Preschool Picasso: Numbers

It was great to see everyone back after holiday break and a few new families. This month's theme was numbers and it turned into a numbers/ocean theme because I found two craft ideas that I thought were perfect for the program and a rhyming ocean and numbers book to go with the whole theme.

We read One Nighttime Sea by Deborah Lee Rose and counted sea animals along the way. The group enjoyed the pictures and helped count the creatures with me.

For our first craft, we did a paint-by-number fish using cardstock and six types of colored paint. Some children freestyled their painting, but the majority did try to follow the colors for each number.

Our next craft was making an adorable jellyfish with eight tentacles. The kids added eight colorful pipe cleaners onto their pre-cut and pre-hole punched jellyfish body. Then, they added beads to each tentacle depending on how many beads were needed. Some of the group even color matched their pipe cleaners to their beads.

The group loved these crafts and I had compliments on the jellyfish, as well as parents saying they would buy their kids some color-by-number books.

I liked that I was able to incorporate a painting craft using numbers and how the jellyfish craft helped them work on their fine motor skills and offered a different craft approach.

Optional Book: Swallow the Leader: A Counting Book by Danna Smith

Book of the Month: The Thing about Jellyfish

For this month's Book of the Month, I chose The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin. 

Summary: After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy was a rare jellyfish sting. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory--even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe, and the potential for love and hope right next door. ~From Goodreads.com 

Lexile Measure: 740L
Age Range: 11 to 13 

"It felt like nothing in the world existed besides me and those words and the silent creatures pulsing all around me."

This was a really emotional read. Suzy is desperate to make sense of her friend's sudden death and believes she died from a rare jellyfish sting. Her best friend's death really affected her so much to the point that she is obsessed with finding everything she can about jellyfish to prove that is how her friend died. There's also the fact that she has stopped talking to others and her parents are concerned enough to take her to a therapist.

I found myself wanting to know the true reason of her friend's death and seeing Suzy overcome the sadness of losing her friend. 

What a tearjerker and a book worth reading!