 Swimmy
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More fun
Activities to use with the book!
Swimmy
Lesson Pre K
Ff is for
Fish
Arts and Crafts activities, poems and lesson ideas.
Swimmy
Review and activity ideas by Betty Alexander
Swimmy
bulletin board ideas
Swimmy
Online questionaires and activities
Practice
recalling information by asking questions such as “How
was Swimmy different? “How did Swimmy save the other
little fish?". Use the illustrations as an
opportunity to teach the names of some of the creatures
that live in the sea. Talk about how these
creatures are alike and how they are different. Then you
may make a mural with the class of this book using sponge
painting on the background paper and using construction
paper to add the fish and other sea animals.
discuss
cooperation and working together to solve a problem.
Follow up by doing a sponge painting activity using
little fish sponges and painting in an outline of a big
fish. Students can present a school of fish puppet play
where they can use puppets to act out finger plays, sing
songs, and do movement activities.
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 A House for
Hermit Crab
A little hermit crab must find a new home and discovers
new friends and possibilities in the process. The book
has lots of other goodies such as different sea creatures
to count,colors,names of the month and is a nice tie-in
to a beginning marine life book if you want to explore
that too.
Many Ideas
Found Here!
Craft
Activity based on Hermit Crab
Webquest
A lesson
using the book
Let's Get
Crabby
Key
Vocabulary:
seashore, beach, driftwood, shells,
hermit crab - A good idea before reading the book is to
discuss these words with your class.
Discuss
with students the different things on the seashore in the
book.
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 My Very
Own Octopus
 Learn
more about the book - Click here
Talk about
what fun things you could do with eight legs? Make up
your own story about an octopus, then make an octopus
puppet by attaching legs (cut from material scraps) to an
old sock and drawing a face on the end of the sock. Have
fun acting out your story.
Read it
again and have the students raise their hand when they
hear /o/. List the words they choose on the
board. Then have the students draw a picture of an
octopus and tell what they would change if they could use
invented spelling. Display their work.
Boiled
Octopus
Take a hot dog and cut a + from each end towards the
center. DO NOT cut
completely to the center. Place the cut hot dog into
boiling water for a
minute or two and the ends will curl up and the hot dog
will resemble an
Octopus.
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Big Al
 Learn More
About This Book - Click Here!
Click Here
to Meet the Author
Use this
book to start a conversation about being kind to others
and being a good friend. Then, let each student design a
Big
Al award for a student in their class for his or her
friendhip and/or kindness.
Key
Vocabulary:
salt, water, lake, float, sink
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My
Friend Whale, by Simon James
A child's enjoyment of a whale in the sea ceases when he
never sees the
whale again. A final page emphasizes the necessity of
preserving whales.
Prereading
Activity
Ask students to pretend that they have their own whale
friend that they
visit and spend time with. Have students name the whale,
draw a picture
of themselves with the whale, and write about some of the
things they do
together.
Activities
1. Write
to the 3 organizations listed at the end of the book for
information about how to help save the whales (the
organizations are
Greenpeace, the International Wildlife Coalition, and the
Center for
Marine Conservation).
2. It is
noted in the book that whales can hear other whales
making
sounds from 100 miles away. Have students experiment with
how far away
they can hear each other whispering and talking Check for
accuracy by
having the speaker say a few words. The listener must
repeat the exact
same words.
3. Have
student write a story about why they think the whale in
the
story did not come back. What happened to it? Where did
it go?
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Whales,
by Gail Gibbons
Information on the lives of different kinds of whales,
including how
they swim, breathe, eat, use sonar, and bear young.
Concern about whales
is also addressed. Prereading
Activity
Explain to students that whales evolved from other
animals millions of
years ago and that the whale's ancestors looked very
different from the
way whales look today. Have students draw what they think
whale
ancestors looked like.
Activities
1. The book says that female whales can only have one
baby at a time.
Research how old a female whale is before she can have
her first baby
and how long whales of that type live. Figure up how many
babies she
might have in her lifetime.
2.
Blue whales can weigh as much as 180 tons. Have students
figure up
how many elephants, cars, trucks, horses, etc. (or some
combination of
heavy objects) would equal 180 tons.
3.
In the end of the book, there is a brief note about
Humphrey the
humpback whale. Humphrey became lost and swam up
California's Sacramento
River in 1985. In 1990, he got stranded in San Francisco
Bay. Both
times, scientists helped Humphrey get back out to sea.
Help students
make sock puppets and write a script about Humphrey's
difficulties, why
he got lost twice, how the scientists helped him get back
out to sea,
etc. Perform the puppet show for other classes. (More
information about
Humphrey can be found in Wendy Tokuda's book Humphrey the
lost whale: A
true story or in the video by the same name)
Whales
Reader's Theatre based on Gail Gibbon's book, Whales
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