Sing, Sing, Sing!

  

We've just had back to back visits from my mother and my mother-in-law.  It was delightful to watch them interact with my baby girl.  They were constantly talking and singing to her.  In the photo you see that I love singing to Emma Rebekah as well!!

In this blog I'll show you how to turn a song into an activity to use in either a bathtub or a preschool classroom.

I'm sure you've heard the song Five Little Ducks. It goes like this...

 Five little ducks went out one day. Over the hills and far away. Mama duck said, 

" Quack, quack, quack, quack," but only four little ducks came waddling back.

If you click here on the song Five Little Ducks you will be directed to an amazing website DLTK that has the lyrics and print-outs for a wonderful song to sing with your children. I created popsicle stick puppets from the print-outs I found on the website and created a story basket for my preschool students along with the books that contain various versions of the song.

I recently found both these rubber ducks and the plastic container in the dollar section at Target.  

Children can turn the plastic container over and it becomes a "story prop".  As children sing the song, they can move the ducks over the container or "the hill".   

Don't forget to SING, SING, SING with your children or students.  It will help them develop the concept of rhyme and is a very effective way to build vocabulary.  

Valentine's Story Basket

One of my MOST favorite reading activities to do with young children are story baskets.  Story baskets are designed to attract young children to literature and enable them to become hands-on with a story.   Children retell the story, page by page, as they interact with the objects in the basket.  

I decided to make a Valentine surprise for my former students:  A Valentine's Story Basket.  Their current teacher is my friend and I know they will love using the story basket in their library center during the month of February.  

Making a story basket is lots of fun and it's easy to do:)

Start out by choosing a story.  I bought Celebrating Valentine's Day by Kimberly Roark at Lakeshore.  Then, as I was shopping at Target I found objects for the story basket. The Dollar Store is also a GREAT place to shop for story basket objects.

        This book and other easy readers with holiday themes also available online at Creative Teaching Press (CTP).  

You can use a real basket or another container to encourage children to explore the story basket.  I found this colorful bucket and thought the students would enjoy it.

Here are the objects I bought so that the pages come to life as students retell the story after listening to the teacher read it.

My plan is to laminate the hearts and encourage the children to write names of their own friends on the front of the valentines.  So, I must add dry eraser markers and index cards with the names of all the students to the story basket.  

Many objects for story baskets you will already have at home or in your classroom (like this doll).  

All finished!!  Hope they like it.

If you have any experience with story baskets, please post what stories have worked best for you.