Author and Illustrator Jan Brett

For our last author week, we learned about Jan Brett.  She is an extremely talented children’s author and illustrator and has written so many wonderful books.  The stories are fascinating and the illustrations are so life-like!  Her books are intriguing to both young and old.  Since we learned about Jan Brett right after Easter, we just had to read her book entitled “The Easter Egg” about a young rabbit who spends the length of the book trying to discover his talents and how he can share them with others.  In the story, each rabbit decorates an egg the best they can to present to the Easter Rabbit.  We thought it would be fun to have the kids do their best, like the rabbits in the story, and decorate their own little Easter egg however they wanted.  They turned out so colorful and beautiful!

The Pre-K classes also cut the eggs out once they were all done.

 Another Jan Brett book we enjoyed this week was “Honey…Honey…Lion!” This was a fun animal review for the kids since we already learned about many of the animals on the African savannah. 
 
 We also watched a little clip showing a number of the animals that Jan Brett saw on her trip to Africa in order to see the animals in their natural habitats and study them to be able to draw the many animals in her book in such a life-like manner.
 
 For one of our projects, we played “Honey…Honey…Lion!” (which is very similar to “Duck, Duck, Goose”).  As you can see, the kids had a wonderful time chasing each other around the circle as the honey badger and the lion as well as waiting for their turn!

We had a very special visitor come to our class this week.  Since Jan Brett has used the hedgehog in many of her stories and has a pet hedgehog of her own, we thought it would be neat to see a real hedgehog in real life.  Thank you Shelley for bringing Bilbo to our preschool!  He was so interesting to watch and see up close!  We got to see his prickly quills, hear him “chuff” when he was so sleepy since he’s nocturnal, and see how he curled up in a ball.  After seeing the hedgehog in real life, it made the story called “Hedgie’s Surprise” come to life.  

 If you’d like to learn more about Jan Brett or find some fun activities for your children as well as videos of her travels and writing experiences, check out her website: JanBrett.com

The big pre-kindergarteners did a great job practicing their handwriting this week as they worked on writing the letter “D” as well as their name with just the first letter capitolized. 

These two were so proud of themselves after they successfully linked all the monkeys together and found a place to hang them!  Just look at those happy grins! : )

Working on sequencing during centers.  The children had to find the three items that went together and put them in order.  Sequencing is a pre-math skill and helps to understand order and predict what will come next.

Singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” with these cuties was so much fun!

We had a great week!  Keep reading to your children each day and pointing out letters, numbers, colors, and shapes that are all around us!