Author Study: Robert Munsch

 

I'm changing up long range planning this year and focusing my monthly themes around author studies, instead of specific topics.  That gives me more flexibility to account for the interests and skills of a wide age range of children (age 1 thru 7) while still incorporating a rich variety of literature into our activities.  February has been all about Robert Munsch.  After reading "The Paper Bag Princess", we decided to make our own paper bag characters.

 

I pulled out some brown paper bags, scissors, glue and open ended craft materials, and let the children create without specific direction.  They each had their own different take on project, but using popsicle sticks as arms and legs became a popular idea.

Some of the children asked for self-portraits of themselves to glue to their paper bags, so we cut them out of photographs.

Robert Munsch's books are always rich in fun and exciting details.  After reading his story, "Purple, Green and Yellow", my oldest daughter wanted to paint fingernails.  Since most of the children in care are boys, I decided we would do a more inclusive color activity.  We decided to pull out the paint supplies, and experiment with different methods of painting and mixing color. 

Instead of just using paintbrushes, the children were able to explore making art with paper tubes, Q-tips and cotton balls.

They really enjoyed the change in painting tool, and the results were both beautiful and colorful!

Messy Art

I was going back through some pictures and realized I had missed some of the great messy art activities we had done over the past few months.  I think it is really important that children have the chance to get messy/dirty/sticky sometimes when creating art.  It can be something as simple as painting their hands for a guided activity (like the spider and turkey above) or fine motor development by adding glue sticks and sequins to a Christmas stocking (I've removed the names the children printed).

 

But sometimes, the best part of getting messy is the chance to extend that experience into another sensory realm - from the sense of touch to the sense of taste.  These were the birthday cupcakes we made together and then decorated individually to celebrate the birthday of one of the children in care.

Nuts For Squirrels

I decided to change the way I do thematic planning this year.  Instead of picking a specific theme (say...bugs) I'm going to plan around a certain author or type of book.  I'm hoping that by doing this, I can integrate more literature rich activities into my planning, and incorporate learning opportunities that fit the wide spectrum of ages and abilities.  So to start out the new year, the author I picked was Melanie Watt, with a specific focus on her Scaredy Squirrel series (though we did spend time with the rest of her phenomenal books).

Scaredy Squirrel gave me some great opportunities to incorporate open ended crafts and natural resources.

This is the children working on their squirrel mural.  I didn't anticipate how much they would enjoy this crafting experience, but we spent an entire afternoon immersed in this creative opportunity.

I decided to broaden the activity for the younger children by working on some fine motor skills - I let them experiment with scissor cutting.  To do this, I sat one-on-one with each child in turn, and let them choose to cut their picture as they wished (after some modelling and guidance).  They were so focused, and handled the scissors with great care.  It was a huge success!

In the end, the murals turned out more beautiful than I could have ever imagined!

Fine Motor Fun

We've been focusing more lately on developing fine-motor skills, and I wanted to show case some of the activities we've participated in:

 

Stickers are an easy way to get young children to work on their pincer grasp - they are inviting, appealing and inexpensive.  Plus, they are easy to remove from walls or tables should they wander away from the crafting station.  I find it easiest to just lay a dozen different sheets across the table with colored paper and crayons and let the children explore.  Even the one year old in my care will peel the stickers off the sheet (though he prefers to squish them, instead of sticking them to paper - I let him, its still good use of the pincer grasp).

 

Open ended sticker craft:  We did this for Halloween.  I didn't direct the children on how to construct the pumpkins.  I just let them explore.

The results were beautiful!

I also found this puzzle at a local store - it has a variety of doors held closed by latches and chains and other simple hardware.  My toddlers LOVE dabbling with this, opening and closing each one.  The perfect instant fine motor activity!

Coloring is also a useful fine motor activity.  With older children, encourage proper pencil holding techniques.  And put out a variety of books to choose between.

For school age children, this is a good activity:  Put coloring pages behind tracing paper, and have the children trace the lines with fine point markers.  Then removed the coloring page and let them finish their masterpiece.

The Hungry Caterpillar

I'm sure most of you have heard of or read the popular children's book by Eric Carle, about the little caterpillar who hatches out of his egg one Sunday morning and starts to eat everything in sight, before eventually emerging from his chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly.

Well, this year, we decided to explore that idea with some more depth.  We purchased a small set of live larvae from Butterfly Wing's n' Wishes and raised our own caterpillars, watching as they ate like crazy, got bigger each day, hid away in a hanging chrysalis, and then emerged with vibrant wings.

Here are some of the pictures we took:

The downside was that the caterpillars couldn't be handled too much, as it affected their survival rates.  It would have been fun to let them crawl around on an open space or across wiggly fingers, but I really wanted the experience of the children watching them change through the various phases.

They were still excited to see them though, and asked every morning to see how much bigger they were.  I think the highlight of the whole experience was that we got to actually watch three emerge from their chrysalis.  The older kids were surprised by how shrivelled and deformed their wings looked at first, thinking they were defective somehow, so it was a nice stretch of learning to observe them unfold and straighten.

It was hard to watch them fly away and say goodbye.  The kids decided to name them Flutterby, Fluttershy, Shutterfly, William, Elizabeth, Bowser and Peach.  I guess that's what happens when you let kids name things.  They worked, however.

I think we will definitely be repeating this experience next spring.

Here are some of the activities we did to go with this unit:

This is a really simple craft that re-inforces the metamorphosis of the butterfly using rice (on a leaf) and basic pasta.  I asked the children to use the shapes to show me what happened as we watched the bugs change.  They knew exactly what to do, because they had experienced it.

I love this activity:  it uses fine motor skills (ripping, coloring, shading, cutting, gluing) and teaches the concept of camoflouge.  The children are given identical butterflies to color, shade, cut out and glue on a background of ripped newsprint.  From a distance, the grey butterfly really blends in with its background.  Can you spot them?

These are coffee filter butterflies, made with markers.  Kids always love to color with markers.

And you can't do a butterfly unit without egg cartoon caterpillars.  Aren't they cute?



Tree Hugging

With spring, the children have been pointing out all the changes they've observed on the trees and plants in our neighborhood, asking really good questions about buds and sprouts, and helping get the garden ready to plant.  With this current curiosity, I decided it was a good time to do a tree/plant unit.

First we made a mural to decorate our space.  At first I intended to make leaves or collect leaves to add later, but one of the kids suggested painting hands and making prints.  It was a hit, and turned out really cute!  (It's fun to notice the difference in the areas the 'big' kids painted and the ones the 'little' kids painted!)

After that, I decided to explore some open ended crafting.  I gave the kids an outline of a tree on some sticky tack, and some assorted supplies, and let them decorate.

 They turned out really cute!

Next it was time to get our hands dirty - literally.  We painted small clay pots, stuffed them with dirt, sprinkled grass seed, and watched and watered each day.

This is science and fine-motor rolled up into one, because the spray bottles are intriguing, but employ lots of hand and arm muscles.

They had so much fun 'spraying' their plants, that we took the bottles on a nature walk to a local forested area.  They could have stayed out there spraying all day.

If we're going to do a forest unit, we have to go where there are trees.  No complaints from these naturalists!

After two weeks, our grass looked more like this:  Time to give these Hairy Harry's a hair cut (more fine motor skills!  Yay!).  The kids got so into this, their plants were basically bald when they were done.  Great thing about grass - it grows back!

Next I think we'll get some hair clips, and let them snap them in the 'hair'.