We were talking recently about ways to engage boys with books at preschool.

We realized that often when we see our boys looking at books it is the factual books that appear to grab their attention.

Dinosaurs and reptiles are an endlessly fascinating topic …

often leading to some wonderful discussions …

and sharing of knowledge.

The same goes for underwater creatures …

space …

and environmental books

So when you’re filling up your library shelf with story books this week …

don’t forget the boys!

Our State Government Department of Primary Industries provides preschools with a wonderful free of charge program called the “Responsible Pet Ownership Program”.

A dog owner and his/her dog come to the kinder for a one hour session to teach the children how to be safe around dogs.

We have been having this incursion for some years now and always find it extremely worthwhile.

This year we had Angelique and Woody her golden labrador come to visit us.

There are boppy songs, lots of interaction from the children,

bright books and relevant stories and best of all …

a real live dog!

The children are taught when it is appropriate to approach a dog and how to go about it.

Our patient dog visitor is the one they practise on.

We are also provided with a CD and DVD, a book and lots of posters to follow up with.

It is a fabulously worthwhile program and what the children (and parents) are taught really works!

We have discovered three collective nouns for frogs;

a knot of frogs - an army of frogs – a colony of frogs

The language that is collective nouns is so interesting and you don’t need to be a child to enjoy learning new language !  And you don’t need to be a child to enjoying learning about tadpoles either.

They have created a real buzz around kinder leading to a multitude of questions and creating great excitement, not only from our students but their parents and carers as well. So in order to better understand exactly what is going on we have been exploring a lovely book with the children called “GrowingFrogs” by Vivian French.

It is a great story about metamorphosis which follows the life cycle of a frog right through from frog spawn to frog.

The lovely illustrations have captured the children’s imaginations and they burst into kinder each day to check to see if the taddies in our tank are changing like those in the book.

Ours is a giant sized book with giant sized pictures …

… and  it’s an exciting way for them to see what will soon be happening to our tadpoles, (fingers crossed!)

The opening page reads; “Once, when I was little, my mum read me a story about a frog that drank and drank, and grew bigger and bigger and bigger“.

Several of the children got very excited by this.

“It’s Tiddalick!  She must have read the story of Tiddalick“.

‘TIDDALICK The frog who caused a flood’ written by Robert Roennfeldt is another great frog story the children have enjoyed hearing.

We have a good selection of frog books which the children can access from our library shelves and many of the children are enjoying pulling them out to look at.

Some of our other favourites include; ‘Green Air‘ by  Jill Morris, ‘The Wide-Mouthed Frog‘ by Keith Faulkner, ’The most colourful frog in the world‘ by Julie Morris and  ’Picasso, the green tree frog by Amanda Graham.

On a particularly beautiful spring morning recently we thought it would be nice to set up a shady spot under the tree on our decking for the children to spend some quiet time with a selection of Pamela Allen books.

We draped a large piece of material over the decking railing and simply tied it to the tree.  We provided a blanket, chairs, cushions and a basket of books.

It proved to be a very irresistible spot indeed and the children were drawn to it immediately.

Then, when the book readers moved out…

… the cubby builders moved in …

… and what a great cubby they made!  Large blocks were carefully stacked and balanced across the front…

… and along the side.

No longer the quiet space we had envisaged, soon it was the rowdiest play space in the yard!  The children had and absolute ball and played here all morning.

The children left the cubby there for the afternoon group to use, who added to it even further. Unfortunately we don’t have any photos to show you but it started off as a boys only club until one of the boys asked the group if his girlfriends could be allowed to play in it too, and they changed the rules … oh! you’ve got to love that!

One day one of the children brought in a case moth he had found in his garden.

He had been following this little creature around his garden for about a week, finding it in a different place each day.  The children were totally fascinated by the way it crawled around carrying its home along with it as it looked for food.

We explained to the children that the process a caterpillar goes through to become a moth or butterfly is called metamorphosis and we used the story of The very hungry caterpillar to explain it in a language they could understand. The very ordinary caterpillar is another lovely book they enjoyed.

They also had a great time acting out the story with The very hungry caterpillar felt board.

Metamorphosis is a fascinating concept for children so we pulled out a couple of metamorphosis puzzles on the life cycles of the butterfly and the frog.

In keeping with the tadpole / frog interest we are currently experiencing at kinder we set up a frog bog using lots of natural materials, frogs (the odd crocodile or two …  naturally) and our frog metamorphosis set.

Including materials like rocks and logs from our garden the water soon resembled a muddy frog bog. It was spectacular!

We have a wonderful frogbog CD which we played (hidden behind a fern) in the background, which made the play space sound and feel like we really were exploring a natural frog bog.

This CD doesn’t contain music just incredible Australian frog calls. It’s so amazing and the children were fascinated by the sounds real frogs make….not one single gribbet to be heard let alone a gulumph!

We have a great song we taught the children about metamorphosis and Sherry made some fabulous prop cards which the children use to act out the song.

Here are the words to the song – METAMORPHOSIS

Kittens look like cats,

and puppies look like dogs,

so why don’t little tadpoles, look like little frogs.

Bear cubs look like bears,

and little sloths like sloths,

so why don’t caterpillars look like little moths.

Kittens, puppies and other things don’t need a special process.

But caterpillars and tadpoles do.

They go through MET – A – MOR – PHO – SIS!

PS. The case moth was returned to the garden and a few weeks later our young friend discovered the empty case … how wonderful!

You can see some amazing photos of case moths and other incredible insects  through our ‘Moths & Butterflies‘ link.

We read this story to the children one day, and it was so simple and repetitive that the children were able to read it to us the next day. In it different characters are invited to a party, but they will only accept the invitation if one of their friends can come too.

The children decided they would like to make a class story about the different friends they would invite to the party if they could.

We used a roll old compute paper for them to work on and as the table could only cope with one person at a time, one wonderful child suggested spreading the paper across the mat and doing it altogether on the floor!

They told us who they would invite to the party, then they illustrated their stories. They came up with some very interesting characters! At the end of the session they read their own stories to the group.

These are two other books that we find lead to simple but exciting story writing.

Our visit to ‘Tinternwood Farm’ at Tintern Girls Grammar School has lead to a lot of discussion recently about…

cows and milk …

… chickens and eggs …

… sheep and wool…

… and of course farm machines!

So naturally the children’s interests have revolved around the farm and the animals we encounted.

We’ve read the books Little pink pig, by Pat Hutchins, Old Macdonald had a farm, illustrated by Pam Adams and The chicken book, by Garth Williams.

We’ve sung Old Macdonald had a farm, Five little duck’s, Baa baa black sheep, and I went to visit a farm one day.

We’ve danced to the Scarecrow song and The farmer in the dell as well as stamp, paint, draw, paste, play and puzzle our way through a variety of great farm activities.

Our bush box is currently home to our large farm animals, with plenty of natural materials like tanbark, grasses, logs, rocks, branches and wooden blocks provided for the children to use as props.

The children love the bush box as it is a very social area and they can climb right inside it and become totally involved in their play. If you don’t have a bush box like ours a child’s clam shell style pool would be ideal for this kind of play.

It’s great to be able to bring the outside in, on a hot or rainy day.