My Apron, by Eric Carle

This is a story of a boy who helps his uncle to do his job/work. It is hard work but the boy is proud. Follow him through the day as he proudly helps his uncle and receives his own apron.

Materials

Bag of flour or plaster of paris
Shoe boxes or cereal boxes, one per child

Vocabulary

Apron; (What you wear over your clothes to protect them and keep them clean while you work).
Plasterer (The person who mixes the stuff that is used to make a house)
Chimney (The part of the house that rises out of the roof where the smoke and heat come out)

Before reading the Story

Ask the children if they know what kinds of work their parents do for a living? Write down their responses. Explain that parents do many different kinds of jobs. Talk about your job as a teacher and other jobs within your center. Ask the children if they know why adults need to get jobs (to make money, so we can buy the food, cause they have to work).

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

Reading the Story

As you read make a point of noting the times of day “In the morning my Uncle Adam and I go to work”-ask the children where they go in the morning? All morning while the boy carries the plaster ask the children what kinds of things they like to do at school in the morning-play, go outside, build with blocks. Talk about lunch time, what you are going to have that day. When the boy talks about all afternoon, ask the children what they do in the afternoon-take a nap, read books, play, etc. Late in the afternoon-explain that this is when the children go home from school.

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

After Reading the Story

Ask the children if they know any jobs that they might like to do when they get grown up? You can then try to find pictures of these on the internet and print them out and write the child’s name underneath. Do any jobs have more than one person who chooses a job type? How many children chose to be firepersons?

Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to use language to compare numbers of objects with terms such as more, less, greater than, fewer, equal. AND Social & Emotional Development/Self-Concept; begins to develop and express awareness of self in terms of specific abilities, characteristics, or preferences.

Discovery

Ask parents to supply a tool from their trade that the children may display and examine in the classroom. Or bring in a variety of tools from different job types (menu, hammer, stapler, stethoscope, cash register, pencil, etc.). Ask the children if they can name the tools and who might use them.

Language Development/Speaking & Communicating; uses an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary. AND Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops growing awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them.

Music and Movement

Put on some music and have the children pretend that they are going up stairs and down stairs. Do this marching like activity for a whole song. Stop and ask the children how their legs feel. Imagine doing this all day long as a plasterer, now that’s hard work!

Creative Arts/Movement; shows growth in moving in time to different patterns of beat and rhythms.

Blocks

Challenge the children to build a home. Can they add window and a door? Can they make stairs? How about a chimney? Let the children stage any community helpers that you might have with their house.

Approaches to Learning/Engagement & Persistence; demonstrates increasing ability to set goals and develop and follow through on plans.

Art

Cut out white apron shapes that the children can decorate.

Creative Arts/Art; gains ability in using different art media and materials in a variety of ways for creative expression and representation.

Sand and Water

Put plaster of paris or flour and water into the table. Let the children mix it and then use popsicle sticks to spread it across shoe boxes or cereal boxes. They are plasterers.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops growing awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them. AND Physical Health & Development/Fine Motor Skills; progresses in abilities to use writing, drawing, and art tools, including pencils, markers, paint brushes, and various types of technology.

Library and Writing

Bring in a variety of books or pictures that depict people at work. Bring in unusual careers also like a ballerina or race car driver. Encourage the children to talk about all the kinds of jobs and help them name the trade and any tools that they know are associated with it.

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

Dramatic Play

Look around and find several different kinds of aprons that you can bring into the center and let the children try wearing. You could also include a tool belt and a paint smock.

Creative Arts/Dramatic Play; shows growing creativity and imagination in using materials and in assuming different roles in dramatic play situations.

Math and Manipulatives

Bring in a yard stick or tape measure and measure how many inches tall the children are. Mark on the wall so the children can see. Put out rulers for the children to practice measuring the table, the chair, or a friend.

Mathematics/Patterns & Measurement; shows progress in using standard and non-standard measures for length and area of objects.

Outdoor Play

Get out the bicycles and pretend that it is time for everyone to go to work. One child can work the gas station pump, another could collect the toll tickets, and another could pretend to serve food through a fast food window.

Creative Arts/Dramatic Play; shows growing creativity and imagination in using materials and in assuming different roles in dramatic play situations. AND Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops growing awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them.

Transitions

Use the jobs cards. Have each child pick a card and tell you one or two things about the picture. Do you know what that job is called? Can you name any special tools that they use?

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

Ask parents to write a brief description of what they do for work and illustrate it. Make it into a classroom book.

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

Mousekin’s Golden House, by Edna Miller

A little mouse is searching for a house to sleep in through the winter. What will he find, will he be safe? This is a beautifully illustrated story.

Materials

1 origami mouse per child and several extra for the block center. Directions for origami mice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjPo3P-Wn_Y
Mouse mask

Vocabulary

Forest (woods)
Swooped (to fly quickly down)
Sulking (to pout angrily)
Hibernate (pass the winter sleeping “Certain animals hibernate because food supplies become scarce during the winter months. By going into a long deep sleep, they bypass this period completely, waking up when food becomes more plentiful”.

