Letter O preschool day

O is for Octopus!

Gathering Activity: Build with blocks or paint color circles (cardstock works best, but ordianary paper will do) I encouraged the children to make four different colors.  Some of them wanted to paint 3 or 4 color circles.  A few of my younger ones just built with duplos and had me paint for them.  I'm not super picky as long as they have fun.  (Boys especially often learn from blocks and Legos better than paint.)  I used finger paint since thats what I had, but I'm sure washable tempera paint would be best.  I had a pile of q-tips and paint brushes and textured items to stamp with, but what I liked best was painting the textures with a q-tip and then stamping.  I was going for octopus camoflauge so I did orange swirls for coral, q-tip dots for bubbles, blue/green/purple for rocks, and I did a purple fish.  The kids free paint was very cute, the ones I did were a bit boring. I didn't have any full circles left for the picture, sorry!

 If a child's color circle doesn't have four, distinct backgrounds or if they want to use colors from more than one circle you can cut and paste/tape down onto the card stock and then outline it with a sharpie.  

If the paint dries, these can be assembled at class, otherwise make holes for the fasteners and show the parents a sample and have them fasten at home.  I put our paintings in the dehydrator for 20 minutes to speed drying times, but that is probably not something most people have on hand.

color circles

Letter Awareness:

We looked for the letter O on favorite food packages and ate some!  Orange juice would have been good for this or cheerios and Froot Loops.

Literacy:

Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan

before reading=Do you go to bed at night or in the morning?  When do you think baby owls go to bed?  What does an owl do for fun all night long?  This is a funny kind of bedtime story because the owl goes to sleep in the morning!

Octopus Alone by Divya Srinivasan

before reading=does anyone ever bug you? do you ever want to be alone where it is quiet?  Do you know someone who is shy?  Are you shy?  An octopus is shy, watch her hide in her cave and watch everyone else play!  

while reading= when she is happy in her cave she is ________(orange)

how many seahorses come to tickle her?________(1,2,3)

When she leaves the cave what color does she turn?___________(blue)

When she is stripey can you find her?

Here she turns pink!

When she is scared of the eel what color does she turn?___________(white)  

See how she changes shape when she swims fast.

After she sees the whale she looks bubbly, where are the bubbles?

She misses her friends, so she goes home, can you find them all?  What fish is the prettiest?  Do you see the shark?

Science:

Watch this 4min video of real octopuses playing hide n' seek.  Gray plant, scared giant cloud, brown rock, green plant.  Where's the Octopus?  (I skip over the color cells part).  There is a 1 min mimic octopus film that shows zebra stripes and the octopus being a poisonous fish too!

Free Play and Take Home Craft:

I finish with free play while we assemble the take home craft.  

brass fasteners ($3 walmart), tape, glue stick, doubled sided tape (if possible), sharpie marker (optional).

top layer: Print the octopus on transparency paper (similar price to color prints) or trace onto a page protector with sharpie and cut it out.  Print the text pages on regular paper glue or double sided tape together.

:

I attached the octopus text page on top of the transparency with double sided tape for speed, but glue or cleat tape on the edges could workk too.  Put this on top of the color circle.  Stab a hole in the middle with an exacto knife or something very sharp.  Insert a brass fastener.  If the color circle is still drying just put the holes in the transparency page and color circles.  The pages can be fastened together later.