Little Red Hen Unit Lesson Plans

Since we’ve finished our ABCs and are using our calendar to learn our 123s, I decided our next focus will be on different books we can get from the library, using ones with a lesson that we can use in our own day to day activities. For the first unit, I have chosen The Little Red Hen. We are using Byron Barton’s version. We read his adaptation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears a few weeks ago, and I like his simple pictures and easy wording. I found a bunch of activities via Pinterest to pair along with the book, and I looked up some other titles that also have a ‘helping others’ theme. I wrote up some lesson plans for the week (that I probably won’t follow in order) to keep me on track for what projects I want to do, what fine and gross motor tasks I want to work on, and a general focus skill for the kids to pick up on. I included my plans and I will update at the end of the week with pictures of our finished projects, and how things went!

Helping Others

May 18-May 22

Book of the Week: Little Red Hen – Byron Barton

Related Books for the week: Little Blue Truck, Little Miss Helpful

Monday May 18

Art & Sensory: Making our own Little Red Hens out of shapes

Fine Motor: Using a glue stick to glue the hen together

Language: How did the Little Hen feel when her friends wouldn’t help her?

Music & Movement: Hellabaloo Game

Focus Skill: Helping others

Tuesday May 19

Art & Sensory: Life Cycle of a Chicken (gluing)

Fine Motor: Gluing parts of the life cycle to another paper

Language: Talking about the life cycle of a chicken

Music & Movement: Walking on a ‘tightrope’ (carpenter’s tape) across the floor

Focus Skill: Helping others

Wednesday May 20

Art & Sensory: Coloring in pictures of events that happened during the book

Fine Motor: Using glue sticks to glue the events in order

Language: Talking about the order of the events in the book, using key words like first, second, last

Music & Movement: Chicken Dance

Focus Skill: Helping others

Thursday May 21

Art & Sensory: Red Hen Handprint Picture

Fine Motor: Putting up the pieces of the story on the felt board

Language: Retelling the Little Red Hen story ourselves with the felt board

Music & Movement: Cosmic Yoga

Focus Skill: Helping others

Friday May 22

Art & Sensory: Making bread like the Little Red Hen (salt dough)

Fine Motor: Kneading the salt dough to the right consistancy

Language:  Who will we share our dough with? Who helped us?

Music & Movement: Shape and Color Hunt

Focus Skill: Helping others

Week Nine Recap

I can't believe it is the ninth week of doing these lessons! It has been a fun experience and I overheard Lily tell Tristan while they were playing in her room "Ok now we do a project" and I watched Tristan pretend to paint Lily's feet and stamp them on a pretend piece of paper!!

Monday:

Whew today was a rough one. I am not sure if it was the weekend apart from each other, or the impending time change or the barometric pressure or an alien takeover, but wow did we have a rocky morning. There was about fifteen minute total where no one whined, cried, hit, bit, screamed, or threw a fit. I would say about seven of those peaceful non-consecutive minutes were spent doing some projects. We painted our letter of the week which was an Iguana I, and glued a witch together out of triangles. We took a lot of deep breaths today and had a few time outs given. Luckily, after nap and lunch we became our normal selves again and kept the aforementioned bad behavior to our usual minimum.

Tuesday:

Things were a lot better today. We had a few time outs and deep breathing exercises, but it was nothing compared to the meltdown chaos that yesterday provided. After our breakfasts, we helped each other get out of our PJs and put our clothes for the day on. The focus skill for this week is putting our pants on and pulling them up with little to no help. I am making a conscious effort to not put Lily in skinny jeans this week so we can master this skill. Once we were dressed and ready to go, we had some free play time so I could get some laundry started. This is usually when things get a little hairy, so once they did, we switched back to a more structured day and climbed into our seats for project time. We made a skeleton by gluing Q-tips to a piece of black paper. I made the outline of a body and handed them each a handful of Q-tips. At first, Tristan started dotting his Q-tip in the glue like we were painting and Lily started placing hers horizontally, which looked like ribs. Chances are, this project will not be staying glued on very long, but as usual, it is fun to see how they tackled a project when given little instructions. We zipped through that project so we practiced some more fine motor skills and peeled stickers to decorate premade monster faces.

Wednesday:

It was quite warm out today, so we started the morning off after breakfast with a nice looooong walk. I found more sidewalk chalk at Walmart last night finally so when we got back, we spent some time coloring with the new full sized pieces. Lily and Tristan also helped me to get some of the leaves out of our play area, and since it was warm enough, we took off our shoes and played in the sandbox for a little bit. We came inside to wash hands, use the potty, and get ready for snack, and they started fighting about who was standing where. Yes, toddler problems. Before I could sprint down the hall, they bit each other. I have been trying to keep them as busy and as active as I can, but sometimes I need to minute to grab snack, refill cups, straighten up. I know it’s the age and they are together all the time, but man, this week has been quite a patience tester! I have tried the calm, “use your words” approach, the scary “I am raising my voice sternly at you so please stop” approach, straight up ignoring them, time outs, and everything in between. I just keep telling myself to belly breathe, and if I am calm, they will be calm. Calm but stern? This is totally karma for the seven years of almost constant physical fighting my brother and I did which was pure torture to my mom. For that I am sorry!

