A house for a hermit crab - Part 1

Mommy was inspired by some works of lapbooking and we decided to start something this holiday with our favourite author Eric Carle's "A house for a hermit crab". Progress was slow but each day we did a little. We started off with knowing the months through retelling the story and knowing a little more about hermit crabs through this craft. These definitely interest Keziah but when we went on to doing things related to English and Math, her interest kind of weaned a little. Guess it's about motivating her to go on.

Plain versus decorated

Some vocabulary cards to bring out some words we read in the books

Keziah coloured these and we laminated them to be used as puppets to retell the story

Facts…well a little boring for the little ones for now…Mommy has to think how to make facts more interesting…

We sang some rhymes and did some crawling side to side like crabs! Kids loved them!

We're Little Orange Crabs


Sung to: "The Farmer in the Dell"
 
 

We're little orange crabs
 

Who live down by the sea,
 

And where we do go
 

We're quick as quick can be.
 
 

We're little orange crabs
 

Who like to run and hide,
 

And when you see us walking by
 

It's always side to side.

Five Little Sea Creatures

Five little sea creatures


On the ocean floor;

The lobster walked away


Now there are four.

Four little sea creatures


Living in the sea;


The octopus crept away


Now there are three.

Three little sea creatures


Wondering what to do;


"Good-bye," said the starfish


Now there are two.

Two little sea creatures


Not having much fun;


Off swam the sea horse


Now there is one.

One little hermit crab


Sad and all alone,


Back came the starfish,


Back came the sea horse,


Back came the octopus,


Back came the lobster,


Then all five went home.

CRAB FINGERPLAY  (Math/Language)


One little crab by the sea so blue, (Hold up one finger.)


Along came another crab, and that made two. (Hold up two fingers.)


Two little crabs swimming in the sea,


Along came another crab, and that made three. (Hold up three fingers.)


Three little crabs playing on the shore,


Along came another crab, and that made four. (Hold up four fingers.)


Four little crabs so glad to be alive,
Along came another crab, and that made five. (Hold up five fingers.)


Five little crabs just having some fun,


Crawling on the sand in the hot summer sun. (Wiggle fingers.)

Few things Mommy planned to cover including simple activities with Abel:

1) Learning about months of the year

2) Math - number sequence, patterning, maze, dot-to-dot, ordinal number and sizing

2) Sea creatures (memory games and recognition)

3) Types of houses

4) Types of shells (field trip to the beach to pick some shells and see if we could spot little crabs burrowing in the sand)

It's definitely a lot of work to prepare all these. Let's see how we progress...