Recommended Favorite Children's Books

Here is a list of my favorites and highest recommended books for our students. One day when I have more time, I will write a short synopsis and some activities to go with it, however, that being said, I still wanted to post them for you. Almost all of them we have read or will read in our classroom this year. The more you read to your child, the better it prepares them for kindergarten including attending, comprehension of activities and preparing for reading themselves. Enjoy!

The Way I Feel Series

A Snake Says, "Ssssssss"

We had surprise visitors in our PM class today. The school today had visitors from Scales and Tails. During their downtime, they came and visited our class. They brought a black and yellow python and then a huge, 110 lb, 14 foot foot long yellow python. All of the students took the opportunity to touch their scales. We talked about their colors, what they say and how to use gentle hands and soft voices. It was a fun impromptu activity. If they come again next year, we'll have to see if they can come to some of the other classes as well.

*Permission from Parent for us to post this pic.

Pete the Cat and Old MacDonald

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This week we are doing Pete the Cat, I Love My New Shoes:
"Oh no! Pete stepped in a large pile of strawberries... Did he cry? Goodness no! He kept walking along and singing his song, I love my Red shoes...".
It's a story about a groovy cat who doesn't fret but makes the most of his circumstances. Going from singing his song about loving his new white shoes to loving whatever color they are. The colors in the book are white, red, blue and brown. After we read and sing-along, we are going to chart the different colors our shoes could turn after stepping in a variety of things. We'll also chart the different color of shoes each student is wearing.

Old MacDonald's Farm: We have different animal puppets on sticks. Each student gets a stick. We will sing old MacDonald Had a Farm while we move around the circle. When a student's animal name is called, they get to decide how we move like this animal around the room. "With a baa, baa here and a baa, baa there".

Our speech therapist is doing a "monster truck" large group activity, so to extend that theme we have "Truck Mashing" for one of our small groups, a discovery, fine motor activity with a fun and different material. Let the mashing begin!

"Truck Mashing" from this week's small group activities

Preparing Your Child for Kindergarten

For a printable version of this, click here: Kindergarten Readiness Printable Handout

Super Heroes and Birthdays

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For our Super Hero Large Group, we will talk about if our friends get hurt, we can be the super hero and help out.

This will include showing pictures of different students in the class making sad faces and sharing a story of what made them sad (e.g. a friend that was hurt, friend that didn’t get the toy they wanted and friend that’s not feeling well)

We will then sing our Super Hero Song and the students will get turns picking which super hero and how we will fly while we sing it (e.g. one hand out like Ironman) to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus)

(Superman) in the sky flies so quick, flies so quick, flies so quick,

(Superman) in the sky flies so quick, to help a friend.

We will then close by dancing and singing to the song, Superhero by Patty Shukla.

 

If you want to know about what our Happy Birthday Large Group is, click here.

Goodnight Gorilla

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'Joining in' Activity: To the tune of The Wheels on the Bus

The lion in the zoo goes ‘roar’, ‘roar’, ‘roar’,

‘roar’, ‘roar’, ‘roar’,

‘roar’, ‘roar’, ‘roar’.

The lion in the zoo goes ‘roar’, ‘roar’, ‘roar’

All through the day

The students then pick what animal and animal sounds they want next.

Goodnight Gorilla~Large Group

After reading the book as a class, each child get’s an animal from the book. The zoo keeper comes around with the flashlight and keys, singing “Goodnight Lion, Goodnight Lion, Goodnight Lion, It’s time to go to sleep. The gorilla comes and unlocks all the ‘cages’ and follows the Zoo keeper to the bed (a pile of pillows and blankets). We all go to sleep and then yell, “wake up!”  and rush back to our cages.

Snowmen and Birthdays

This week we have two themes: Snow and Birthdays. The students have been very excited about both! We've had a lot of birthdays recently and even when their birthday might be 9 months out, a lot of our student's say, "It's my birthday soon too!" so we are going to celebrate everyone's birthday (although we celebrate individuals ones as well on or close to their birthday).

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During our Snow Man large group we will talk about keeping warm in the cold weather. Then we will be reading the following story and the student's will get to put a piece of clothing on our 'life size' paper snowman. Afterwards, we will talk about other things our snowman can wear and draw pictures of them to put on our snowman as well. You can download a copy of this story (via this link).



During our Birthday Celebration Large Group, we have a birthday cake with a different birthday songs on each of the candles, including Feliz Cumpleanos (Peruvian version). Each student will take a turn choosing the song and a motor movement (e.g. stomping feet or clapping hands) for us to do with it.

Our other books this week: