Transition Song: Colors by The Learning Station
Materials: Laminated letter C, Book: Hiding Phil by Eric Barclay, items to hide under (blanket, table, chair, coats)
Vocabulary and concepts: elephant, hat, house, blanket, swimming pool, bath, tree, happy, sad, nose, slide, teeter-totter, under, What questions, Who questions, Where questions.
Pre-literacy: Talk about the letter C. Trace with "Put your finger at the top. Draw half a circle. Now we stop." The letter C can make 2 different sounds. A /k/ sound or a /s/ sound. What words do you know that have a letter C. Miss Carrie's name starts with a letter C using a /k/ sound. Who else has a C in their name? Other C words we discovered include cookie, cupcake, candles, candy, circus, cow, cup. The letter C almost looks like a circle. We looked at the letter backwards, forwards, and upside down.
This week we are reading a fun book by Eric Barclay titled Hiding Phil. I used the book for my READ picture in the front hall by the office. (The READ board features each teacher in the school with a book they recommend. We're supposed to dress or bring props themed with the book. Hence, the reason why I am hiding under the blanket. The kids who take the bus pass the picture to and from the classroom. They like to point at it and remind me "Hey, that is you!)
Hiding Phil is great fun because of the funny places the children try to hide the elephant. We also noticed the dog in the book was silly, too. We looked at the emotions on Phil's face and the children's face. We wondered what would happen on the next page. We asked Where/What/Who questions.
The illustrations are charming. The few words per page combined with the pictures for clues make it possible for kids to learn how to tell the story back to you. After they know it, I like to ask the child to 'read' it to me. Some of their retellings are quite funny! It is a great way to promote language.
After we read the book, the children went around the room to explore what they could hide under. They hid under the table, under chairs, under the cloths that cover the toy shelves, and under the coats on the coat rack. Their very favorite part? I took pictures of them hiding and then we viewed them as a class at the end of Large Group. The children had SO MUCH FUN identifying their friends or themselves on the pictures and telling us WHERE they were hiding.
