This week’s theme was pets. Just perfect for Isla who waivers between being a pet cat or a pet dog herself. She is familiar with both of those and guinea pigs as we have them in our home. I thought it would be fun to introduce other pets that she was not as familiar with. Not Norman was perfect for this as it is about a little boy who gets a goldfish as a pet and he does not want him initially. She took a liking to the story and it was perfect to pull activities based on the goldfish theme.
First, some fishbowl templates from The Artisan Life were great to add numbers to and them count goldfish on at snack time. For more fine motor skills you could add the element of using tweezers or a spoon to get goldfish to place. We just did the numbers 1-6 that day but you could keep going. Goldfish are a favorite snack so in the spirit of the theme we grabbed a box of the multicolored goldfish for some color graphing as well. This can also be done with multiple color bowls or construction paper squares. Lessons that can be eaten are always a hit at any age I believe.
We also got a fishbowl template from The Artisan Life for a fun coloring and glue page because she loves to color and glue things like stickers. It is every child’s style, but it is hers.
Isla is working hard on her letters so reviewing them in fun ways is always important. Growing Book by Book had some fun activities for this story. We modified them a little for her letters and interests. I wrote the letters she has reviewed on the fish, but instead of dotters we used her favorite letter stampers. It helped her have something to match them to. Initially, they were in a basket so that she could pick randomly and look for them, but she later dumped it out because is wanted to find them in the order that I wrote them. That’s where I have learned to be flexible and let her explore it in her way. She was still learning and she was having fun and I was not creating unnecessary conflict with her.
We also used their fish template for simple sight words. She is not reading yet but it did allow her to practice identifying letters and placing them in order. I also think it is important to expose them to things beyond their skill or you won’t learn to move further. For the words, I used her name “mom”, “cat” and “dog” to go along with the theme. Even though we were identifying letters, I asked her the words and planned to sound them out. She recognized her name and when I pointed to mom she said: “that’s you, mommy”. She might not read the word, but she definitely recognized it, so more simple sight words will be in store.
For some more fun we also made a goldfish kite out of a toilet paper roll and some orange tissue paper. Now she can pet goldfish to her gaggle of pets, real, stuffed, and plastic. This girl loves her animals.
