#2534. Napping House activities compiled

Reading/Writing, level: Kindergarten
Posted Sun Mar 31 15:14:45 PST 2002 by Kathleen Carpenter ().
Kindergarten Forum
Teachers.Net,

The Napping House-A.Wood. -book extension ideas
Posted by ashley

Ths is similar to the above post. I got the idea from a
Marilyn Burns activity. After readingthe story te second day I
ask the kids how many feet are there in the napping house and
we count--adding 2+ 2+4+, etc. I have them cut out a house
shape from a large 12x18 paper. It folds so the house opens.
The kids decorate the cover to look like their house.Inside,we
talk about how many feet are there when everyone is sleping in
theirhouse and then we draw them. They include all their pets,
draw everyone in bed, and put the cats, dogs,etc on the rugs or
in the beds, etc. I've even had dad on the couch! Then we
write a math statement to add up all the feet and I let the
kids solve it using the caculator. It is fun.
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Posted by Jacque/WA/K-1
I did a wonderful math activity. Read the story and then ask
how many feet were asleep in the story. Entertain all their
ideas and then go back and count all the feet that were
asleep. Tell them they are going to make their own Napping
House. Pass out an 8 1/2 X 11" piece of light blue paper
(copy paper does beautifully). Have them fold in half the
hamburger way. Holding with the fold at the top, have them
bring the two outside edges together, not to fold, but simply
to make a crease so that you will know where the middle of
that fold is. Here I always tell them, "What do you think?
Does it look like a house? I think it could look better---I
want it to have a couple of nice, peaked roof sections.
Let's try this...". Then I show them how to fold each of the
outside edges to that crease that marks the middle, so that
it looks like you have two doors to open. If you lift one
side and press it open-matching the crease to the edge of the
paper, so that it makes a triangle shaped roof at the top of
each side, you will now have a wonderful little house with
doors that can open. Now have your students think about
their own house and how many people live in their house, they
will write that number on the outside of their house. Inside
the doors they will draw all the feet in their house. I let
mine include pets, because the story does, but some teachers
limit to just people. As they finish I have mine tape theirs
to the white board in a graph, according to how many feet.
It makes a wonderful display and we then talk about how many
people have whatever number of people living in their house,
which number has the most, least, any ties, etc. This takes
nearly an hour and it is especially handy to have some
parents to help with the folding part.
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Posted by Cloe70
This is one of my favorite books!! Don and Audrey Wood are
super. There are so many ideas for this book. You can study
rainbows - have the kids make individual torn paper rainbows
or have the class use sponges to make a great big
spongepainted rainbow. You can spend time studying each
animal in the story, either for a day each, or for several
days. You can have a mini-sleep over during the day at
school, with pajamas and all. You can have the children help
you create a thunderstorm's noise by using percussion
instruments, wrapping paper cardboard tubes and aluminum
foil. You can have the kids write about their favorite part
of the story. Or they can choose their favorite animal in
the story to write about (most of the time my kids love the
the dog best). Sing a song about rainbows or rain. There are
also lots of finger plays out there about rain - The Itsy
Bitsy Spider comes to mind. So many choices, so little time.