Literature Based Kindergarten, Heckedy Peg

Primary Literture

Heckedy Peg by Audrey and Don Wood. This was our last October book, I wanted something a bit scary to go with Halloween. An evil witch, Heckedy Peg, tricks seven sweet children (all named after the days of week) in to letting her enter their house while their mother is away. Once inside she turns them all into food. Luckily, their mother is able to rescuing them with a few tricks of her own and some cleverness. The book's painted illustrations are stunning. They contain just the right amount of darkness which adds to the suspense-fulness of the book.

Complementary Literature

The kids memorized 'A Week of Birthdays' from The Real Mother Goose. We chose to use Sunday instead of 'the Sabbath day'.

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace;

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go;

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for its living;

But the child that is born on Sunday

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Hansel and Gretel by Rika Lesser and Paul O. Zelinsky. This is a traditional retelling and is accompanied by exquisite paintings, it is a Caldecott Honor book.
King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey and Don Wood. The Woods' have created several fantastic children's books. I, however, chose to use this one as a companion because the illustrations techniques are similar to the ones used in Heckedy Peg. This is a comical tale about a king who refuses to get out of the bathtub. It's sure to have your kids giggling. This book is also a Caldecott Honor book and the illustrations, especially the costumes, are breathtaking.

Learning Activities/Games:

Puzzle matching game, children can match the correct child to the food he was turned into and the present he requested. I've made the printable available (for free) here.

Days of the week color wheel. This printable is from Mr. Printables.

Please check our homeschooling page for more children's literature and unit ideas.

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A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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