10 Little Rubber Ducks

This summer, our family signed up to participate in The Educators' Spin On It: Summer Book Exchange!  Twenty bloggers agreed  to 1-0choose a favorite book to share and 2-)send it with activity ideas and supplies to another blogger!  Mommy and Me Book Club was paired up with the fabulous hostess of the event...The Educator's Spin On It!   We had sooo much fun putting our package together to send off to our friends at The Educators' Spin On It!  My three kiddos were very excited to send their kiddos our activities and a beloved book.  (I will share what we sent as soon as they post)!   But my kids were not NEARLY as excited to give as they were when the postman delivered a book box to our home!!!!

My children are a bit obsessed with birds of all kinds...but ducks are currently the favorite! Can you imagine their excitement when there was a GIANT YELLOW DUCK on the outside of the package? Guesses of what duck book might be inside flew wild across the kitchen table.


My eldest son made everyone cover their eyes while I opened the box and revealed the book....

  10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle! It is a sweet story of a box of rubber duckies who fall off of their transport ship and out of their box into the ocean.  Each rubber duckie meets a different ocean animal on his adventure. Perfect for summer!  The book counts from one to ten as it introduces each animal.  (AND it wasn't one we already had or one that any of the kids guessed!  Hooray for surprises)! The Educators' Spin On It sent us SEVERAL envelopes with Rubber Duckie book inspired learning activities!

It was a very rainy day outside, so we started on the activities right away!  (Although there were so many fabulous learning activities, we did have to spread them out over two days)!

My eldest wanted to read the story to his younger siblings.  (Which was perfect for being able to take pictures, so I didn't mind.  Is there anything sweeter than siblings reading together)?

MAKE RUBBER DUCK FACTORY SIGN
For our first activity, we used the supplies sent, to make our own Rubber Duck Factory Sign.  Each child helped by either writing or decorating.    This was such a fun way to set the stage and spark the children's imagination as we proceeded through the rest of the activities. 

CREATE THE CHARACTERS FROM
 THE STORY AND RETELL

We used these fun art supplies and created each of the characters from the story....including the sun.  Everyone took a couple of different animals and set to work.  I was surprised at how creative they were with the pipe cleaners.  Then they enjoyed retelling the story with the characters they made, over and over again...especially my youngest.  She wasn't really interested in moving on to another activity.... even an hour later. 

MATH ACTIVITIES: MAKE NUMBER DUCKS, PRACTICE FACT FAMILIES, AND ORDINAL NUMBERS

Next we had fun with MATH!  My sons created the numeral ducks together and practiced addition and subtraction facts.  Then they played with these adorable ordinal number cards!

SPELLING PRACTICE

My 5 year old practiced spelling these animal names from the story using letter beads and word cards.  He loved it and asked for more words when he was finished. 

ABC DUCKIES
My three year old enjoyed making and playing with these ABC duckies with me.

MAKE YOUR OWN ANIMAL STAMPS 

One of the fun activities was to make our own stamps using sticker characters from the book and bottle caps.  This was another activity that my 3 year old had no desire to stop!

 TEN DUCKS IN A BOX

We used the duck stamp to create several boxes of ten ducks and practiced counting by tens.

WHERE IS THE DUCK?  POSITIONAL WORDS AND MAP PRACTICE

My 7 year old enjoyed playing "teacher" and calling out the positional words to his little brother.  "Move the duck east of South America....Move the duck under Antarctica."  I was surprised how quickly my 5 year old picked up on the names of the continents in order to play the game!

WATER COLOR ANIMALS INSPIRED BY ERIC CARLE

For our culminating event, the children watched a video online about how Eric Carle creates his art and then tried their hands at creating their own!

Thank you so much for the fun activities and new book for our collection!  We had such a wonderful time participating and look forward to seeing everyone else's posts! My 7 year old is creating a list of all the people we know and which books he would like to send them now!

 Here are some of the other participants who have already shared their book exchange posts!  Make sure to check out their book inspired fun!  I will continue to update between now and the end of July!  THANK YOU, Educators' Spin On It, for all of your hard work organizing this exchange and, our own family thanks you especially for the fun activities you mailed us! 

No Doubt Learning
Having Fun At Chelle's House- Five Little Ducks

Make Do and Friend
Taming the Goblin
Growing Book by Book
The Vincent Family
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom
Here Come the Girls - The Worst Princess