Tot School: Fish

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This post is about One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. This is one of the books Mommy brought with us on the long trip from Mozambique to the US via South Africa and Scotland - I didn't have to wait 9 months for it to come by shipment - so I know it real well!  She picked it because it's got SO MUCH stuff in it!  And that means there was tons to do!

Other books we read - these are all old favorites I love...:

• Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
• The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
• Go, Dog, Go! by P. D. Eastman
• Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood
• The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
• Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni

Of course, we needed some colored Goldfish crackers for the week.  As soon as Mommy put them out, I decided to sort them by color and put them in their own separate little pipe cleaner ponds.



Then I illustrated my very own One Fish, Two Fish book... (printable from our Itty-Bitty Bookworm curriculum)

We did a pollution demonstration.  Mommy cut out two blue fishes from sponge, and we made two ponds.


The first pond had clean, fresh water.  We put all kinds of gunk and oil and food in the other pond.  It looked yucky!  Mommy asked which pond I would want to live in if I was a fish, and I said I didn't want to live in a pond - I wanted to live in a great big sea!


I went fishing in a blue towel of a pond!  We used a magnet on the fishing pole and paperclips on a bunch of paper fish with 2-letter words.  So I had to read each fish I caught - with Mom's help.  (If you'd rather do letters, here's a place to print alphafish out, but I know all my letters already.)


We painted lima bean fish - blue on one side and red on the other.  To make it quicker, we used Do a Dot markers.


After we waited a LONG time for them to dry, I got to shake them in a cup and pour them out on a plate.  I was supposed to sort them by color and count the blues and reds.  Since 15 was our number of the week, there were 15 beans.  After I counted one color, Pappa would guess how many of the other there was - and he was always right!



We colored some fish with crayons, and then painted over the coloring with blue liquid watercolors.  The wax stood out nicely as long as you didn't drown it with watercolor.



Another round of the classic tissue-paper/paper-plate fish.  I wasn't feeling well that day so never fully got into it with my pink fish.  Mom made a cool rainbow fish that I totally claimed, though!


We used Do-a-dot markers on fish...(Ocean themed magnet pages here)


Here's a rainbow fish (fish pattern here) that Mom started and I totally took over.


We did lots of fish worksheets.  Here's one about same or different - I didn't say I did it all right!  I do everything my OWN way.


Another worksheet matching shapes.  There appears to be an error on this sheet - we never found the oval fish to go in the oval tank.


And I put a fish puzzle together.


Also a counting/coloring page and a counting/gluing page (not pictured).

Mom printed some fish on cardstock and glued felt strips on the back so I could use them on my felt board.  We sang 5 Little Fish Teasing Mr. Shark over and over while I acted it out with the felts.



Sometimes when we journal, Mom asks me a question and writes down my answers in the journal.  This week's prompt was "If I was a fish..."

• I would swim in the ocean.
• I would be caught by a shark, a GREEN one.
• I would hide from the green shark.
• I would eat little, little, little, tiny fish.
• I would play with seahorses and crabs.
• I would swim slow because someone bit my fin.

Now, the Dr. Seuss book has lots more than fish in it, so we did other nonfishy stuff, too.  We worked on some lists.  I told Mom I liked to go SLOW!  Then I named some things that move fast and some things that move slow...


Mom named some activities, like eating breakfast, or taking a bath.  I had to turn my day/night card whichever way was right - like eating breakfast means the sun is showing!


I also did a drawing of day and night.  That's a pink egg in a pink next, by the way.  And the night is moon and stars covered with black.


I matched some rhyming fish - like bat & cat, or bee and key.



We played another rhyming game - Mom drew some things on my easel, and then she said some words.  I had to find a rhyming picture for each word and cross it off with a black marker.  The first couple were hard, and then I got the hang of it and did perfectly.  Though she had tricky stuff on there, like car and star both rhyme with far and tar.



We also did opposites.  Mom would say a word, and I'd have to show her the opposite.  Here I am showing her the opposite of little!


I painted funny Thing 1 and Thing 2 by making one painting and then folding the paper in half to mirror the paint on both sides.  But I decided to cut them into pieces with my handy dandy scissors before we got to elaborate on them with google eyes and yarn hair and all that stuff.


I plucked diamonds from the night sky!  (Rock salt on black felt.  Mom's note:  I've seen tweezer activities that I wanted to try, but never found that perfect child's pair of tweezers.  So I decided just to grab the tweezers from the medicine cabinet for this one, and she did great with them - under supervision!)


S was our letter of the week, so here's my S collage.  Bet you'd never guess which things I colored and which one Mom colored!  I'm very careful with my coloring - sometimes...


Of course, a fish study is never complete without an ACTIVE game of kitchen tennis with my very own tennis racket.  Daddy makes sure I've got all the good stuff.



I helped make fresh orange juice!  Mom finally decided to get the citrus juicer add-on for our Bosch out - it was packed away for our trip back to Africa...  I don't like orange juice plain so much, but put the fresh stuff (plus juice from one lemon) in the blender with some sweet frozen Bing cherries, and that's something I can down - plus it gives me a pink mustache!



It's definitely spring here, and my nose has been telling me all about it.  Even with allergy medicine, it's been doing lots of running.  But I do love the white lilacs by our front door!  They have tiny tiny baby flowers and smell lovely!