Three Little Pigs- Weekly Wednesday Book Talk

The story of  "Three Little pigs" is a classic which no one needs an introduction to. This was my favorite story as a kid and I loved playing the big bad wolf. And whenever I tell this story to little kids I get to relive all the fun memories of my childhood.

I love the ladybird collection of these old tales. The illustrations are bright and fresh and the text is simple to understand.

This story book provides a fantastic chance for role playing and retelling.

We ended up doing a lot of craft work too with this book.

First the kids made the 3 houses of the pigs. For the straw house, they used noodles/spaghetti. For the stick house, ice cream sticks came handy and for the brick house, I simply cut some red paper.

Then the kids made the big bad wolf!

We made the pig snouts with pieces of egg carton. The kids just didn't want to take them off!

They also matched the right pigs to the correct house type. I got the cards from HERE.

We ended this story unit by retelling the story. We cut the pictures and stuck them in the correct order.

Get this Printable from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Hope you liked the activities. Weekly Wednesday Book Talk will take a little sabbatical from the month of October. I would be starting "Friday Fine Motor Activity Fun" soon. So do come back for ideas and printables to develop those little finger muscles of your kiddos.

Dinosaur Ideas

My Dinosaur unit is ready for all you guys out there! It has literacy, math and science activities and is full of hands on learning.

 

There are various math games which your little kiddos will enjoy playing.

The unit also includes a lot of writing activities.

There is an emergent reader in colored and black and white. You could either use it as a book or in a pocket chart.

There are dinosaur life cycle cards and a herbivore and carnivore sort too!

Grab all this fun stuff in one pack by visiting my TPT STORE.

Dinosaur Craft and Writing Activities

After discovering various dinosaurs through books and videos, the kids made crafts of each dinosaur and wrote a fact about each one of them. The dinosaurs turned out to be very cute and my little kids are turning into expert writers,

I found the templates for the crafts from Thecrafttrain.com

The writing sheets are from my own dinosaur unit which I would be posting soon.

Check out my other dinosaur posts for more ideas.

Dinosaur Activities

I didn't expect the dinosaur unit to be such a hit with kids though I knew that it would definitively hit the right cord!

We have been reading a lot of fun books on dinosaurs but our favorite turned out to be "Stomp, Dinosaur, Stomp" by Margaret Mayo.

The book has a lot of cute dinosaur pictures which exposes the children to various dinosaurs.

We used a page from the book to match toy dinosaurs.

We made huge dinosaur feet. I got the template from HERE.

Since the kids are learning sight words, I decided to add a sight word activity to the dinosaur theme.

I cut few colored pipe cleaners(pretend dinosaur bones) and put them in dough. The kids had to search for dinosaur bones and match the colored bones to the correct sight word(the sight words were of the same colors as the pipe cleaners).

And math couldn't be left behind, so I found a fun addition activity from 3 dinosaurs.com to add to our unit.

We also did a lot of craft and writing activities, which I would be sharing soon.

Weekly Wednesday Book Talk- Dinosaur Bones

This week we started a unit on dinosaurs  and we sure had a lot of fun discovering new things about them.

We read a lot of books on dinosaurs but today I would be sharing a very comprehensive book on dinosaurs by Aliki. 'Dinosaur Bones' is a book which helps children understand what dinosaurs were like. It talks about how fossils were discovered and how scientists found out about dinosaurs by studying fossil remains.

After reading the book, we made our own fossils.

We put plastic dinosaur toys into balloons and added water in them.

We froze them in the freezer.

After which we took off the balloon and used various tools to dig up the fossils.

Now I must say, it wasn't an easy job to break the ice fossil. Patience was the key to this activity but because it was so exciting for the kids to take out the dinosaurs, it kept them engaged.

We also made a dinosaur skeleton puzzle and wrote a sentence about fossils. Get the template from HERE.

I would be sharing more activities about dinosaurs, so do visit again.

Letter Recognition Game

Play a fun game to help children identify letter names or sounds. 

Ask children to sit in a circle. Choose one person to start the game. 

Sing the popular song"A tisket and a tasket...", of course with a little modification. When the song finishes, the child  has to put the basket of letters behind a friend. The friend will pick a letter, say its name and move around to place the basket behind another friend. The game continues till everyone gets a turn.

Its quick revision and pure fun!

Click on the image to get the song.

Weekly Wednesday Book Talk- A House For Hermit Crab

Its Eric Carle again, this week! "A House For Hermit Crab" beautifully captures how a hermit crab changes his shell when he outgrows it. The book also introduces a lot of new vocabulary for kids who are learning about the ocean. And like all Eric Carle books, this one too allows a lot of scope for building the sequencing and retelling skills in children.

We made a hermit crab craft after reading the book.

The children used sequencing cards and retold the story in their own words.

 We used Lima beans to spell out the new words we learnt. You can use magnetic letters, letter tiles or a marker to spell the words.

 The kids learnt a lot of new vocabulary and they used the vocabulary cards to match the words and the pictures in a pocket chart.

The kids are also learning how to write a sentence using punctuation marks, In this sheet,they  practiced cutting the words apart and putting them in order(an important print awareness skill).

You can get all these activity sheets from my Hermit Crab Pack.

Hope you enjoy them.

Weekly Wednesday Book Talk

This weeks book is "The rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister. 

It is a well known children's book and I am sure most of you must have read this book to little children. I love picking up this book when I want to talk about the concept of sharing and of course no ocean unit can be complete without this amazing book.

You can also use this book

 to talk about the parts of a fish and it also goes well with the introduction of letter r.

In the story, the rainbow fish has a lot of pretty shiny scales which he doesn't share with anyone. As a result the fish in the ocean doesn't want to become his friends. At the end, the wise Octopus guides the rainbow fish and helps him to win over some friends. It is a simple story which children would love to hear.

We did some literacy activities after reading this book.

First the kids told the story in their own words using sequencing cards.

Then they completed a story map.

They also drew an illustration of a fish and labelled its body parts.

And lastly, talked about their favorite part in the story.

You can get all the above activities from my Rainbow Fish Literacy Pack.