After nap and lunch, we were refreshed and regrouped. During nap, I put together a few possible projects we could do, depending on the mood of the afternoon. We ‘painted’ a piece of paper candy corn with orange, yellow, and white rice and then we built a foam scarecrow face using googlely eyes, shredded paper for straw hair, and a foam hat. I was using cheap glue, though, and ended up with a nice clump of sticky rice in my hair from shaking off the excess that I did not find until later. These are the days!

Thursday:

It was back to being quite chilly this morning and the kids were back to being noticeably more behaved, so we did some fun things inside to make the morning go faster (and smoother). While I got my stuff organized, Lily and Tristan spread out a blanket and had a picnic with the fake food. They ended up bundled and snuggled and giggling which was music to my ears. After we cleaned up, we started our projects for the day. I have some odds and ends that need to be completed from previous projects (like the color of the week), so we did some gluing. We painted some paper plates black for spider bodies. While they were painting their plates, I began painting their piggies! I used green on the base of their foot and black up around their toes to make a Franken-foot picture. We took a break to go potty and try out a new game. Using a hula hoop and some packaging tape, I made a spider web that we tossed pompoms at to see if they would stick like bugs. They did not quite stick like I had planned unless you smushed them to the tape, but we still had fun tossing the bugs at the web. I might try this again with different tape and maybe some lighter pompoms or some crumbled up paper. When they started sticking their faces to the tape, we cleaned up and moved on to the next thing---snack. After our snack, we glued on some googlely eyes to both our spiders and our monsters. Then it was time for nap and lunch. After lunch we took a nice long stroller walk but since it was still a little chilly, we came back inside and played with the chalkboard in Lily’s room instead.

Friday:

Happy Halloween! We finished up all of our Halloween themed projects today with a secret spider web watercolor and making an Olaf inspired pumpkin statue! For the spider web, I drew webs on two sheets of white paper with a white crayon and had Lily and Tristan paint over the drawing with water colors! Thank you to Nicole for the idea! The kids went nuts when the web started to show! Lily and Tristan played upstairs in Lily’s room with the dress up clothes and blocks for a little bit while I organized all the junk that has been piling up around my bed. It is so nice to be able to let them play freely in there for short spurts of time while I straighten up. After nap and lunch, I have a few more simple projects up my sleeve, like making a ghost out of cotton balls and gluing to tie up some more loose ends. I am making a taco dip tonight and I might also let them help out! 

Hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! I tried to train Lily and Tristan to go for the good candy this year since last year Lily seemed to be attracted to the shiny silver wrapper of the Three Musketeer Bar where as I am more of a Reeses or Twix girl. Here's to gaining a few pounds and making a few memories this weekend!

September Lesson Plans

In preparation for Ashley eventually having another baby for me to take care of, I decided that next week Lily and Tristan will be going ‘back to school’! I also need to start preparing myself for longer days spent inside once it starts to get colder and we can’t spend a majority of the day outside. The two of them are already on a pretty good schedule, but I would like to add a little more structure, as well as throwing in some sneaky learning tactics. I based my lesson plan model of ones I had to create when I worked for The Learning Experience. For the lessons, I used a combination of things I did with my class, things I found on Pinterest, projects my mom used when she taught, and things I did myself as a child. Each day will include an art or sensory project, a fine motor skill to master, time with music and movement, and a language activity. In addition, each week will have its own focus skill. For example, the first week we will be practicing putting on our own shoes. It could also be a task as simple as making a tower from blocks. Each week will start with introducing a letter and a color and a book that will be the theme for the week. I would like to teach them (and myself) to sign each color and letter as well. When we run out of colors, we will reconnect with our shapes. I am excited to do an array of fine motor and sensory activities with them, especially now that they are older and can handle more activities on their own.

Here’s an example of the lesson model, the projects I plan to do, and the skills we plan to work on. We’re starting off simple and hopefully we’ll all be able to ease into this (slightly) new routine. I am hoping to update this on a daily (more likely weekly) basis and compare what I wanted to get done vs. what we actually got done. I am a realist, so there will be days where certain tasks will not be completed, and that’s fine too. I am very excited to get back into a good groove and watch them learn new tricks!

Week One: September 1-5

Book of the Week: Alligator Alphabet by Stella Blackstone and Stephanie Bauer

Letter of the Week: A

Color of the Week: Red

Monday September 1: OFF

Tuesday September 2

Art & Sensory: Painting the Letter A with water colors

Fine Motor: Using a skinny paint brush

Language: Reading “Alligator Alphabet” and talking about letters

Music & Movement: Dancing to Bop Til You Drop

Focus Skill: Putting our shoes on by ourselves

Wednesday September 3

Art & Sensory: Gluing red tissue paper onto an apple

Fine Motor: Pincher grasp while gluing the tissue paper

Language: Talking about the Letter A and things that begin with it

Music & Movement: “Kids in Action”

Focus Skill: Putting our shoes on by ourselves

Thursday September 4

Art & Sensory: Gluing dyed rice to the Letter A

Fine Motor: Pincher grasp to pick up rice

Language: Talking about things that start with A

Music & Movement: Going on a hunt around the house for things that are red

Focus Skill: Putting our shoes on by ourselves

Friday Septmeber 5

Art & Sensory: Apple stamping pictures of things that are red

Fine Motor: Using an apple as a stamp

Language: Talking about things that are red

Music & Movement: “Exercise Song”

Focus Skill: Putting our shoes on by ourselves