'This is a fun book titled, From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. I really like his stories and pictures. Listen carefully for the action for each animal.' I will read the book only stopping to explain some of the more uncommon animals that they may have never seen such as the flamingo and the peacock. Download activity sheets, coloring pages, and materials for use at home or in the classroom. There are many implements to choose from.
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I am going to engage my students in further discussion about the animals and the verbs by drawing a bubble map. We then will compose sentences for each animal using the accompanying verb.
'That was so much fun acting out the verbs for each animal. I will make a bubble map and put the title of the book in the center, From Head to Toe. I want you to turn to your partner, go knee to knee, eye to eye, using whisper voices. I want you to tell your partner the action word for the Penguin.'
I walk around and listen for conversations that are on task and redirect those that are not.
'Put your hand on your head when you have told your partner what action the Penguin did. Good, I will choose a name stick and have someone tell me the answer. James, what action did the penguin do? Turn his head? Yes, everyone turn your head. I will write Penguin/turn his head and draw a bubble around it and then draw a line from this little bubble to the big bubble. Let's do the other animals. Turn to your partner and tell then what action the giraffe did.'
I continue the partner sharing until all the animals and the action words are written on the board.
'Look at all the action words we now know and can do. How fun. For today's writing i want you to choose one of the animals and write a sentence. The sentence frame you will use is: I can _____. '
I model the sentence writing under the document camera so that the writing is large enough for all the students to see.
'So if you wanted to write about the penguin you would write, I can turn my head. What could you say about the gorilla? I can thump my chest. If your sentence is about a seal, what should be in your picture? A seal, that's right.'
I dismiss my students one row at a time to go to their tables. I ask my class helpers to pass out the story paper.
'I am going to turn the document camera off. I think we can help each other sound out the words for our sentence. If you need to, you can come up to the bubble map to see what the action word is for your animal. I will come around and help you if you want help.'
I walk around and help a few students with their phonetic sounding out of words. I highlight the sentence for one student who forgot his glasses.
I collect the writing papers as they finish. My students sit on the carpet quietly and read library books. I don't want to rush my slower students. Sometimes they are not slow, they draw and color very detailed pictures. I like them to not be rushed so they can finish and feel the satisfaction of doing how they want to. Even though this is a structured activity, there has to be some amount of creativity.
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![From Head To Toe Coloring Pages From Head To Toe Coloring Pages](http://www.supercoloring.com/sites/default/files/styles/coloring_medium/public/cif/2015/07/honey-bee-coloring-page.png)
As part of our All About Me theme, we spent a little bit of time working on learning the parts of the body. More specifically, the head shoulders knees and toes.
Since Nicholas is only 3, we didn’t go too far in depth, but that didn’t stop us from squeezing quite a bit of learning into what we did cover.
In fact, one of the things that we learned is that learning, even just the basics, is a lot more fun when you put it to music.
Yep, that’s right! The age old song, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, that you’ve probably heard a hundred times (if you have small children, you’ve probably sung it a few hundred more).
Both of my kids love music and you can usually find them dancing along with just about anything so I knew that this would probably be a big hit. Turns out, you can dance to some music, practice fine motor skills, color with some crayons, and work on some early math all at the same time 🙂
To start, we watched the Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes video by Super Simple Songs. Well, if we’re being honest, we watched it about 10 times and I will probably see it in my sleep but Nicholas really seemed to enjoy it and had a lot of fun following along.
After we had the song down, we moved on to the fun part.
With our Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes printable (which you can grab at the bottom of the post), we found all of the body parts mentioned in the song and started coloring.
Once you’ve got your little guy (or gal) all colored, break out the scissors!
I’ve been trying to incorporate more structured fine motor skill activities into our days since that is one area that Nicholas seems to struggle with and the progress he has made really is amazing. We’ve still got a bit of work to do to get him caught up in that area but we’re definitely getting there!
Have your child cut along the dotted lines. This is where our fine motor practice is really coming into play.
Once all of our pieces were cut, we mixed them up and used some problem solving skills to solve the puzzle and put them back into the correct order.
Finally, because Nicholas wanted to hear the song (again), we watched the video while pointing to the correct pieces as the corresponding body parts were named in the song.
So even though this song will probably now be on an endless loop through my brain, we managed to practice quite a few skills all within a single fun activity. Not too bad for an afternoon.
Ready to give it a try? Grab the printable! We’ve got both the little guys and the little gals covered 🙂
Head Shoulders Knees and Toes - Girl Printable
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