A House for Hermit Crab

I can't believe summer is almost over and school will officially start five days a week next week.  In a state of panic, it makes me realize that I have only one more year at home with my 'baby'.  She's growing up way too fast.  In my attempt to soak up as much of her awesomeness as I can, I am going to attempt to blog about more of her last year in preschool with me.

Today, we read an Eric Carle book titled A House For Hermit Crab.   We discussed title, author, front, and back of the book. 

We found all the months of the year throughout the book and talked about our current season of summer and described today's weather.  

After reading the story, we discussed a crab's habitat.  Click here for crab facts.  

We wrote a sentence by sound about a crab.  We used our handprints and circle sponges to make our artwork for our picture.  

Raileigh: Four years, twenty seven days old

This activity not only connected reading and writing, but also worked on other skills: directionality of print, capital and lowercase letters, phonics, sight words, first and last word on a page, spaces between words, and punctuation.  

We counted the number of words in our sentences, the spaces in our sentences, the number of bubbles in our picture, eyes, mouth, and our fingers shown in our picture.   


We also learned a new fingerplay.  It's from Preschool Express by Jean Warren.  Click here for more of her amazing stuff!

CRAB FINGERPLAY  (Math/Language)
One little crab by the sea so blue, (Hold up one finger.)
Along came another crab, and that made two. (Hold up two fingers.)
Two little crabs swimming in the sea,
Along came another crab, and that made three. (Hold up three fingers.)
Three little crabs playing on the shore,
Along came another crab, and that made four. (Hold up four fingers.)
Four little crabs so glad to be alive,
Along came another crab, and that made five. (Hold up five fingers.)
Five little crabs just having some fun,
Crawling on the sand in the hot summer sun. (Wiggle fingers.)
                                          Liz Ryerson

We made a list of our rhyming words and pointed out our sight words that we already know.  

To connect this book even farther, If you have a puppet theater, you may want to make these puppets to go along with your book.  Click here for Puppet Patterns to the story.