Before Reading the Story

Ask the children if they know what a jack-o-lantern is? Ask them if they made a jack-o-lantern last Halloween? What shape eyes, nose, and mouth did you make? Let the children share any jack-o-lantern stories that they may have.

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

Reading the Story

When you get to the page where Mousekin saw something in the path left over from Halloween, ask the children if they can guess what it might have been?

After Reading the Story

Go back through the story and talk about the pictures. Ask the children if they can tell what season different pages represent. Explain that some animals hibernate all winter. Talk about the turtle and how he goes inside his shell when he is afraid. Show the children the forest and talk about other animals who might live in the forest.

Science/Scientific Knowledge; expands knowledge of and abilities to observe, describe, and discuss the natural world, materials, living things, and natural processes.

Discovery

Put a jack-o-lantern inside of the classroom where the children can observe it. You can also carve an apple into a head shape and leave out to observe. After several days the apple head will start to look like a shrunken head. As the fruits start to wrinkle, call attention and let the children begin to share daily observations. Have them draw their observations of the pumpkin weekly. Does it still look the same?

Science/Scientific Skills & Methods; develops growing abilities to collect, describe, and record information through a variety of means, including discussion, drawings, maps, and charts.

Bring in a box of soft and hard things for the children to sort. Try to bring in some natural objects like moss, cotton fluff, sticks, and rocks as well as man made items.

Science/Scientific SKills & Methods; begins to use senses and a variety of tools t and simple measuring devices to gather information, investigate materials, and observe processes and relationships.

Music and Movement

Explain to the children that when a mouse or other small creature sees an owl or other enemy in the wild, they often freeze. Put on music with different beats. Encourage the children to move to the beat and t when the music stops they must freeze in whatever position they are in.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; shows progress in understanding and following simple and multiple-step directions. AND Movement/ expresses through movement and dancing what is felt and heard to various musical tempos and styles.

Sing, Can You Make a Happy Face Jack-o-lantern. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8b4f5fhYuw&vl=en

Teach the children the Parts of a Pumpkin that is shared by primarythemepark.com. (See resources)

Science/Scientific Knowledge; expands knowledge of and abilities to observe, describe, and discuss the natural world, materials, living things, and natural processes.

Blocks

Give the children toy mice or make several origami mice that they can use to build a mouse house for.

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

Art

Put large pumpkin shapes on the easel. The children can paint them fanciful or add faces.

Creative Arts/Art; gains ability in using different art media and materials in a variety of ways for creative expression and representation.

Give each child a pumpkin shape. Have them collage cotton and leaves onto the pumpkin. Glue their origami mouse onto the pumpkin. On the top of the pumpkin write “This pumpkin is my home”.

Creative Arts/Art; gains ability in using different art media and materials in a variety of ways for creative expression and representation.

Library and Writing

Talk to the children about different kinds of homes that animals and people live in. Ask then children to draw a picture of where they would like to live and then write their description at the bottom of the page. (I would want to be a mermaid and live with Ariel. I want to live in my house with my family. I would live in a nest like a bird).

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

Sand and Water

Use Water Jelly Crystals in your table today. As they start to grow, talk to your children about the changes that they see happening.

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

Dramatic Play

Make several mouse masks for the children to use in the center. They can pretend that they are mice and make a soft, warm house to sleep in. Provide extra pillows, blankets, or soft items that you might have.

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.

Math and Manipulatives

Use sequencing cards for the children to put in first, than, and last order.

Ask the children to help name animals that would be small enough to live inside a jack-o-lantern. Write their responses on a pumpkin shape.

Mathematics/Geometry & Spatial Sense; begins to determine whether or not two shapes are the same size and shape.

Outdoor Play

When the owl swooped down, Mousekin ran into the jack-o-lantern house. Play a tag game where the children can pretend to be mice and the teacher is the owl. The teacher chases the children who then run trying not to get caught. There can be a safe area (a play house, a tree) that can be the mouse house.

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. AND Physical Health & Development/Health Status & Practices; participates actively in games, outdoor play, and other forms of physical exercise that enhance physical fitness.

Transitions

Ask the children to help name other animals that might live in a forest, a zoo, a pond, or a pet store. Extend this by bringing in pictures of real animals from magazines and asking the children to name the animal and where it might live. Group the animals by habitat.

Science/Science Knowledge; expands knowledge of and abilities to observe, describe, and discuss the natural world, materials, living things, and natural processes.

Mouse starts with the letter /M/. Can the children think of other words that begin with the letter /M/?

Literacy/Phonological Awareness; shows growing awareness of beginning and ending sounds of words.

Mouse-house are rhyming words. What other rhyming sets can the children name?

Literacy/Phonological Awareness; progresses in recognizing matching sounds and rhymes in familiar words, games, songs, stories, and poems.

