotional Development/Self Control; demonstrates increasing capacity to follow rules and routines.

Transitions

Bring in a stuffed cat and a box. (If you do not have a stuffed cat, use any animal). Tell the children you are going to play a game called Where’s the cat? As the children go to the next activity have them take turns following a placement direction. (Kerry can you put the cat on the box, Roger put the cat in front of the box, Tammie put the cat in the box). Use; under, over, in, out, in front of, behind, next to, over.

Mathematics/Geometry & Spatial Sense; builds an increasing understanding of directionality, order, and positions of objects, and uses words such as up, down, over, under, top, bottom, inside, outside, in front, and behind.

Dear Parent- Today we read a story about cats. If you have a pet at your home, let your child help care for it (feed, walk, brush). Tell the story of how you chose your pet to become a member of your family.

Resources

Accompanying Book; Everything Cats:What kids Really Want to Know About Cats, Marty Crisp

JANBRETT.COM has several nice cat coloring pages you could use instead of this cat.