Toboggan Craft and Activities

WINTER FUN ACTIVITY

For the Winter Fun Activity the kids must find all the things for winter fun.  

Here are the small pictures to cut out and scatter around for the kids to find:

Small Pictures of Things to Find

And here are the big pictures to hold up as you read the text below:

Big Pictures to Hold Up

Here is a suggested Winter Fun text to read:

Winter Fun Text

TOBOGGAN CRAFT

Print the toboggan craft page and fold along dotted line:

Toboggan Craft Page

 

 Cut around the figures and the glue tab at the bottom:

Open out the toboggan people and they are now ready for the kids to color:

Take a strip of colored construction paper two inches wide and at least nine inches long.  Use a pencil to roll up one end to be the front of the toboggan.  Use a glue stick to place glue on the two glue tabs and glue them to the toboggan, and you are finished:
 

BOOKS TO READ ALOUD

Curious George in the Snow

 

This book is also available in PDF format to borrow from the Internet Archive:

Curious George in the Snow 

at the Internet Archive 

The excellent Pre-K Pages website provides a great list of...

Winter Fun Books for Pre-Schoolers 

Three Little Pigs Craft and Activities

This is a Three Little Pigs craft where we make four tongue depressor puppets (or soda straw puppets) and a three sided structure with one of the pig houses on each side.

Once the Three Little Pigs story has been read and acted out with a set of the puppets and houses, we proceed to the activity.  I usually choose to read one of the less violent versions such as:

Three Little Pigs (Fun to Read Fairy Tales)

  

 In the above version, none of the pigs are eaten and the wolf falls down the chimney into the caldron of boiling water, but then runs away howling and is never seen again.   

  
ACTIVITY

This activity has six alphabet mothers.  The kids will help to find their three little pig children with a letter to match that of their mother.

Here is the song to sing as the kids set off to find one set of pigs after another (sung to the tune of "Where Has My Little Dog Gone?"):

Mother Pig Song

 

  

Here is the set of six mother pigs, each with a different letter of the alphabet: 

Six Mother Pigs

And here is the set of little pigs to find (print out three copies to have three little pigs for each mother):

Little Pigs to Find

Once the activity as been completed, we proceed to the craft.

THREE LITTLE PIGS CRAFT

For this craft we assemble tongue depressor (or soda straw) puppets for the wolf and three pigs:

We can use one or two sided puppets.  The two sided puppet works better if you are using soda straws instead of tongue depressors:

Set of One Sided Puppets

Set of Two Sided Puppets

To go with the pigs, we have the three houses of straw, wood and brick.  You have the option of printing out all three on one sheet of long, legal size paper (8.5 x 14 inches) then fold them into a triangle form with one house on each side.  I cut the windows out for each house so that a pig can been seen looking out during the puppet show.  Alternatively, you can print out each house on a standard size piece of paper and assemble them together into the three sided structure:

All three houses on legal size paper

Three houses on separate sheets of standard paper

The houses assembled into a three sided unit for a puppet show or alternately can be left separate:

Stand Up Shark Craft and Activities

This is a stand up shark craft.

The book I usually read for this craft is Smiley Shark about a lonely shark who loved to smile but had trouble making friends:

Smiley Shark

 

 You can watch a video of this book being read to get an idea of the story:

ACTIVITY

Once the book (or any other shark book has been read) you start the activity which involves finding friends for Smiley Shark.  You hold up the picture of Smiley Shark and then each of the friends that the kids must look for.

Here is the file of small pictures to scatter around, big pictures to hold up and a brief text to read:

Shark Activity Pictures and Text

 

CRAFT

The stand up shark craft is made from three pieces: the shark body, fin and teeth. 
 

Alternately the teeth can be just white triangles glued into the mouth.  

You fold the shark body down the middle so that the shark will stand up.  You next glue on the teeth and the back or dorsal fin.

I usually print these parts on light blue card stock, but you can use regular paper as well (maybe glue the paper onto card board for added strength!)

