Maxwell's Preschool: S is for Scaredy Squirrel

Maxwell is part of another preschool co-op this school year. The group consists of five children, two girls and three boys. We do a weekly number, letter, color, and theme and use the curriculum The Amazing Action Alphabet. (As of right now, I am not overly impressed with The Amazing Action Alphabet, but it is providing some structure, which is nice.) For more preschool ideas, click here.

For my first week of teaching, I had the number 5, the letter S, the color blue, and "feelings and emotions" as a theme.

I thought Scaredy Squirrel would be the perfect lead-in to a discussion about feelings and emotions . . . plus "scaredy" and "squirrel" both begin with the letter S. How convenient.

Scaredy Squirrel is afraid of everything. He never leaves his safe nut tree, and he never varies from his very reliable schedule. But just in case disaster were ever to strike, Scaredy Squirrel is well-prepared with his emergency kit. (And if all else fails, he knows he can always play dead.) Then one day, something unexpected does happen. And Scaredy Squirrel realizes the "unknown" isn't as awful as he feared . . . even if his emergency kit falls out of his tree.

(There is a whole line of Scaredy Squirrel books, and all of them are funny and creative and present a new set of problems and fears to overcome. Our other favorites are Scaredy Squirrel at Night and Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend.)

After beginning with our opening routine (welcome song, days of the week song, calendar, weather, pledge of allegiance, reading the story in the alphabet book, and doing a little worksheet), I read Scaredy Squirrel to the children.

But first, we had a little discussion about things that we're scared of. Even though the kids were very influenced by what each other was saying, we still heard a variety of ideas.

I only got to the first page before I had to stop. The first page reads, "WARNING! Scaredy Squirrel insists that everyone wash their hands with antibacterial soap before reading this book." So of course, we had to stop and put on some hand sanitizer. We wanted to follow Scaredy Squirrel's request.

Personally, I sometimes find Scaredy Squirrel a little tedious to read aloud because it contains lots of lists and diagrams and such (which are all absolutely hilarious but make it difficult to maintain the flow), but the kids LOVED this book. Some of them are a little energetic sometimes, but all of them were motionless while we were reading.

After reading it, we gathered around the table to make our own charts of things we're afraid of. Scaredy Squirrel's chart looked like this:

The kids' charts turned out like this:

Looking back, I wish that I'd labeled all of their squares just like Scaredy Squirrel's. Some of their pictures are more difficult to interpret than others, although I know tarantulas, bees, and sharks all made an appearance straight from Scaredy Squirrel's own list.

Top left corner, going clockwise: shark, ghost, a stuffed snake named Luvvy, and bees

After that, we had a snack. Since Scaredy Squirrel loves nuts, we had "acorns"--really chocolate kisses, vanilla wafers, and pretzels, glued together with frosting. Super healthy, I know.

In the book, Scaredy Squirrel shows several similar emotions: fear, anxiety, stress, terror, and panic. But I wanted the kids to think about more emotions than just those ones. So I decided to let them give Scaredy Squirrel whatever emotion they wanted.

I drew my own picture of Scaredy Squirrel but left off his face. Then I laminated him. I made one of these for each child.

I put dry eraser markers out for everyone (and lectured them about the importance of keeping them away from their clothes :-)). Then we talked about some of the other ways Scaredy Squirrel might feel. I had a white board, and as the kids thought of various feelings, I drew an example up on the board. They could then copy it on Scaredy Squirrel or come up with their own ideas.

 

 Surprised

I was surprised with how imaginative the kids were with this activity. They loved it, and they were really quite good with adding little details to change Scaredy Squirrel's expressions.

 Angry

There is a little twist at the end of Scaredy Squirrel. As he jumps to save his emergency kit, Scaredy Squirrel discovers something amazing: he is a flying squirrel. Since he had never ventured beyond his nut tree, he never knew he had this amazing talent.

Of course, Scaredy Squirrel wasn't really flying, but gliding. I thought this would be a great time to talk about how falling objects slow down based on how well they're able to catch the air. For the sake of this lesson and our obsession with the letter S, we called this soaring. 

I found a great book of science projects for 2-6 year-olds called Science Play by Jill Frankel Hauser.

It just happened to have a whole experiment focused around air resistance.

