Preschool - Jungle

So it's another week and another theme.  This past week we went with Jungle!  I decided to deviate from the Letter of the Week curriculum and am mostly just using the theme as a jumping off point at this point.

First, we listened to A Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saens and danced around our living room pretending to be animals in a jungle.  I threw pillows and blankets in various places to help pretend we were in a jungle.  Couches became trees, pillows were rocks, blankets spread length wise were logs, and we even ended up with some sort of pretend water feature that Green Bubbles kept ending up in.  The kids had a lot of fun with this one and it got a lot of our wiggles out.

 We also made these paper plate lions.  Little Miss picked blue for her lion while Green Bubbles went for more tradtional colors.  After coloring their plates I gave them the noses and eyes to glue on themselves.  I drew the smiles and whiskers though.  They really liked making the lions and Little Miss spent the entire week walking around with her lion roaring at everyone.  These were a big hit!

The books this week (note: links are afflicate links) --

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild - We read this one at the same time as our dancing game. It was the perfect fit since the kids were already keyed up and roaring whenever Mr. Tiger roared was acceptable at the moment.  And my kids were totally wild the beginning of the week too.  We just got back from a weekend trip and they weren't back into our normal routine yet.  Both loved this book, but I think the favorite part was when Mr. Tiger swam in the fountain and took off all his clothes.

Crocodile Beat - A story about a lot of animals making noise, waking up a crocodile, and a hero lion!  Green Bubbles loved the ending of this book and Little Miss got very involved when she realized the crocodile was awake and hungry.  We made our lion plates after reading this book too!

If I Were a Lion - A story about a little girl who's in trouble for being wild.  But she doesn't think she's wild at all and compares herself to a bunch of real wild animals.  While this one might be a stretch for a 'jungle' theme, I've read this one before with Green Bubbles when he was Little Miss' age and knew I wanted to bring it up again.  Especially since they are both in the wild stage right now!

Verdi - The story of a baby python living in the jungle who doesn't want to turn grow up and turn green.  Verdi wants to stay yellow because he thinks only yellow snakes are fast, fun, and exciting.  After an accident Verdi understands why the green snakes act the way they do and, even though he grows up as well, he learns he can still have fun.  This book was cute but for the littles was a bit of a challenge.  The beginning was tough but about half way through it Green Bubbles got more into it.  He said his favorite part was when Verdi met the baby snakes, which was the very end of the book.

The Little Little Girl with the Big Big Voice - Little Miss' favorite for the week, probably because she is a little girl with a big voice as well.  This little girl scares away a lot of big tough animals because of her big voice.  That is until she meets the lion and giggles ensure.

Gumption! -  A cute story about a little boy named Peter who goes on an adventure with his Uncle where he learns all it takes is a little gumption (and a lot of great luck) to have a great time! Green Bubbles liked this one a lot.  I think because the boy saw and did things that the uncle never even noticed.  There were elephants, crocodiles, and snakes as they made their way to the jungle and the gorilla within.