Here are the shark parts to cut out.  I would always pre-cut the shark parts so that the kids just had to assemble them:
 

Shark Craft Parts

Completed stand up shark craft:

BOOKS

Smiley Shark

 

The Great White Man Eating Shark 

The Bookroo website presents a good selection of 

Shark Books for Kids 

Kangaroo Puppet Craft

This is another paper bag puppet, but this one is a mother kangaroo with a joey in her pouch holding a K for kangaroo.

Activity

The activity for this craft involves finding things that hop.  Download the file which contains both the small pictures to scatter around and the larger pictures to hold up as signs so the kids know what they are looking for:

Things That Hop Activity File 

For this activity I would often use a song based on the fifties pop tune "Lets Go to the Hop":

Lets find things that hop

Hippity Hop! Hop!

Rabbits like to hop
Hippity Hop! Hop!

(Spoken:  Can anyone find a rabbit?)

Substitute a line for each of the other things that like to hop:

Frogs all like to hop

Robins like to hop

Kids all like to hop

Crickets like to hop

Grasshoppers like to hop

Kangaroos like to hop

CRAFT

The craft for this activity is a paper bag kangaroo puppet:

Kangaroo Puppet Craft

I would always pre-cut the pieces for the kids.  Everything is glued to the bag except the baby kangaroo or joey which is just placed in the pouch.

For the kangaroo pouch, I fold up the bottom two inches of the paper bag.  I would do this in advance because paper lunch bags are rather flimsy and tear easily, so the folding up has to be done carefully:

The finished kangaroo and joey:

BOOKS

There are lots of great kangaroo books to read aloud, and here are some of my favourites:

Marsupial Sue

 Maruspial Sue is also available to be checked out in PDF format from the Internet Archive:

Marsupial Sue at the Internet Archive

The Goodreads Site has a great page featuring many kangaroo books for kids:

Popular Kangaroo Books 

Deep Sea Diorama and Activities

This is a Deep Sea Diorama craft where you color and display a group of sea creatures against a deep sea background. 

ACTIVITY

For this craft we do a sea hunt activity where you must find a set of seven sea creatures as well as a treasure chest!

Download the pictures for the kids to find

You hold up a picture of each creature the kids must find:

Dowload larger pictures to hold up on display

Finally you tell them that there is also a treasure chest to find!

 

SONGS

Baby Beluga by Raffi

CRAFT INSTRUCTIONS

Here is the diorama ready for the kids to work on:

Here are the steps that the kids will follow to complete their diorama:

 

You can make the frame of the diorama out of a shoe box or other box of about the right size.  I could never round up enough shoe boxes so I will describe how I made the frame from a ledger size piece of paper (11 inches by 17 inches).

Here is the picture and heading that are printed onto the ledger size paper:

 Download the diorama picture with heading from here

If you want just the picture to glue to the back of a shoe box diorama frame:

Download just the picture from here
 

After the diorama picture is printed on 11x17 inch paper you fold it for added strength and prepare to add the sea floor section:

The printed heading is folded back and ends up on the back of the diorama:

The  sea floor is made from two pieces of light blue card stock 11 inches wide and 6.25 inches deep, rounded at the front as show above.

The top piece of the floor has the strips slit almost to the back and this piece is glued along the back strip to the blue card stock piece below it:

The floor section is now glued to the diorama frame:

The sea creatures for the diorama can now be printed and cut out so that they are ready for the kids to color and glue to the diorama strips as shown in the steps above.

You can download the file of sea creatures from here 

You can also download...

A set of labelled sea creatures so that the kids can see what their names are

Color and glue on the sea creatures as described above and you are done!

One nice thing about this diorama is that it can be folded flat for transportation or storage:

BOOKS TO READ ALOUD


Commotion in the Ocean

This book is also available to borrow in PDF format from the Internet Archives:

Commotion in the Ocean at the Internet Archives

Baby Beluga by Raffi

Baby Beluga is also available to borrow in PDF format from the Internet Archives:

Baby Beluga at the Internet Archives

  The Rainbow Fish

Hello World!  Ocean Life