Resources

Pumpkin sequence cards

Why Worms? by Gillian Davies and Robin Kramer

This is an easy reader book that really does not tell much about worms but it could be a good book to introduce a worm study unit. Andrew likes to draw worms, lots of worms.

Materials

A dozen worms and a plastic shoe box
Several colors of yarn cut into 10 inch lengths, one per child
Large pieces of paper
5 Styrofoam coffee cups

Vocabulary

Wrigley (moving all around)Curling (to make lines that are not straight but like a rainbow or a C)
Squished-up (all bunched up into a little ball)

Before Reading the Story

Show the children the cover of the book and read the title, Why Worms? Ask the children if they know what worms are good for. If not, talk to them about how fishermen use worms to catch fish and gardeners like worms because they make the soil soft and healthy for flowers and plants to grow. Ask them if they can think of animals that might eat worms? Tell them that worms are very important to the earth and that worms are good for the earth.

Reading the Story

When you get to the page where the only place left to draw is the wall, stop and ask the children what they think will happen? When you get to the page where Mom says they have to go shopping, ask the children if they can guess what Mom is going to buy?

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 predict what will happen next in a story.

After Reading the Story

Give each child a piece of yarn about 10 inches long. Ask them to make a curved worm, a squished-up worm, a long worm, etc. Can you make a letter /c/ with your worm? Try a letter /s/. Continue until the children lose interest. You can have them make different kinds of lines, letters, and shapes.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary AND Literacy/Alphabet Knowledge; shows progress in associating the names of letters with their shapes and sounds.

Discovery

Bring in real worms for the children to observe. Put them in a plastic shoe box with a little bit of torn newspaper on the bottom, worms need moisture. If the children are going to touch the worms have them dampen their hands first. At the end of the day set the worms free. Add a magnifying glass. On a piece of paper write; Today we looked at worms. Underneath it write the children’s observations (they tickle, they push and pull to move, they snuggle together are they scared? They are sticky, they are shiny, they stretch out long! They make letters like /e/ with their body, worm and squirm are rhyming words). Give the children pieces of paper and ask them to draw their worms as they observe them in different positions.

Science/Scientific Skills & Methods; develops growing abilities to collect, describe, and record information through a variety of means, including discussion, drawings, maps, and charts.

Music and Movement

Pretend to be worms. Have the children spread out and lay down on a carpet. Can they wriggle their bodies like a worm? Try to curl-up and squish up. See if you can stretch and scrunch to move forward, no arms allowed.

Physical Health & Development/Health Status & Practices; progresses in physical growth, strength, stamina, and flexibility.

Play the Hap Palmer song Walter the Waltzing Worm. Cut out 10 inch piece of yarn for the children to dance along with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6cp8XOyCY

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary AND shows progress in understanding and following simple and multiple-step directions.

Blocks

Show the children how to lay a block on top of a piece of large paper and trace around it. Have them trace around several different blocks. Later lay all the pieces of paper on the floor and the children can match the correct blocks to their shapes.

Literacy/Early Writing; experiments with a growing variety of writing tools and materials, such as pencils, crayons, and computers. AND Mathematics/Geometry & Spatial Sense; begins to be able to determine whether or not two shapes are the same size and shape.

Art

Cut several colors of yarn into six inch pieces. Put out a bowl of watered down glue and brushes. Give the children a piece of brown paper and have them brush the glue onto the paper. They can then use the yarn worms to make a picture. Encourage them to try to make letters and shapes with their worms.

Mathematics/Geometry & Spatial Sense; progresses in ability to put together and take apart shapes.

Library and Writing

Make journals for the children and present them. Encourage the children to draw something that they would like to learn more about in school.

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

Sand and Water

Put dirt or sand into the table. Add rubber fishing worms and several spoons. The children can dig for worms. Make sure there are no hooks in the worms! Count how many worms you found.

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

Dramatic Play

Tie a piece of yarn onto a small stick, a pencil will work. On the other end, tie a magnet. Cut out fish shapes and put letters, numbers, shapes or colors on them. Let the children go fishing. Add a bucket to put the fish in.

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. AND Approaches to Learning/Engagement & Persistence; grows in abilities to persist in and complete a variety of tasks, activites, projects, and experiences.

Math and Manipulatives

Label the Styrofoam coffee cups with numbers 1-5. Have a child hide their eyes and put a yarn/fishing worm under one of the cups. The child has to guess what cup it is under by the number name. (It’s under number 3).

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

Outdoor Play

Give the children shovels and dig for worms.

Physical Health & Development/Health Status & Practices; participates actively in games, outdoor play, and other forms of exercise that enhance physical fitness.

Transitions

Put a piece of paper on the wall and a container of crayons. As the children prepare to go to the next activity, have them come up and draw a worm. The teacher names the color and the child picks the proper crayon. When they draw their worm, make sure to comment on its curl, length, zig-zag, size, etc. (Kerry what a curly blue worm, Roger that is a long yellow worm),