Thanksgiving Puppet and Songs

If you're looking for some fun Thanksgiving songs to sing with your littles, look no further!  A couple of years ago I made these turkey finger puppets to use during singing time. The kids are able to use their fingers as the legs for the turkeys and make the little turkeys run.

Here we are at the carpet getting ready to sing some fun Thanksgiving related songs using our turkey finger puppets. Oh my goodness, look at these cuties! Some of their faces are cracking me up. We're still working on looking at the camera. Hahaha. A friend of mine gave me the puppets to copy. To make your own you could use these finger puppets from dinkycow.com.  (The finger holes should be about 3/4 of an inch wide. Adjust as necessary.) You could also use turkey popsicle stick puppets or turkey finger puppets.  Here are a few songs that are easy to sing to celebrate this fun day. Gobble-gobble Says the Bird (To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It") Gobble-gobble, gobble-gobble says the bird. Gobble-gobble, gobble-gobble says the bird. Mr. Turkey gobble-gobbles, And his feet go wobble-wobble. Gobble-gobble, gobble-gobble says the bird. Turkey, Turkey (To the tune of "Twinkle Little Star") Turkey, turkey, look at you! Please be careful what you do. Thanksgiving Day is almost here. We eat turkey every year. Go and hide out in the woods,  We'll eat pizza, as we should.

Mr. Turkey (To the tune of "Frere Jacques") Mr. Turkey, Mr. Turkey, Run away! Run away! If you are not careful, You will be a mouthful, Thanksgiving day, Thanksgiving day.

L is for Ladybug

Aren't these the cutest little ladybugs you have ever seen?! 

We made these during letter L week using a tutorial from One Little Project. 

After we made our ladybugs, we sang some ladybug songs:

See the Ladybug - sung to "Frere Jacques"

See the ladybug, see the ladybug.
Watch it crawl, watch it crawl.
See it crawling higher,
See it crawling higher.
Watch it crawl, up the wall.

See the ladybug, see the ladybug.
Watch it crawl, watch it crawl.
See it crawling lower,
See it crawling lower.
Way down low, to my toe.

~Jean Warren

I'm a Little Ladybug - sung to "I'm a Little Teapot"

I'm a little ladybug on the go,
Landing on an arm, now an elbow.
See me fly around and around your hand,
Now watch as on your thumb I land.

I'm a little ladybug searching for some toes,
But watch me quickly land on your nose.
Now I look around and head for your hair,
I muss it up a bit, then pat it down with care.

I'm a little ladybug looking for a knee,
I'm just so happy you're not bugged by me.
Now you see me heading for your chest,
This little ladybug needs some rest.

~Susan M. Paprocki of IL

Ladybugs Fly - sung to "Three Blind Mice"

Fly, fly, fly.
Ladybugs fly..
Fly over here.
Fly over there.
They fly up high and they fly down low.
Around and around and around they go.
They fly fast, and they fly-fly slow.
Oh, ladybugs fly.

~Cheryl's Sweethearts ChildCare

Dinosaur Stomp

 

We tried out a new activity this year that was pretty dang fun! I saw this idea somewhere, I think from Family Fun Magazine, and thought it would be fun to try. It also goes perfectly with the song we like to sing during letter D week.

So we decided to make some dinosaur feet so we can properly stomp around.

It took a couple of days because we painted one day and added claws the next.

Start with some small boxes like cracker or microwave popcorn boxes. Then spray paint them green and cut a hole out for the feet. 

Break out the paints and let your little dinosaurs paint them.

After the paint has dried, glue triangular shaped claws at the front. We used construction paper, but I would suggest card stock. 

Put them on . . .

. . . and have fun stomping around. . .

. . . as the fiercest dinosaur around!

C is for Cookie

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!

Here are some of the fun things we did during letter C week with cookies.

We read this awesome book:

We listened to this awesome song:

We made some sugar cookies

We did this amazing sharing cookies activity. Click here for more details about it.

Spring Time Song with Finger Puppets

 Spring is upon us and summer is fast approaching. In our neck of the woods, everyone is planting their gardens and the roses are starting to bloom. Here is a fun spring time song with finger puppets for the kids to play along while you sing. 

It is titled In the Leafy Tree Tops. It is from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints children's songbook. The song can be listened to or downloaded at lds.org. Or you can go directly to the song here.

When we sing this each child has a flower on a popsicle stick and a bird finger puppet. Cut out the circles where the beak should be and their thumb and pointer finger become the beak. My holes are a little small, so you might have to cut a little bigger than what is drawn. I printed the bird to be about 5 inches tall.

In the Leafy Tree Tops

 In the leafy treetops, the birds sing "Good morning."

They're first to see the sun.

They must tell ev'ryone.

In the leafy treetops, the birds sing "Good morning."

In my pretty garden, the flowers are nodding.

"How do you do?" they say.

"How do you do today?"

In my pretty garden, the flowers are nodding.