The book suggested using paper strips in three different ways:

1. As itself - no folds or cuts anywhere
2. A larger rectangle with a long slit coming in from either side, then opened up and taped to make a triangular shape.
3. A little snip in each end that were then interlocked to make a fish shape
4. I added the fourth rectangle and later let them cut, fold, and tape it however they wanted to make the absolute best flier they possibly could

Then it was time to test the fliers. First we tried the paper strip. 

 

Then we tried the fish shape. This one was actually really cool because it spun around and around all the way down.

After that, we tried the triangle shape. Now that they had three different flying examples, we went inside to work on the green piece of paper.

I was amazed with their creativity. They cut and folded, and they used lots and lots and lots of tape. All of them looked so different!

As a final activity, I put a basket under the club house. I told the kids they could use whichever flier they wanted. Then they had to drop them and try to get them in the basket. This was much more difficult than I was expecting.

That was the end of the first day (we hold preschool two times a week).

On the second day, the first thing we did (after our opening routine) was go into the kitchen and make some pretzels. I wanted them to have a more tactile experience with the letter S. I gave each of them a ball of dough and let them roll and twist and shape it into an S.

I had made the dough the night before (I used this recipe). I've never let the dough sit overnight before, but it worked out just great.

While the pretzels were cooking, I had them work on a little number 5 worksheet.

While they were doing that, I took the pretzels out of the oven and brushed them with butter and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar.

We ate them while they were still warm. They were so yummy! One of the little boys is kind of a picky eater. He was in Aaron's preschool co-op last year, and I almost never could find a snack that he would eat. But he LOVED these pretzels, so I felt very gratified.

To go along with our feelings and emotions theme, we read another book: Happy by Mies Van Hout.

This one is absolutely delightful. It shows one fish on each page displaying a different emotion. The emotions range from your basic "happy" and "sad" all the way to "shocked" and "jealous" and "furious." I love the variety. It's the only book I've found that covers so many feelings, and it's amazing how well the pictures express what the fish are feeling.

(My two-year-old has this book memorized, and it is so adorably cute to hear him say big words like "curious" and "confused" while making the appropriate faces.)

As I read this book to the kids, we tried to copy the faces of the fish. I explained any of the feelings they weren't familiar with.

Then I had all of them sit on the couch. Each one had a turn leaving the room and deciding which emotion from the book they were going to express--a simple version of charades. It was wildly entertaining to see these emotions on the children. We played several rounds of this game, and I think they would have just kept playing if I hadn't moved them on to another activity.

In Scaredy Squirrel, there are a couple of pages that outline Scaredy Squirrel's schedule each day: at 7:00 a.m. he eats a nut, at 12:00 p.m. he eats another nut, etc.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a simple lesson on telling time. But first, we had to make our own clocks.

I did quite a bit of the prep work for this project ahead of time. I cut out the arrows for the clock hands. I also wrote out the numbers 6-12 on squares and glued them around half of the paper plate.

 

I wanted the children to have both writing and cutting practice, but I knew it would be too overwhelming for them to try and write all the numbers. So far, we've learned the numbers 1-5, so I gave them a strip of paper with several squares marked on it. I had them write the numbers on the squares and then cut them apart. Then they glued them onto the paper plate to finish the clock.

Then I showed them how the little hand tells us the hour, and when the big hand is right on the 12, it is exactly three o'clock (or five o'clock or whatever).

We played a little game where I told them what time it was (seven o'clock, for example), and then they scrambled as fast as they could to show that time on their clocks. Then they flipped it around for me to see.

By this time, they were all getting a little restless, so it wasn't quite as fun as I was hoping for. However, when my five-year-old got home from school and saw the clocks, he had to make one, and I've since used it to help him learn to tell time, with good success.

We only did one more activity after this, and it was very unstructured. Since we were learning about the number five, I told them to go on a five scavenger hunt. They could go anywhere in the house or in the backyard and round up a collection of five. It could be a collection of anything, even mismatched or random objects, but it could only have five objects in it.

Here are two collections--one of animals and another of leaves.

I think it's kind of funny that both last year and this year, my weeks to teach fell on the letter S. So while I don't have any lesson plans for many of the other letters, I now have two completely different lessons for the letter S.

