A is for Alligator (preschool)

The girls had fun with alligators today. They enjoyed painting, the swamp, and learning about greater than and less than. We got our recourses for today from the A is for Alligator, Apple, Astronaut Teachers Pay Teachers pack.

Alligator Science

We used the Alligator Life Cycle poster to visualize how an alligator is born.
I read the letter A from the Abeka Animal Friends Flashcards to learn more about the alligators. We watched Alexandar Alligator Song to go with the card.
She also did her matching Alexander Alligator page from her Abeka Letters & Sounds for 3’s book.
The Alligator- Animals for Kids video taught us a lot more facts about alligators too.
We also played with our Schleich Alligators.

The girls each had a similar writing paper for the letter A. My 3 year old had a capital A and lowercase a with tracing arrows, along with an alligator to color. The 5 year old had the same paper, but added a short poem and more tracing A’s and a’s on the bottom. I found both of these in the A is for Alligator, Apple, Astronaut Teachers Pay Teachers pack.

I printed this A is for Alligator Craft onto cardstock for the girls to paint. I cut out the capital A for them to paint green. After is dried they glued it to a piece of blue construction paper. Then I cut out the teeth and eyes for them to glue on.

We read the poem by Dennis Lee:
Alligator pie,
Alligator pie…
If I don’t get some…
I think I’m gonna cry!
Give away the green grass,
Give away the sky,
But don’t you give away my Alligator pie!
We made vanilla pudding and dyed it green, then we folded in 8 ounces of cool whip, and placed this in a graham pie crust. Refrigerate it for a couple of hours, then enjoy!

We also watched The Wild Kratts- Alligators vs. Crocodiles video that shows how the mother lays her eggs and cares for her babies.

We read the A book in our AlphaTales collection. The girls really enjoy these funny phonetic stories.

First we watched this Number Eating Alligator Song to learn that Mr. Alligator likes to eat the number that is more.
Then I printed out the Greater Than/ Less Than pieces and laminated them. I found some green buttons for the girls to count out as a visualization.
Each of the girls got to choose a number to place on their side of the board, then they placed the same amount of buttons to match their number. After they did this, we talked about it together to figure out if we should use the “greater than” or the “less than” alligator.

The girls didn’t get to do the Alligator Crawl today, but they liked the idea. One of them had a stomachache today and the other had a nasty fall and scraped up her elbow the day before. We will probably try it in a few days when they are all healed up!
We also played with our Fisher Price Little People Alligators, I think these came with a Noah’s Ark set?

She had this little alligator finger puppet craft in her Abeka Arts and Craft with Amber Lamb book. You just color, cut, and tape. She is growling like an alligator in this picture!

I printed out the Alligator Color Match game, and the girls helped me cut them out. I laminated them and the cut them again. Then we turned them all upside down and took turns flipping to try to find matching colors. They enjoyed this game, but had a hard time when the other girl found their favorite color.

I took a big, clear, shallow, empty tub outside with the kids. I asked them what was in a swamp. First they said water, so I added some water to the tub. Next they said grass and leaves, so they all gathered some grass. And last they said that a swamp has mud, so we added a couple small shovels of dirt. I added some foam hand soap to make it bubbly, and last they put in their Schleich Alligators and Fisher Price Little People Alligators. They loved this sensory tub and played in it for quite a while, and one of them got all wet!

Here are some of our other alphabet preschool posts: