G is for Giraffe

I got the idea from this website. http://missmarensmonkeys.blogspot.com/

L is for Lion

Pictures are an important part of helping kids figure out how to "read" a story. Using wordless picture books can be a great way to help kids learn to use the pictures to tell that story. We read this beautiful Caldecott Medal award winner by Jerry Pinkney. It is the story of the Lion and the Mouse that doesn't use any words.

The first time we read it, we didn't talk, we just looked at the pictures. 

The second time we read the story, the kids told me the story in their own words as we looked through the pictures. 

Then we made our own lion pictures using our faces and construction paper strips. 

Check out more detailed instructions here.

L is for Lion

 Who needs to wait for Halloween to dress up like a lion? Here's a fun deviation from the paper plate lion heads we did last year. Instead of using a paper plate, use a picture of the child. 

Now that's one cute lion!

Here's What You Need:

• 1 X 6 orange strips
• large photo of the child's face
• glue
• scissors
• markers
• construction paper

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut out the child's face and glue it onto the construction paper. For younger lions, draw a circle around the face to give them a guide where to glue the paper strips.
2. Glue the orange paper strips around the face by only putting glue at one end of the strip.
3. Draw a lion nose a whiskers. 
4. Use scissors to carefully curl the strips like you would curling ribbon. 

** Update: If you curl the paper around a pencil instead of with scissors, it gives a more coiffed look like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz. I like it much better. 

Jungle Safari

At the beginning of this month, the kids went on a jungle safari to explore what kinds of animals live in the jungle. Each explorer was give a jungle safari guide book that had a different picture of a jungle animal on each page.

Then I introduced them to the "jungle." (A bunch of connected pop-up tubes. This would work great for letter T because T is for tunnel)

 

Along the inside of the tunnel, I put small animals that matched the pictures in their safari book. There was a hippo, leopard, zebra, elephant, crocodile, and monkey. The kids crawled through the "jungle" carefully watching out for, but not touching the animals in there. After they went through a few times, we talked about what animals they saw and then they colored the animals in their guide book. 

To see how to make a folded book out of a single piece of paper without using tape or staples, check out our post on folded paper books here.

King of the Jungle & Kites

K is for King of the Jungle! We used bulletin board borders to make these jungle themed crowns for letter K day! 

 

The kids colored and cut out the K shaped King then glued them onto the border. Then we stapled it together to make a crown. 

Feel free to use the lion picture for your King of the Jungle project.  

We made our homemade kites again this year and the kids had a lot of fun. To check out the step by step instructions, see our original kite post here

L is for Lion!

When studying the jungle, you can't leave out the king! We made lion faces this week and read an amazingly beautiful and fresh take on The Lion and the Mouse. We read the version by Jerry Pinkney. 

 

The art is amazing and the fun part about this book is that there are no words. We talked as a class about how using the pictures in a book can help us understand and know what's going on in the story. It's a important comprehension strategy for young readers. The first time we read the story, we read it silently and I had the kids make up what was happening in the story in their head. Then we read it again and talked about what was happening in the pictures.

After, we made our own lion faces complete with a crazy mane of hair. 

Here's What You Need:

• Paper plate
• Brown, white, orange, and black construction paper
• Glue sticks
• Crayons

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut a lot of strips of the orange paper. Ours were 1 X 4.5 inches. 
2. Cut out eyes using the white and black. Cut out a nose using the brown.
3. Color the inside circle of the plate yellow.
4. Color the outside circle of the plate orange.
5. Glue on the face and draw a mouth and wiskers.
6. Flip the plate upside down and glue the orange strips around the edge of the plate.
7. Curl the orange strips with an open pair of scissors like you would curling ribbon.