The Grasshopper and the Ants...

On Thursday this week our Mother Goose Time lesson was all about the story "The Grasshopper and the Ants."  This story taught us there is a time for work and a time for play!  Unfortunately the grasshopper in this story did not collect any grain all summer long because he was playing his fiddle and enjoyed making music instead.  He asked the ants to give him some grain.  They shared a little, but it would not be enough to feed him all winter long.  We learned through the grasshopper's mistake that we should get our job's done first before we play!

These were the kids responses to the daily topic question, "What kind of work do you do?"

Mother Goose Time provided us with these letter phonic cards for the month of August...

During circle time we passed around the letter A flag as we sang the alphabet song.  When the song ended the person who was holding the letter flag crawled around our circle of friends and pretended to be an ant.

Next, I dumped a pile of blocks out on one side of the room.  We imagined the blocks were pieces of grain and that we were ants (just like in the story for the day).  The kids picked up as many blocks as they could carry and crawled over to the block bucket to put them away.  While we worked we sang, "The Working Ants" to the tune of "The Muffin Man."

Do you know the working ants,

the working ants,

the working ants?

Do you know the working ants?

They work from day to night.

Grasshoppers favorite foods are plants in the grass family such as corn.  Mother Goose provided the following supplies for a math activity.  The kids cut apart their cards and then turned all the number cards face-down.  They chose a number for the grasshopper and a number for the ant.  I asked the kids to compare the two numbers by counting out the same amount of corn on each card for each insect.  The kids were asked to identify which insect had more and which had less.  Then they could add the two numbers together to find the sum.

Next, the kids worked on a letter A for ant writing activity.  They practiced writing the letter A and then they made fingerprint ants on the large uppercase and lowercase letter Aa.

The kids completed this beginning sound activity in their literacy workbook...

...and this addition and subtraction activity in their math workbook...

This was our book for story time.  It was a story about helping to do the work when you are a part of a team.

In the afternoon I taught the kids that grasshoppers like to hop.  I challenged the kids to a hopping race with our new potato sack racing bags!  I love this pic!