Materials:
Laminated letter M for each child
Book: What Will Fat Cat Sit On
Puppet for each child
Vocabulary and basic Concepts:
On/off, not, sitting, mad, sad, worried, happy. scared, dog, cat, cow, chicken, pig, mouse (plus animal sounds), next, behind, What questions, Where questions, emotions.
Transition: Must Be Santa - Raffi. (first three verses only)
We are going to be caroling to the people in the front office on our last day before the holiday break. We'll be singing Jingle Bells and Must Be Santa. We'll also be shaking jingle bells from our instrument box.
Pre-literacy: Let's talk about the letter M! It goes up and down like mountains. Draw up the mountain and go back down. Go up the next mountain and down to the town. Who has a mmmmm sound in their name? What words have the mmmm sound in them? Mom, monster, mad, mouse, mouth, moon, family, yummy, tummy, game, name, home.
We're reading a book titled What Will Fat Cat Sit On? by Jan Thomas. Jan has a lot of fun books. Go find them at your library.
Fat Cat has a problem! (Part of Highscope is learning Conflict/Resolution. We are constantly working with the children to learn how to solve problems together. This book was great to emphasize conflict/resolution because everyone needs to agree on the resolution before the problem is solved.)
What will Fat Cat sit on? The animals do NOT want Fat Cat to sit on them. We looked at the animals' faces to guess how the animals felt about it. Some looked worried or scared. Dog looked MAD! The animals had to come up with a solution to the problem. Did Fat Cat agree to the solution?
After the book, each child picked an animal puppet to use. We went all around the room to find places for our animals to sit on. Some were silly (sitting on the coat rack, sitting on Miss Carrie's head), and some were logical (sitting on other chairs or the rug). We also worked on negation (Not) as in "Miss Carrie does NOT want the animals to sit on her head."
For our kids who are working to develop language, we worked on 2- and 3- word phrases (EX: Sit on. Sit on [object].) Kids with middle language skills increased the length of the phrase (EX: My [animal] is sitting on [object].) Our advanced peers working on negation and narration (EX: My animal] is NOT sitting on the [object]. My animal is sitting on the [object].)
At the end, everyone put their puppets on the rug and sat on a letter. (What letter/color are you sitting on?) Then we moved like our favorite animal to the tables to get ready for Snack Time.
(Be sure that when you read this at home, stop and talk together about the facial expressions, the animals, etc. Let your child label the animal before you. Ask "What does the cow say?" Be silly while you make animal sounds together. Do more than just read the words on the page. )
