Tag Archives: picture book lessons

Princess School: The Rapunzel Engineering Challenge

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With our Rapunzel engineering challenge, we practiced building a tower (and learned about foundations) as well as retelling a favorite story.One subject keeps my preschooler interested right now, and that is princesses. She loves Sofia the First. She loves the other Disney princesses. She loves ponies with long shimmering hair. She loves dressing like a princess and acting like a princess. If I can add princesses into school time, then I’ll get her attention. This week for Princess School, we did a Rapunzel engineering challenge as we built a block tower for Rapunzel to let down her hair from. Of course, then we needed to act out the story with our new scenery. Continue reading →

Archimedes Water Displacement Science Lesson

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Read about Archimedes and then create your own Eureka moment with a water displacement science in the kitchen lab to find the volume of rocks or another odd-shaped object.

We’ve learned how to find the volume of a cubical object (such as my son’s bedroom). But how does one find the volume of something as odd-shaped as a rock? Using Archimedes’ story as an example, we made our own kitchen Archimedes water displacement science experiment to understand the concepts and reach our own “Eureka” moment.

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Zoo Flakes: Symmetrical STEAM Snowflake Craft

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Learning about snowflakes is a perfect lesson for learning about symmetry.  When we read Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell, we got a unique alphabet of zoo animals as well as instructions for making our own symmetrical STEAM snowflake craft.  Continue reading →

An Alphabet of People in the Community

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We learned about an alphabet of people in our community by using LMNO Peas as the springboard for our own A to Z book of people.I loved the picture book LMNO Peas by Keith Baker from the first time I read it. Basing our activity on the book’s list of jobs to do, we made our own A to Z book of people in the community. The last page asks us, just as the Peas do, “Who Are You?” It’s an activity that got my daughter thinking. I asked her the question, “What activities do you do that are a part of who you are?”  Continue reading →

Gingerbread Man Hide and Seek

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After reading Gingerbread Man Loose in the School, we played gingerbread man hide-and-seek, where we had to find him in our school room!In The Gingerbread Man Loose in School by Laura Murray, the familiar character from the tale of the Gingerbread Man has now been retold in a new way. In this book, the Gingerbread Man has been created by a classroom. After he has come out of the oven, he is looking for his class! As he explores the school, he has a number of adventures before he finds his class, who has also been looking for him. When we read the book this week, we decided to continue the fun by playing Gingerbread Man hide-and-seek in our “school,” aka our basement. Continue reading →

Gross Motor Moon Phases Lesson

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The picture book Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me teaches about moon phases and encourages kids to get up and moving!Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle is a fantasy story about a papa and his little girl who loves the moon and dancing. One night, she thinks about dancing with the moon and asks her papa to get the moon for her. Naturally, he gets a ladder and climbs it to the moon. Then the moon explains that he will be smaller soon. So, Papa waits for the moon to get small, and then carries it down to his waiting daughter.
What a perfect way to introduce the concept of moon phases to a little one! As a bonus, the book suggests that we dance. A gross motor activity during reading time is a perfect combination for preschool!
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Creating Animals with Hearts: Picture Book Preschool

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After counting all the hearts in the animals in My Heart is Like a Zoo, we had to try our hand at making our own heart animals. Strawberry also made her own blue shape monster.My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall was an interactive picture book for us, just the way a picture book preschool lesson should be. The author, who is a graphic designer, has created a zoo full of animals, each one created using hearts of all sizes. The text provides similes comparing ones’ heart to the animals (such as “eager as a beaver”). Strawberry loved counting the hearts on each page, and we made our own heart animals. Her favorite page in the book is the hippos drinking apple juice. Continue reading →

How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World Activities

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We learned about where food comes from as we read How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World.As I mentioned before, we’re following Jamie from Simple Homeschool in her #GiveYourChildTheWorld book club this summer. How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman was one of the first picture books we picked up for this book club.  We’ve had a lot of fun doing some activities to go along with the book.  Continue reading →

Learning about Color Mixing with the Color Kittens

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The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown is a simple Little Golden Book about two cats, Brush and Hush, who love to paint with colors. There is a hint of fairy tale in their story (as it is the explanation of how the world has so many colors) and the text has a pleasant but irregular rhyme that makes it a delight to read aloud. Brush and Hush’s adventures in making “all the colors in the world” are childlike and loveable. Color mixing and making our own paintings is a natural progression from reading The Color Kittens together.
We practiced mixing our own colors after reading The Color Kittens. Then we painted our own pictures with "all the colors in the world." Continue reading →

Our Favorite Hermit Crab Preschool Imagination Game

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Every week, on laundry day, my daughter loves to climb under a laundry basket and pretend she is Hermit Crab from the Eric Carle picture book, A House for Hermit Crab. She asks for a coral or a starfish to put on her “house.”
Last week, she got to meet her cousin’s new pet hermit crabs! She loved how one hermit crab wouldn’t come out of her shell, and one did. She’s talked about it all week. So, the next time laundry day came around, I decided it was about time I provide some hermit crab preschool accessories for her imagination play time! I added in some cut-and-past ordering fun, and she had a great time this last laundry day.
My daughter loves pretending to be a hermit crab when she climbs under an empty laundry basket.
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