Going Batty!

Using chalk to color on dark paper.

TODAY'S ACTIVITY
Today we made flying bat puppets. Much like the bird puppets of 3 weeks ago, these little critters flap their wings with sweeping arm movements up and down. The children enjoyed making them. They threaded the straps, made "eyes" with the hole puncher, and colored them with markiers and colored chalk. When some complained that the markers didn't show up on black paper, I simply told them that there was something on the shelf that would. They tried the crayons. Nope. Then colored pencils. Uh-uh. When they tried colored chalk, you'd have thought someone struck gold! Unaccustomed to drawing light on dark, they busily drew, rubbed, and dusted their bats and themselves. They flew those bat puppets for a half hour at a time!

TODAY'S MATH:
paper + hole punch = happy kid
kid + tiny circles on the floor + masking tape "mitt"(sticky side out) to pick up all those tiny circles = happy parent



TODAY'S STORY
HICCUPotamus, by Aaron Zenz. This book full of bright, colorful, "cartoony" illustrations, tells of a hippo trying to get rid of the hiccups. He visits animal after animal for remedies. Eventually he does cure them, only to find that all of them have the hiccups. Each page is written in four line stanza with multi-syllable suffixes attached to rhyme. It makes up for what it lacks in logical narrative with phonically amusing word patterns. It's similar to the rhyming kids do with one another when they're just "being silly."

TOMORROW: We examine the results of our "bone experiment."