Tot School: Humpty Dumpty

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This week we wrapped up our Humpty Dumpty theme – ideas thanks to Itty-Bitty Bookworm…

Our books (I loved them all):

• The True Story of Humpty Dumpty by Sarah Hayes
• Little Lumpty by Miko Imai
• Humpty Dumpty by Kin Eagle
• Tillie Lays an Egg by Terry Golson
• An Egg Is Quiet by Dianna Aston

The video clip I watched over and over:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDyayfFnH90

My very favorite thing to do this week:  act out The True Story of Humpty Dumpty while Mom read!  First we used a stuffed Humpty I made out of paper (two ovals stapled together), stuffing, and brads to connect the arms and legs.  Then I acted it out with ME being Humpty – on a wall of pillows!


I made a lot of Humptys.  Here’s one I made out of shapes that Mom cut out of construction paper.


Here’s another one – Mom drew an egg on the easel paper, and then I drew in the face and a crack.  I bandaged up the crack with band-aids!


I drew a Humpty face on a real egg, too.


And I tried to put Humpty together again with glue.  First we put egg shells in a ziploc bag with a few drops of food coloring, and I crushed and smushed them up.  Then we laid them on a paper towel to dry.  Then I painted an oval shape with glue, put the eggshell pieces on the glue, and painted some more glue on top of it all!  Not quite like the original…


I made a pet rock Humpty with egg and chick stickers.


I did some upper/lowercase matching with plastic egg halves in my sensory bin.


I practiced cutting a zig zag shape on a paper egg.


I made a crown with glitter glue so I could be king of all the horses and men…


I practiced “reading” my very own Humpty book.  (Excuse the name – I’ve been practicing my trademark signature of both Es facing inwards, so some of the other letters get rushed…)


I did story sequencing with these sentence strips.


I put puzzles together, kinda like putting a Humpty together.


And I worked on my writing skills with some Humpty words, like “wall.”


I practiced carrying an egg around in a spoon.  This is harder than it looks!


And I cracked and fried myself an egg to eat!  (I put green food coloring in it, too – cuz I LOVE green eggs and ham…)

Cloud School

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Our theme book this week (thanks to Itty Bitty Bookworm) was It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.  Which was a fun book – but with a pretty simple storyline that didn’t warrant much re-reading.

So we read lots of others, too.  Among our favorites:

• The Cloud Book  by Tomie de Paola.  This was our “fact” book of the week.  Now I can tell you what cumulus clouds are!  And I know all about clouds that produce lightning and thunder.
• Moongame by Frank Asch.  This was my FAVORITE book of the week!  I love Bear and Moon and all this author’s books!  (And Mom loves the science concepts in them, like echoes and shadows and in this one – how clouds can help Moon hide in a game of hide and seek.).  
• Little Cloud by Eric Carle.  Another fun one that tied in really well with the theme book – pretty much the same concept.
• The Police Cloud by Christoph Niemann.  A fun little story about a cloud that wanted to become a police officer, but realized that perhaps he should choose a different service role!
• Wind Says Good Night by Katy Rydell.  A look at all the things that impact each other in nature – clouds included.
• The Mouse Bride by Joy Cowley.  A similar theme to the previous book – how everything in nature interacts (including clouds), and a mouse can actually be the most influential of all.  Cute story.

Now on to the activities…  Let’s start with food.  Food is always a good place to start - especially cloud food!  We had cloud pudding (whipped cream on top of blue-colored vanilla pudding).  Yum-MY!


And since we happened upon our cloud cookie cutter, we made cloud sugar cookies, as well.  Those would be cumulus, by the way.


We did cloud painting!  First we painted clouds using a cloud (cotton ball) and white paint.


Another day we painted clouds using puff paint (a mix of shaving cream and white glue).  Very cool effect!  (even cooler when you wear your swimming wings and flippers…)


I also practiced writing letters in shaving cream.  I am working on my S a lot these days.

Also for art, I used a dropper to drop raindrops (blue liquid watercolor) all over a nature scene.


Here I am tossing my cloud bean bag (made from felt, beans, and hot glue) into a basket.  I got lots of work to do on my throwing!


We played hide and seek, just like Bear and Moon.  Only we didn’t have any clouds inside to hide behind, so we had to pretend.

We spent some time looking at clouds outside.  Here we are charting whether the days were cloudy or sunny.  It gets complicated, because some days start cloudy but end up  sunny!


We did a little with rainbows, since rainbows and clouds sort of go together.  Here I made a pipe cleaner rainbow and glued it with clouds (cotton balls) onto a beautiful gardeny stationery.


We talked about how wind and breeze makes clouds move.  To demonstrate, we put cotton balls on the table in front of a fan.

We made a rainbow streamer thingy with streamers that I waved around.  Then I had lots of fun TAKING OFF the streamers…


I did beginning sound drills with cloud shapes.  Easy peasy…  Though I thought the angel was a bird and needed a little help with “sheep.”


I practiced counting and adding with cotton balls.


And I practiced reading with my It Was a Cloud book.


We did some science stuff like making clouds and making rain.  I’ll tell you more about that in my science post this week.

Mom tried to get me to build a city in the clouds (tulle/ribbon) with my legos, but I didn’t like the cloud part.  I DID spent a lot of time with my new legos!  They are the big kid kind…


Not so much on the cloud theme – I LOVE washing dishes.  I could spend hours playing in the sink…


Also, I got some lessons on tricycle riding from my cousin.  (We got lots more cousin photos – we’ll try to post them as we’ve got time.)


African tricycle riding – let’s get the whole family on board!


They helped me put this zoo foam sticker craft together, too!  (One of Mom’s thrift store finds.  She LOVES finding ready-to-make kits like this for cheap…)


Another thrift store find – Junior Scrabble (with NO letters missing).  Mom had this game as a kid, so it brings back memories…  I haven’t figured out all the rules, yet, but I can match up letters!


I played with Bendaroos.  Kind of like play dough but with a twist.


And I made lots of tea!  With rice cakes and crackers.  Would you like some?  I’d love to serve it to you!