Maxwell's Preschool: S is for Snake

Note: Last year, I participated in two different preschool co-ops--one for Aaron and one for Maxwell, and both of them were fabulous. I'm trying to be optimistic that this year's co-op will measure up, but we'll see. I've been slowly writing up my lesson plans from the past year. This is one that I did with Maxwell's group last March. For more of my preschool posts, click here.

When I found out that my week to teach would fall on the letter S, I immediately gravitated toward snakes. Not because I have any immediate fondness for the creatures (I definitely do not) but because it is so easy to talk about what sound the letter S makes when in reference to snakes.

One of our favorite books is The Splendid Spotted Snake by Betty Schwartz and Alex Wilensky. 

I talked about it in greater detail here, but I had a feeling that with its colorful snake that magically grows and its catchy rhymes, it would be the perfect book to begin our lesson with. The children loved it, and after we read it, we met around the table to make our own colorful snakes.

The night before, I cut out a snake-shaped head for each child and also a big stack of red, blue, yellow, green, and black rectangles.

First, they drew faces on the heads:

For the body sections, I told them they could try writing the letter S or just decorate them any way they wanted to.

They glued on tongues, and then I used a small hole punch to make holes in each end of the rectangles.

Then we put brads through the holes to join all the pieces together.

(Incidentally, this has been one of our longer lasting preschool projects. Usually I throw them away after a month or so, but I didn't want to throw away all those brads (and I also didn't want to disassemble the whole thing), so we've hung onto them. I just put them down in our animal bin in the playroom, and they have continued to hold up, even after months of playing.)

The other book I decided to use with this unit was Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh. 

It's about a hungry snake who goes looking for some lunch. Ten little mice, all fast asleep, turn out to be easy prey, and soon he has collected all of them in a jar. He is just about ready to begin his feast when one of the mice points out a big "mouse" (i.e., a rock) in the distance. Although ten mice should have been plenty, the snake is greedy, and while he is gone, the mice manage to escape.

Besides being a great story, it also focuses on counting (although, I have to admit, I find the counting to be a little confusing to kids since it's broken up with text).

I thought this would make a great flannelboard of sorts (without the flannelboard). I found a picture of a mouse that I liked, copied it ten times, and laminated it. I also gathered a snake, a jar, and a rock.

After reading the story, we acted it out. I hid the ten mice around the room, and then the children got to take turns being the snake and putting the mice in the jar. At the end, we tricked the snake and all tumbled out of the jar and ran away to safety. The kids loved this story . . . both listening to it and acting it out.

Then we talked about how snakes use their tongues to smell. Even though our tongues can't smell, we decided to use them to try and identify different flavors.

 

I made three different kinds of pudding: vanilla, lemon, and chocolate (above is just the vanilla).

The idea was for them to dip their tongues in the pudding and try to figure out what they were tasting. Some of the kids didn't want to be blindfolded, which was totally fine, so they just closed their eyes (or, let's be honest, used some of their other senses to aid them in figuring it out).

But a couple of them were adventurous and tried the blindfold.

  

 It was fun to watch them put their minds to work and think about what they were tasting.

 

One thing I was surprised to discover is that kids (at least these kids) don't like pudding nearly as much as I thought they would. Chocolate was pretty much the only flavor that was even a little bit tolerated.

Besides the letter S, the number of the week was 19. I realized that making 19 that much different from 18 or 20 is a real challenge!

I decided that I wanted them to be able to get a visual picture of just how many 19 is. I cut up a bunch of straws (I chose straws because they start with the letter S). I gave each child a little bag of 19 of them and then told them they could use those 19 straws to create whatever sort of picture they wanted, but I did want them to try and use all of them.

Some of the pictures were orderly (I just squeezed out the glue in the shape of a house).

Others were more random. (This little girl actually wanted me to draw Ariel with the glue, but I had to confess that that was probably beyond my artistic abilities.)

For our last activity, we played a little game with straws. Each child got a straw and a pom-pom. They had to place their pom-poms at the starting line . . .

. . . and then use their straws blow their pom-poms across the table. The person whose pom-pom fell off the table first was the winner.

Try as I might, I couldn't figure out what pom-poms or straws had to do with snakes, but it was still fun.