African Savannah: Giraffes

At the beginning of the week we talked about animals that we knew would be found in the African Savannah. You can see this post to find out how I made this blank page a lot more fun for Annabelle.
We also continued to read Born Free. I am quite impressed with how much her attention span has increased in just these couple weeks! I will be doing an upcoming post on activities that I am doing along with this book to make this book come to life for her.

Some fun things that we learned about giraffes this week.....

Their front legs are longer than their back legs (10% longer to be exact). We stood on cans to see what it would be like to be a little taller. We also stood on them with one foot on the ground to see what it would be like to have one leg significantly longer than the other. P.S. Front legs on a giraffe can be up to 6 1/2 feet tall!
We learned that their tongues average 18in. long! Crazy.
Here's another fun fact: Giraffes only sleep 10min.-2hours a day. I would be completely exhausted....
Annabelle's rendition of a giraffe.
Shoe box/paper towel tube giraffe.
It turned out pretty cute. I was surprised to actually find Annabelle using it for pretend play today.
Also to encourage her pretend play I set up a little play area with stuffed animals that would be found in the Savannah.
Success! This girl loves her stuffed animals.
We did do much more with giraffes. However, we will not be finishing it up until tomorrow morning. I will post tomorrow afternoon sometime the really cool 'scrapbook' that we will be keeping this year of all our cool animal adventures.

This week in the curriculum we were to concentrate on the letter S. When I first saw this part of the lesson I thought we would just skip over it. She already knows her letters. Then I thought about it again and knew that she would enjoy the games and she isn't too old to have review and reinforcement of letter sounds.

We went fishing and sorted fish by which pictures started with the S sound and which didn't. I had already had these fish from her preschool year. I printed out some clip art of images that started with S and then animals found in the Savannah (that obviously don't all start with S). She had a fun time, and I was surprised by how much she actually needed this review. Guess I shouldn't assume that she can't forget something after we've learned it.

Coloring her S page. Annabelle really doesn't like to color all that much so to make it fun I bought colored pencils (a medium that she hasn't used before to peak her interest). I also split it up into 4 days to make sure she did her best. She colored two animals a day and actually enjoyed doing it!
We also discussed how the letter S is used at the end of words to make them plural. We played a game where I would say a word and then she would add an S to make it more than one. It took her a good 15min. to understand this concept and what I wanted from her.

We also made a snake out of a paper towel tube.....
which she has played with as well.

That was our week! I almost started her language arts this week, but thought I should stick to my original plan and wait another week or so. It will be nice to get a good rhythm going before adding anything else. Stop back tomorrow evening to see what else we did with giraffes. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to Preschool Corner. :)