I hope you have a great spring and that the birds sing and flowers bloom in your garden!

Spring Trees

 Here in Utah spring has come early. I know it means we will get a crazy frost in May that is going to kill all our fruit buds, but I am trying to be positive and enjoy the beautiful weather while we can. This is the view out my front window. It's amazing and it smells just as pretty as it looks.

In our church we have a time during church where the kids have music time and sing songs. One song is called Popcorn Popping by Georgia Bello and it is a song about spring time. 

1. I looked out the window, and what did I see?
   Popcorn popping on the apricot tree!
   Spring had brought me such a nice surprise,
   Blossoms popping right before my eyes.
   I could take an armful and make a treat,
   A popcorn ball that would smell so sweet.
   It wasn't really so, but it seemed to be
   Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

(Here's a link to the music and a free mp3.) 

Our neighbor has a "popcorn" tree so we sang the song and then went outside to look at it. Then we decided to make our own spring trees like the fall and winter trees we made earlier in the year.

 

I popped some popcorn without oil or butter so it wouldn't make grease marks on the paper. It was so simple. Put about 1/3 c popcorn kernels in the bottom of an opened paper bag. Fold over the top two or three times. Put it in the microwave and cook until there is a 1 - 2 second delay between pops. (Mine took about 2 minutes) Then take it out and enjoy your healthy, air popped popcorn. Easy peasy!

Then the kids glued the popcorn onto their colored tree. Make sure they do a pretty good puddle of glue so that the popcorn sticks since it isn't flat. 

J is for Jellyfish

Did you know that a group of jellyfish is called a smack? We learned that in the book we read during letter j week. I don't know why, but that makes me smile. A smack of jellyfish. :) It just sounds silly. 

We had a lot of fun singing a jellyfish song during letter J week.  I apologize to the parents if they had to listen to the jellyfish song constantly because I sure heard it a lot during class, even when it wasn't singing time. :) Have you ever sung the camp song A Tooty Ta?

It has become quite a favorite in our classroom with one slight change. Instead of singing "a tooty ta", we sing "a jellyfish" while making our fingers undulate like a jellyfish. Can I just interject for a second how much I love Dr. Jean? This is her preschool version of "A Tooty Ta". She makes a lot of fun preschool cds that are definitely worth a listen. We sing with her a lot in our class. 

Anyway, jellyfish . . .

We made these jellyfish like the ones we made here. This year, I spray painted them ahead of time instead of trying to paint on plastic with non-washable paints with preschoolers. Last time, I was so paranoid that the kids were going to get paint on their clothes, it took some of the fun out of the project. 

  

Each of the kids started with 3 different colors of ribbons and we worked on making an A, B, C pattern on our pieces of tape for the jellyfish tentacles. I was so excited and impressed with how well the kids made their patterns with very little help. It is so exciting to see their progress throughout the year. For a detailed instruction of how to make a jellyfish, please go here. 

I is for Ice Cream

We had a lot of fun, ice cream centered activities for letter I week. 

We did an ice cream, number recognition. 

Each child rolled a 10 sided dice and colored the corresponding number. Click here for a free printable. 

Click on the ice cream math pdf. You will need to sign up to download. The small grey download button with the blue arrow is the correct link. 

We sang an ice cream song with felt ice cream cones.

(To the tune of 5 little ducks) 5 little ice cream cones in an ice cream shop.

But no one wanted to by them with vanilla on the top. 

So one little ice cream cone took some time to think.

She mixed in some bubblegum and turned herself pink . . . 

Click here for the full tutorial and full lyrics to the song. 

We made capital I, ice cream art. 

Click here  to see the insect activities we did relating to the second half of this project. 

At the end of the day I was really wanting some ice cream so we decided to do an impromptu field trip to the ice cream shop for the next class. (It was really a frozen yogurt place, but we'll take it.) The lady was so nice when she found out we were from a preschool. She showed the kids the freezers and the machines in the back and explained how everything worked.

 

Halloween

Every year I plan to post our holiday activities before the holiday so people can use them if they want. And every year, I get busy and it doesn't happen. Sorry everyone. To make up for it, I'll include a video of my cuties performing some Halloween stuff for their parents.

Here's one of the "healthy" halloween snacks we had when we made candy corn mosaics.

Candy corn fruit! It's made with pineapple, oranges, and whipped cream.

Here are some ghosts we made with real ghost fluff. ;)

 Here's our Frankenstein craft we made

after reading one of my favorite books, Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew McElligott. Here's a sample page from inside the book.  I'm telling you, it's awesome! The pictures are so much fun.

Here is a song we sung

I'm a mean old witch with a hat!
I ride on my broomstick with my cat!
My nose is pointy and my chin is too.
You better watch out or I might scare you . . . Boo!

and a poem we recited

5 Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late."
The second one said, "There are witches in the air."
The third one said, "But we don't care!"
The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run."
The fifth one said, "We're ready for some fun!"
Then OOOhh went the wind, 
And out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Happy Halloween!