Mom & Me Book Club: Duck! Rabbit!

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "Duck! Rabbit!" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we gathered together a bunch of books that had rabbits in them or ducks in them and let the kids and mommies read stories together as we waited for others to arrive.

Show & Tell: 

Each child brought an item related to the book  for show and tell. They stood up in front of everyone, said their name, showed everyone what they brought and told the group about it. For those that forgot their show and tell we had them share their favorite color.   

Circle Time: During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. We then sang the song "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and used a little rabbit finger puppet for the parts with the bunny. Then we read the book, "Duck! Rabbit!"   

Activity:

After reading the book, we talked about how we can look at things and we can sometimes see two different things. We looked at several different illusion pictures and let the kids tell us what they saw. (pictures like, the old woman/young woman, candlestick/faces and so on.) 

Activity:

After looking at the different illusion pictures we let the kids create their own illusions or animals using pipe cleaners and pom poms. They got to show everyone what they made and have people guess what they were. Got the idea from the mommy and me website here. 

Activity: 

We played a game called, "live duck, sleeping duck, dead duck." (normally this game is played with cows, but we changed it for this book.) We shouted out one of the three, and the kids had to act it out. Live duck waddles around the room and quacks, sleeping duck, lays on the ground pretending to be asleep and dead duck lays on their back with their feet up and tongue out. In this game generally the last person to change to the called out duck is out, but we just let everyone stay in and played over and over and over.

 

Craft:  

For our craft we made Duck/Rabbit puppets. One side of the puppet is a duck and the other side is a rabbit. on the duck side you glue on feathers, googly eye and color in the rest of the duck. On the rabbit side you glue on a pom pom for the tail, googly eye and color in the rest of the features. We got the idea from here. 

 

Snacks:

For treats and snacks candy ducks, candy/pretzel ducks and rabbits that we saw here. We also had bread and rolls, bunny marshmallows, fruit and a tray of "rabbit food" veggies and many other yummy treats.

 

Mom & Me Book Club: "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

 We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we let the kids draw their families just like the mouse does in the book. They of course signed their names with a pen, just as the mouse did as well. 

Circle Time:

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. Then we read the book, "If Give a Mouse a Cookie." 

Activity:

After circle time we let the kids help re-tell the story using props. Each child helped pick which item went next in the story and then lined up in order of the story. We used items that represented things from the book. A toy cookie, pretend milk, a dust pan, a blanket, scotch tape, a pen and so on. We got this idea from the Mommy & Me Book Club Website.

Then we sang "shake my sillies out" with the last line being, "tip toe my sillies out" as we tip toed over to the table for a craft.

Craft:  

For our craft we made mouse puppets. We got the idea here. We used colored paper, cut out and prepped for the kids, googly eyes, a craft pom pom for the nose and glued it all together on a craft stick. 

Activity: 

For our next activity we sang through the song, "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar" We all sat in a large circle and each kid got to point at/pick the next person who stole the cookie. The kids loved being the ones who stole the cookies and one of them even decided that, "yep, it was him."  

Activity:

Another activity we did was a cookie counting activity. We pre-cut out 10 paper circles per child. Each cookie had a number on it from 1-10 and had the amount of dots for the number. The kids got chocolate chips that they got to count out and put onto their "cookies" and occasionally sneak a few bites here and there.  Got the idea from here. 

Show & Tell:

Each child also brings an item related to the book (if they can) for show and tell. They stand up in front of everyone, say their name, show what they brought and tell the group why is is related to the book or why it is special to them. 

Snacks:

For treats and snacks we had Cookies, of course! We also had milk, cheese and crackers, fruit and veggies and various other snacks and goodies.