Kk kangaroo day -preschool style

Kangaroo day was such a fun day!  I searched hard for a great book and found two.  I squeezed them both in and the kids agreed that they were both really good ones.  

We talked about some things that begin with the letter Kk and ended up talking about kangaroos.  We looked at pictures of them and talked about how the mama kangaroos carry their baby verse how people mama's carry their babies.  We talked about this picture:  We talked about what this kangaroo is doing, why he is resting, where he has been jumping.  The kids had some good ideas.

I read Katy No-Pockets by Emmy Payne.  It's a long one so I paraphrased it mostly.  The kids thought it was funny.  Poor Katy has no pocket to carry her joey in and ends up getting an apron with lots of pockets. 

I passed out these little fabric pockets that I sewed up in about 20 minutes the night before.  They are rough, no finished edges, mostly uneven, but the kids didn't notice.  We stuck in a laminated joey so we could carry our baby kangaroo just like Katy did.  

Before getting to any work, we jumped around the room to this song:

I have a little Joey (tune:  Have you ever seen a lassie)

I have a little Joey, a Joey, a Joey

I have a little Joey, he lives in my pouch.

I jump up and jump down,

he bounces up and bounces down.

I have a little Joey who lives in my pouch. 

(repeat with:  I jump right, I jump left, he bounces right, he bounces left)

and we jumped those little joeys all around.  

Then we took out our Joeys and put them to bed.  Each Joey had a picture of an item that started with a letter a-k. 

The kids put their Joeys in the right bed.  They were so tired after all that bouncing. They did surprisingly well.  If anyone got stuck, I reminded them of the  sound from our phonics song.  The kangaroo outlines are from Mailbox magazine preschool August/September 1997.  The item pictures are from The best of Mailbox learning centers preschool/kindergarten 1996.  (It's probably not surprising that I have saved such random copies of papers I might someday use.)  I drew the beds by looking off a clipart I found online.

After our time in 'the big room' (which is our room with all the play areas -blocks, doll house, kitchen, office, baby area, etc) We stopped in the hall and did some jumping.  A grown kangaroo can jump 30 feet on average.  I measured out 30 feet in the hall as well as 1 foot increments from the start to about 6 feet. 

As the kids jumped I recorded their distance on a page that will go in a class book about how far we jumped.  The kiddos love the books that we've made together.  They choose them before others in the classroom.  

Here was our craft.  The kids cut out the pieces and assembled.   Our crafts are not exactly 'process over product' but they are always cute. 

After our time playing in the gym, as parents arrived, I squeezed in the other book, Baa! Moo! What Will We Do?  by A.H. Benkamin.  This is a great one if you like to read with voices.  The animals hear a kangaroo is coming to the farm and each is worried that the kangaroo will be able to do his farm job.  The kangaroo of course doesn't want their jobs, she actually is a babysitter. 

Here is something Lou brought home this same day.  I thought it was cute and will save it for another time for myself.   The kids were given little baggies with kisses and letter k cut outs in them with this little saying:  

I found this on my bed after school, Lou had helped me make my bed this morning, so he left me the K treat.