Little Red Hen

The project for May 2010 over at Unplug Your Kids  is "bread".  I avoided doing last months project because I could not think of anything creative for "flat" and at first I could only think of the obvious for bread and actually bake some.  Then I was looking for some links to go with the story bags I have been trying to put together and I found a link to an online version of "The Little Red Hen".  Well that was my lightbulb moment so here are the resources to go with the story.
The story itself is thought to be a folk tale which was originally written in the 19 th century.  The hard working red hen finds a grain of wheat and plants, grows, reaps, and mills the wheat and then bakes the flour into bread.  Along the way she asks the "who will help me...?" of the lazy animals where she lives all of whom answer "Not I".  Today there are many versions of the tale and which version you have dictates the animals involved in the tale but the choral nature of the text is usually common to each version.  At the end of the tale the red hen having done all the work keeps all the bread for herself - the moral of the tale,hard work pays off and if you want to share the benefits you have to work with the team.
The story can also be used to teach plant life cycles; sequencing, farm animals, and crops as well as linking into a baking session!
Without further ado here is a list of resources you could use to tie in with this version.  This version has a duck, a dog and a cat as well as the hen but obviously if your version has different animals you might need to adapt it slightly.

• online audio version of the story if you want one with words only here is one from Enchanted Learning 
• Wheat to bread sequencing cards 
• paper craft duck from DLTK 
• online jigsaw from First School
• Painting/printing activity.  Make duck and chicken footprints on large bits of paper, use a plastic fork for the chicken feet and a spatula for the duck feet - talk about webbed v. non-webbed feet.
• How to draw a cat from Chunky Monkey
• dog wordsearch
• count by two's hen dot-to-dot
• hen maze

Photos to follow once I get my camera back from OH!

Bubbles bubbles everywhere

In honour of the sphere project over at unplug your kids we got out the bubble mixture today. Since it is inches deep in snow in the garden the bubble machine was replaced by good old lung power whilst the boys shared their evening bath.
B loves bubbles - in fact I think one of his very first words was "bubble" and being only just over 2 gets very excited when we use them. He also wants to blow them himself so the bubble fest was punctuated by "me try, me try!" he even managed to blow a few; he has got the blow air bit right but does it through clenched teeth rather then making the right shape with his lips, it was nice to see that even when he only blew one bubble rather than a stream like everyone else he didn't give up and sulk (he is so not his brother and sister!).
For the older ones I asked them "why is a bubble spherical?" "Can you blow bubbles that are other shapes?" This is what we plan to do today. We will use some plastic coated wire to make bubble blowers that are other shapes instead of just a circle and see what shape the bubbles are. R with her usual initial enthusiasm has bet me thousands of millions of pounds that she can blow a square bubble. That's me off to buy a retirement villa somewhere warm then!

Unplug your kids project: sphere

This months project on Unplug your kids is "Sphere". In the past the projects have been weekly and despite our best intentions by the time I managed to think of or fit in an activity to match the project the week was well and truly over. One of these days I will be a super-organised mega-tidy model of efficiency; round about the time that I celebrate my one thousandth birthday and win the Nobel Prize! Now however they are appearing monthly instead so we stand at least a chance of getting organised before the party is over.
This weekend we had yet more snow (like the 10+ weeks -yes weeks!- that we had snow on the ground weren't long enough) so we took this as a sign and went outside in the garden to have (probably) the last snowball fight of the year. Snowballs are spheres right! We played "who can throw the snowballs the farthest", "who can throw the snowballs the highest", "who can throw the snowball into the goal"(a basket) and "who can get the snowball through the basketball hoop". Sadly I have no pictures as bitter experience last year taught me that my over-enthusiastic son, snow and cameras don't mix. I hope if you are taking part in the project you have as much fun as we did.