Katy No Pocket

We just finished Katy No Pocket by Emmy Payne this week and as always, had a great time. The best go along book was Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle. I don't think there are any Eric Carle books that I don't like and this one fits right in by helping us talk about mommy animals and their babies. One of Stephen's favorite was Gluey: a snail tale by Vivian Walsh since he has become interested in magical fairytale type books. Imogene's Antlers by David Small, The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson were also favorites of the week. Stephen was able to recall the Katy No Pocket story by the second evening and it wasn't long before we were ready for our big family activity. Katy was a Kangaroo that didn't have a pocket for her baby. She was very upset that she didn't have a pocket for her baby, so she decided to ask other mommy animals how they carried their babies. She finally asked Owl how to carry her baby and he said to go to the city to get a pocket. This was a great way to talk about nocturnal owls. The owl in the book was upset that Katy woke him up during the day. We talked about how Owl sleeps during the day and plays at night. Katy went to the city and found a man with an apron that carried tools. We decided to use our aprons to carry our stuffed animals. We found that some of the animals were too big and some were just right.

We usually lay our our matching cards on the floor, but I did it differently with the Katy No Pocket Cards. One set was laid on the table and I handed them the matching set one at a time. This gave us time to talk about each letter since Stephen is starting to recognize letter and recall their sounds.

Rhea's animal file folder game by http://preschoolprintables.com/

Itsy Bitsy Spider Book by http://www.kidzone.ws/

Stephen painted his kangaroo, pocket, and baby first and then cut out the pieces after it dried. We then glued it together and made a nice frame that Stephen was especially proud of.
Rhea's kangaroo

Stephen cut out pictures of all the animals that Katy put into her pockets. I highlighted the beginning of each word and we worked on starting sounds. I pasted the words and he was pretty successful in matching starting sounds and beginning letters to the appropriate animal.

Our last activity of the week was to measure how far a kangaroo could jump. We looked it up on the computer and found that the average jump is 25 feet, but someone must have recorded 40 feet. We marked out both 25 feet and 40 feet and decided that 25 feet seemed to be more reasonable unless it was a REALLY big kangaroo. We tried to jump as far as a kangaroo, but the kids quickly lost interest in that activity since it was impossible and riding their bikes seemed like more fun after being couped up in the house for so many months. How could mom possibly try to make us learn something when we could be playing? The upside was that Stephen remembered how far the jump was by the next day, so I call this unit a sucess.