Snip Snap! What's That?

We found this book when we lived in Georgia and it quickly became a favorite.  However, we don't own the book and we hadn't read it since we moved back to Florida.  I knew the girls would be thrilled to check it out from the library again last week.  Each day, we read the story and did a quick activity to go along with it.

Summary of the story (copied from front of book)

Three siblings are frightened by the wide mouth, long teeth, and strong jaws of the alligator who has crept up the stairs - until they decide they have had enough.

Day One

A week or so ago, the girls painted pottery.  It was such a hit that I knew they would like to do something similiar again.  This time, I found wooden alligators ($1 at Michael's) that they were able to paint (paint and paintbrush included). 

Day Two

Arin reviewed some of the three letter words ending in "-ip" or "-ap". 

I cut out two alligators.  On the first I wrote -ip and on the second, I wrote -ap.  The story stars three children (two girls and a boy).  For each word, I cut out two girls and one boy.  I wrote the word's consonants on the girls and the vowel on the boy.  Then, I orally gave Arin a word, she found the correct letters, spelled the word and put it under the correct heading (-ip or -ap).  This quickly became too tedious, which did not surprsie me.  It's been so long since we've worked on structured reading activities that I was mainly trying to see what she remembered.  I ended up finishing the spelling of each word and then we read them together.  She liked that much better.

Day Three

Ella has been begging to do school.  I didn't plan as many activities for her to go along with this book, but I did find these counting cards.  She loves to count and she wanted to do this activity over and over and over!

Day Four

Arin worked on a math project using the alligator theme.  I printed out five alligators and  20 eggs.  On the alligators, I wrote the numbers 1 through 5.  I cut the eggs in half.  On each half of the egg, I wrote part of an addition problem.  Arin was to find all of the math facts that equalled each answer and put it under the correct alligator.  So under the "1" alligator, there would be an egg that had the number 0 on one half and 1 on the other half.  The second egg under the "1" alligator would have a 1 on one half and a 0 on the other half.  She continued this for each egg.  This actvity seemed to be very enjoyable to her.  She enjoys math and she liked finding the pattern under each alligator.

Day Five

We took a field trip to Gatorland.  It was the first time that we've been there and we enjoyed it.  We saw alligators of all sizes (baby up to 13').  Ella got to pet an alligator (Arin was too scared to, even though its mouth was taped shut).  We saw several shows, fed alligators, walked around the swamp, saw all types of birds, fed animals in the petting zoo, and the kids played in the water area.  Their favorite activity was feeding the birds. 

This is the snake Andrew caught on our swamp walk.

Arin's Summary of the Story

The alligator was creeping up the stairs because it wanted to eat the three children.  It bit open the door and walked close to the children.  The children were scared and ran away.  At the end of the story, they said "Alligator, You Get Out!"  Then, the story asked if the alligator was scared.  And it was!  It left and went all the way back home.  The children were happy when the alligator left!

Goodnight Gorilla

This week we read Goodnight Gorilla, by Peggy Rathmann.  We also watched the animated version of the story. 


I asked Arin to summarize this story for me (this is an idea I borrowed from Michelle.  Thanks!)  This is how she retold me the story:
"The gorilla got the keys from the guy that locks all the animals in the zoo.  Then what happened was the gorilla unlocked all the cages, even his own, and all the other animals' cages.  Then, the zookeeper went to his house and the animals went too.  Then the girl (zookeeper's wife) saw the animals and she brought them to the zoo.  Then the gorilla still had the keys when the girl brought them back to the zoo.  The gorilla went back to the house with the mouse.  They put the keys on the floor and then got in bed and went to sleep with the zookeeper and the girl.  That's it!"

I printed a set of animal cards from here and had Arin sequence them.  She needed help to remember which order the hyena and the giraffe were introduced.  Otherwise she did the rest of the sequencing on her own.  I think we'll be doing more of this type of work after reading stories.

I printed a second set of the cards and let Ella use them as matching cards.

Next, the girls both colored a picture of a gorilla (found here).  We used Arin's picture as the cover of her lapbook.  I taped four pieces of cardstock together (green because it is Gg week) and made the book acordian style.

The activities for these two pages came from here and here.

On the next two pages, I glued on animal cages (this game is found here).  I closed each cage with a piece of velcro and then put a velcro dot on the back of each card and also on the space next tot he cage (mostly so it would be secure during storage).  I believe the original directions were something like match the correct key to the correctly colored cage, open the cage and see the animal inside.  Arin is past color matching and Ella was down for a nap, so we revised the directions.  We played a game of guess where the animal is.  Instead of gluing the animals into the cages, we left them loose so we could move them around with each play.  One of us would hide the animals and the other would guess where it was.  For example, if I were looking for the lion, I might guess it was in the blue cage.  I would take the blue key, place it on the velcro dot beside the cage, open the cage and see what was hiding inside.  If it was the lion then the turn would end.  If it wasn't the lion, then we'd take another key and try a different cage.  We kept the keys on the velcro dots until we found the right cage (this way we could see how many turns it took to guess the right cage).  Arin especially liked this game!

On one of the back pages, I printed Gg dot-to-dot, which can be found here.

I glued this gorilla maze to another of the back pages.  It was really too advanced for Arin.

On the back page, I printed a small fact sheet about gorillas (found here) and I also wrote down all of the Gg words that Arin could think of.

Make Way For Ducklings

During Dd week, I read Make Way For Ducklings by Robert McCloskey to the girls. 

This story is about Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, who are looking for the perfect place to live and raise their family of ducklings.  They are looking for a place without any foxes or turtles.  They come across the Public Gardens in Boston, where they are fed daily by the park visitors and also by the policeman, named Michael.  The ducks decide this is the perfect place to live with their ducklings.

This story has become so popular that there is a statue located in Boston that was made in honor of this book.  You can check it out by clicking on this link.

We put together the girls' USA floor puzzle.  Then, we found Massachusettes and Boston on the map. 

To go along with the story, we fed the ducks (and geese and swans and whatever other birds were there at the time). 

This swan was so gentle.  It ate bread out of Andrew's hand.

This swan was not so gentle.  It skipped the bread and just tried to eat Andrew's hand.

For a special dessert, we made duck ice cream treats!