Crazy, Mixed-Up Animals!

After signing in, as we headed upstairs to check the weather, Maddie remarked, "We won't want to stay long 'cause it's COLD outside!".  How right she was!  But we also noticed that the sun quickly came out from behind one of the few clouds and it was very bright, but there was a slight wind that made the air feel very cold.

We put our weather symbols on the board and then sat down for the reading of The Cow That Went Oink by Bernard Most.  It was such a fun, silly story [except when the other animals made fun of the pig and the cow, and they were sad] with the cow and pig having mixed-up voices. We talked about the letter "M" today and that it starts the names of Mirabella and Maddie, and also the word "MOO".
The three children could name all the animals in the book and do most of their sounds, so they were able to help me when all the animals were laughing; such as when the donkey would go, "He-haw-HA!".  At least the book had a happy ending and the cow and pig got the 'last laugh'.

Now it was time to get up and move. We repeated our "Turkey Pokey" from last week and everyone sang, and danced, and giggled as we shook our wings, stomped our drumsticks and shook our tail feathers.  Then to get in a little more movement we blew bubbles and chased about catching them and giggling some more. We knew that bubbles were "round things" that we had studied earlier.

When our wiggles were worn out we sat down to read The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle. We soon learned that the chameleon wasn't going to be happy no matter how many animals he tried to be like, but as he added other animal parts to himself he became more funny-looking and we got some laughs out of that. In the end he discovered he needed to be himself in order to catch a fly for dinner, and so we also learned that it is better just to be ourselves.

Next it was time to look at a surprise on the back of our bulletin board. I had posted pics of crazy mixed-up animals there and we talked about the parts that were put together to make them.

So off we went to the craft table to make our own crazy mixed-up creature. I provided a "body" and a sheet of animal "parts" for each child.

We first cut out and glued the body to our choice of colored paper. Then Moms did the cutting, but children selected the parts they wanted to use and put them where they wanted.

As you can see below, we ended up with some funny creatures.

We also got to take home all the extra pieces and another "body" so we could make another weird creature.  We were also given a bag of candy corn to "feed" us!

There is no Story Hour next week, so everyone may enjoy time with family.  Happy Thanksgiving!
When we meet again on December 4th we will be looking at the book Who Is the Beast? by Keith Baker.