A is for Alligator ...again

We did this theme last year. I came up with some new ideas for this year and we had a lot of fun. Last year we did the typical capital "A" alligator that is seen on a million blogs. This year I did it with a little twist. We made him without teeth and made it into a game. We rolled a dice and then put on that number of teeth. We used the play dough I made the other day for the apple theme. It is slightly brown, so I told Alex that the alligator hadn't been brushing his teeth. It was great counting practice.

Alex wanted to do more with the play dough so I gave him the whole chunk and a plastic alligator that Alex already had. He made alligator foot prints, the alligator ate the play dough, and he made prints in the dough with the texture of the alligators scales.

We also made a alligator out of hand prints. It was kind of an abstract alligator, but Alex and myself really love hand print art.

We did some printable worksheets from Lightning Bug Literacy

Alligator 1-10 puzzle

Letter A tracing page

I pulled out our Do A Dot paints. Alex never really showed much interest in them, but today he loved them. He did a alligator page from Making Learning Fun and he did the ant magnet page from the previous post and a letter "A" page from Confessions of A Homeschooler.

We practiced making the letter "A" with a paint bag. Green finger paint in a ziploc bag.

We sang the song:
Five little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

Continue counting down the monkeys till there are none left.

Alex acting out the snapping Mr. Alligator with a little alligator snapper I made for him. I got the idea from here. I just used some cardboard, bottle caps, green and red paint, small pompoms and wiggly eyes (thanks to craftprojectideas.com).

For a snack I made him alligators sitting on logs. Not exactly healthy, but fun. The alligators were green Fruit Rollups cut out with a cookie cutter and the logs was graham crackers.

We watched a old classic Sesame Street clip Alligator King I love classic Sesame Street. I'm not a fan of present day Sesame Street though. I think it lost its creativeness and is trying to be too politically correct.

We read The Lady With the Alligator Purse by Nadine Bernard Westcott. It doesn't really have much to do with alligators, but it is a fun book.

and we looked at Alligators: Backyard Animals by Heather C. Hudak. It is a little advanced for him, but it was good to see real photos of alligators.