Time For Tots: Pond Life

I often use a lot of the same resources for my Time for Tot's day; so yesterday when I found this new AWESOME site I was so excited. It is called Pre-Kinders: Resources for Pre-K Teachers. It has so many ideas for our theme that I couldn't even use a lot of them.

And what was our theme for this week-Ponds and the things that live in them. No trips to any ponds, but still so much fun!

We began by reading Little Quack's New Friend by Lauren Thompson.
We talked about how frog was still kind, even though most of the ducks were not nice to him at first. And then we talked about the pond they lived in.

We then created our own pond, i.e. a big blue blanket, and added some animals that lived in the pond. Then I asked what was one thing all the pond animals had in common. After I gave them the hint it was related to how they were born, Lucas immediately said they come from eggs!The kids each became an egg and when I tapped them they cracked open and were baby turtles, who of course need a shell. They then had to try and crawl around while keeping their shells on.Alex soon, all on her own, became an alligator and was trying to eat the baby turtles and so we (I became a turtle at this point) would hide in our shells whenever the alligator got close.

We then practiced writing by tracing the word duck, and even wrote it a a few times. While we were doing this, Lucas said "this is so much fun!" and actually wrote the word duck several times without any extra prompting from me. I was so happy as this is something he would never have done when we first started our Time for Tot's days.

He really was happy, he was trying to not smile funny and not close his eyes, not trying doesn't always work

We then helped the turtle find his way back to the pond with a maze.

Next came a Counting/Bingo type game. We were supposed to use a dice and then stamp or cross-out the number of turtles as rolled, but I couldn't find the dice. So instead I made the numbers 1-6 on some red and green fish. We then randomly drew a red fish and green fish; then if the green fish had a higher number we got to add that many jelly beans to our card; if the red number was higher we took away jelly beans. Once the card was all filled the kids got to eat their jelly beans. They loved it and Lucas proved he could put all 8 jelly beans in his mouth at once.

Did you know frogs can jump 10-times their body length? I didn't until I was preparing for this. I had a printout of a frog and we measured it (ours was 4 inches), we then made little marks on some long paper every four inches and labeled them until we had ten 4-inch sections. The kids then jumped this distance. I then showed them how far they would have to jump based on their height if they could jump proportionally the same length as a frog.

And finally we ended with a little game of memory, except in this game rather than there being two pictures, there was the picture and the word they had to match up.
It was a wonderful day!

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Resources:

• Inspiration for most of our activities came from Pre-Kinders, here.
• Pictures of animals in pond came from Pre-Kinders, here (scroll down page)
• Tracing Paper for "Duck" came from Lanternfish, here
• Turtle Maze came from Kaboose.com, here
• "Bingo" turtle cards came from Pre-Kinders, here
  
• Fish pictures I printed for Bingo game came from daniellesplace.com, here
  
• Picture of our frog came from Alphabet Soup, here
• Memory Matching Cards came from Kaboose.com, here
  

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If your kids are like mine and like to pretend to be animals, you should check out this great giveaway on Tutu's Bliss. It is for the cutest animal ears, paws and accessories that kids can wear. I am hoping I win so when Alex pretends she is a doggie she can wear these instead of socks on her hands and feet for her paws.

(Paw picture from Tutu's Bliss)