Where the Wild Things Are

Special Instructions:  The children each wore a costume and brought a dollar to help pay for the pumpkins.

Gathering Activity: We decorated paper plate monster masks together to use for our Wild Rumpus at the end of class.

Circle Time: We read Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  We roared along with the Wild Things in the story. When we sang our opening song, "Here We Are Together," we sang it twice.  Once for our real names, and once for the names of the characters we came dressed as to Mommy and Me. We sang monster songs and did monster finger plays. 

Snack: Monster Face Pizzas
Ingredients: English Muffins, pizza sauce, cheese, pepperonis, pepper slices, olives.
Directions: Allow the children to assemble their own pizzas and bake until cheese is melted.

Art Activities: Pumpkin Monsters
Materials Needed: Pie Pumpkins, foam stickers, glitter glue, feathers
Directions: Allow the children to use the supplied materials to decorate their pumpkins however they wish.

Playtime Activity: Wild Rumpus
We held our masks in one hand and our instruments in another and ran through the house making lots of noise dancing, jumping, stomping, and crawling like wild things.  Then when a child pretending to be Max yelled "STOP", all the children stopped and then another child had a turn to be Max.  

Giraffes Can't Dance

Gathering Activity: We read stories about jungle animals and played with the Fisher Price ABC Zoo.

Circle Time: We read Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.  We sang songs about jungle animals and used plastic jungle animals to order them smallest to largest.  We played a guessing game with the jungle animals.  The children made the sound of the animal and everyone tried to guess which animal makes that sound.

Art Activity: Giraffe Paper Towel Roll Craft
We followed the directions located at the link above.

Snack: We ate animal crackers and bananas with spots (drawn on by a black sharpie to look like a giraffe).  Giraffes in captivity eat bananas. 

Playtime Activity: We wore animal masks and played with jungle animal puppets and held our own Jungle Dance to fun music including, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight. "

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Gathering Activity: We played with magnetic letters, alphabet puzzles,and read alphabet themed stories.

Circle Time: We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. We sang ABC songs and acted out the story with flannel board pieces, over and over and over again! They loved making the letters crash to the floor.

Art Activity:  Chicka Boom Trees
Materials Needed: crayons, paper, ABC stickers
Directions: Trace each of your child's hands with a green crayon for the top of the tree.  (Why do kids love having their hands traced?).   Help them draw a trunk with a brown crayon and then color in the tree.  Have fun sticking on the letters to complete the tree.  Our kids had a great time making the letters fall down the tree.

Snack: We ate Scrabble Cheez-its, cheese cubes, and grapes.  Then we helped crack open a coconut to see what was inside.  Using a hammer was so much fun!  We tried the coconut milk and meat.

Playtime: Rice Exploration and ABC Freeze Dancing
(We were having too much fun that I forgot to take pics of this activity today!  Oops!  But I think you can get the idea).
Rice Exploration: We hid wooden ABC letters in a bucket of rice.  The children sifted through until they found all 26 and then we tried to place them in order.
ABC Freeze Dancing: We placed ABC flash cards on the floor and danced around to fun music.  When the music stopped, we each ran to a letter and with our mom's help (if needed), named the letter we were standing on.