March is Reading Month!There will be lots of fun ideas on the way for the month of March!

We went on a Safari!

I pulled the shades and turned up the jungle sounds and we went on a safari! We had to be very quiet so we didn't scare the animals away! We even survived the rain storm! We used our binoculars we made and I bought all of them a safari hat to wear on our adventure. They had so much fun!

Animal Cracker Box

This is why I said to save the animals cracker boxes. We say this little poem at circle time and the kids take turns picking the animals out of the box! If you click on the image you can read the poem.

Belle making circles on the little chalkboards!

Reegan working really hard to get the pegs in the lite brite!

Reegan and Belle using tweezers to pick up colored pasta noodles!

Belle enjoying our frozen banana snack! We put the banana on the stick and put it in the freezer. It only took them 30 minutes to freeze! Then we dipped the top in chocolate!

These are the binoculars we made for our safari. We painted two toilet paper tubes black. I stapled them together and added some yarn.

Mikey the Monkey

Mikey the Monkey came to visit us for Dental Health Month. He brought along his new toothbrush that he got at the dentist!

How to Make a Rainshaker!

You will need: empty plastic bottle, rice, food coloring or water color, ziplock bag

Fill a ziplock bag a quarter of the way full with rice. Put a few drops of food coloring or water color in the bag and close. Knead the bag until all the color has spread over the rice. Use a funnel to put the rice in the plastic bottle. Put this fun saying on the bottle:

Shake this rainshaker up and down,

To hear the rains pitter-patter sound.

Our rainshakers! When we took them in the jungle we shook them all at the same time and it really did sound like rain!

Belle being very careful to get all the rice in her shaker.

Reegan shaking her rainshaker!

Fruit Loop Graphing

I used these punches to make the fruit loops for the graphing chart!

Luke and Belle graphing their fruit loops. They ate them when they were all done!

These are fun foods to use for a jungle theme! You can sort, graph, match, or make a necklace with the fruit loops. The Animal Cookies are always fun for the kids to go through and look at the animals, but always save the box, I have a cute activity coming up with it! The Curious George fruit snacks are fun for the kids to eat because they all love George!

Fruits of the Jungle

We taste tested fruits that grow in the jungle. We tried pineapple, starfruit, prickly pear, baby bananas, kiwi, coconut, and papaya. We usually taste mangoes too, but the store didn't have any.

Belle examining the coconut. It ended up being rotten inside! Yuck!

Luke being silly with the top of the pineapple!

This is a papaya. The kids thought it tasted okay.

This is the inside of the prickly pear. It tasted like dirt!

This is starfruit. It has a sour taste to it. The kids loved it!

This is a fun game to play when your doing a jungle theme. However, I didn't buy it because I already have Chicken Limbo for when we do farm.

I Went to the Jungle

(sung to: London Bridges)

I went to the jungle one day,

jungle one day, jungle one day,

I saw a ________ on the way

and this is what he said,
(make animal's noise).

*Fill in a new animal and sound every time you sing the song*

Reegan playing with the mix and match box of chocolates!

Luke doing some heart matching!

We played with heart-shaped ice cubes today!

Books About Love and Valentine's Day

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

Winnie the Pooh's Valentine by Bruce Talkington

Winnie the Pooh and Valentines, Too byLiza Alexander

Dinofours: It's Valentine's Day by Steve Metzger

Bear in the Big Blue House: Love is All You Need

The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing

Arthur's Valentine by Marc Brown

My Love For You by Susan L. Roth

I Love You, Grumpy Bunny by Justine Korman

A Book of Hugs by Dave Ross

A Book of Kisses by Dave Ross

Bear Hugs by Karma Wilson

Happy Valentine's Day, Pooh by Isabel Gaines

Pooh Loves You by Fran Posner

Valentine Mice by Bethany Roberts

Elmo Loves You by Sarah Albee

How Do I Love You? by Leslie Kimmelman

Mouse In Love by Robert Kraus

Heart Sorting

The kids loved sorting all the hearts into the right colored buckets. I let them have one heart before they started and one heart after, and none of them were tempted to taste more!

Cookie Cutter Heart Art

Heart Matching

These are our valentine mailboxes!

Handprint Heart

Reegan is sorting out jungle animals!

These are our paper plate snakes! The kids painted one side green and one side yellow. Then I cut them in a spiral, and added an eye and a tongue. We hung our snakes from our jungle vines!

Reegan brought this for show and tell! We had just read a book about elephants!

We talked about monkeys so playing with a barrel of monkeys seemed to be the perfect thing to do! They are great for fine motor skills!

Can You Guess Who?

We put on masks and pretended to be jungle animals. I took pictures of them and I put them on a bulletin board titled "Can You Guess Who?"

Luke making snow castles! The kids really like bringing the snow inside and watching it melt. Sometimes we sprinkle different things on the snow to see what makes it melt faster. We have used salt, sugar, pepper, bread crumbs, etc... So it's a little sensory and science all mixed together!