Spring Time Fun

I am sitting nice and cozy in my home - watching the worst wind storm I've seen in years out the living room window. It's definitely spring time in Texas! As I look outside - I'm thinking of lessons I would love to do next week given the windy spring season has subsided. It's time for blooms, flowers and bugs! Yes, I said bugs. As much I hate them I love them, especially when I am looking at my clients and their wide-eyed faces or wrinkled up noses. They either love them or hate them as well. But my the language you can cultivate!

One of the lessons I love to do - goes with the book, "In the Tall, Tall Grass" by Denise Fleming. It is a little boy down in the grass exploring all the insects with rhyme, that's one way to enjoy, but the other way is just as fun. We make 4x4 cards of tall grass and glue it on a Popsicle stick. We get down on the floor and explore.

Before hand, I have gone to the dollar store, which is now busting at the seams with spring fling; and bought play rakes, shovels, Easter green grass and miniature plastic bugs - all varieties. Butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, crickets, dragon flies, spiders, and ants to name a few - they have been placed on the floor and hidden - as we are on the floor, they explore and I make the sounds. Butterflies flitter, flutter; ladybugs dart and dip; bees hum and strum and so on. This is appropriate for four year olds through six year old to build vocabulary with action words.

For the younger group of children, I paint a mural of all green and place next to the toys. I have through the years bought lots of rubber stamps of various items through Oriental Trading - what a great outlet for materials. Anyway, I have bugs - the children pick a stamp to use on the mural and as they stamp down on the paper I have them listen, discriminate, and imitate. It could be as easy as 'hop, hop, hop' for grasshopper or a little harder 'flitter, flutter, flitter, flutter' and they go find that bug in the 'tall, tall grass'. Tons of fun for the afternoon.
Oh how I wish the winds would go away!!!