J is for Jungle

After a couple weeks off from Letter of the Week, Arin was asking to do it again.  Today, we read Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreae. 

Ella is very much into stickers right now (you can see them all over her arm in this post!).  The first activity the girls did was to place jungle animal stickers on the letter Jj.  Arin had an upper case J, because she is the big sister and Ella got the lower case j, because she is the little sister.

Ella worked on her wooden animal puzzle.  She has been enjoying puzzles lately and gets them out to do even when we are not doing school.

Arin also enjoys puzzles.  I bought her a 100-piece Baby King of the Jungle (lion cub) puzzle.  It was the first time that she had done a 100-piece puzzle and I knew as soon as I took it out of the box that it'd be too much of a challenge for her to do by herself.  It turned into a great bonding session for the two of us.  Arin is such an encourager and every time I would get a piece, she'd congratulate me!  Arin did surprise me because she got more pieces than I expected her to and she had so much patience during this activity.  She stayed with it until the end and then asked to do it a second time!

Arin worked on an animal graph.  I made a chart with five animals listed on it.  Then, I gave her animal cookies in the same shapes as those listed on the graph.  Arin placed the cookies in the right spots on the graph.  Then, we talked about which one had the most, the least, which had the same, etc.  I quizzed her on greater than and less than using the graph.  Finally, I asked her a few simple addition problems, also using the data collected on the chart.

I placed three different stickers (monkey, lion, tiger) under three identical lids.  I placed them face-up in front of Ella and asked her which one she wanted to find.  Once she told me, I flipped them all over, mixed them up, and asked her to find it.  She loved this game.  Orginally, I had planned this game only for Ella, but Arin wanted to be involved as well.  She also loved it.
In fact, they both liked it so well, that they ended up playing it together while I made lunch.

Arin had her first introduction to measuring by using a ruler.  I bought a couple of the grow-an-animal toys (lion & zebra) from the Dollar Tree.  Arin measured them today, before putting them in water.  She wrote her findings down on a chart and she will measure them again tomorrow and then the next day to see how much they grown each day.

I found a three-part jungle animal puzzle in the bargain aisle of Target.  Both girls loved this puzzle.  They put the animals together the right way and they also thought it was funny to put different animal pieces together.

Finally, I cut greeting cards in pieces (an idea I got from Chasing Cheerios) to form puzzles. Ella's puzzle was a simple, four-piece puzzle, while Arin's was more difficult.

Linked to:
Tot School
Preschool Corner (&5k too!)