Exploring Shapes with Circle Dogs {Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids}
The Summer Virtual Book Club continues this month with Kevin Henkes as the featured author! Another new to us author, we enjoyed reading the mouse books like Lilly’s Big Day
Circle Dogs describes a day in the life of two dogs. When we first meet the dogs, they are curled up asleep in their big square house. “See the dogs? See the circles?” You watch the dogs play in their big square yard and see them play with the kids. You see their triangle ears and pink tongues.They eat and take a nap. Then, they play some more.
Scenes from Circle Dogs
I decided to recreate scenes from the book and let Aiden play with them. I cut out shapes and helped him build the house. As we put the house together we talked about the shapes involved {squares, rectangles, a triangle, and circles}. We also talked about the colors of each of the shapes. I let Aiden rearrange the shapes however he wanted.
Next, we made the dogs’ big yard. A large green square was the perfect play yard. I thought about cutting out paper circles to represent the dogs, but they really didn’t do the dogs justice. I grabbed some pipe cleaners and made the dogs out of them.
Aiden played with the dogs in the yard making them run around and jump at imaginary shapes in the air.
Tracing Circles
To make the paper circles, I traced them with half a plastic egg. Aiden thought this was the coolest thing and wanted to try. He spent quite a while tracing circles. He held the egg half like I did and drew around it with his pencil. After making it half way around the egg, he picked up his pencil to trace the other half. The egg moved and his circle was not complete. He tried this a few more times with the same result – a messed up circle.
He asked me to help hold down the egg so he could trace it. Success. A complete circle. He covered his paper with circles. As he got more competent at holding down the egg, I touched it less and less. He eventually held the egg down all by himself. He was excited.
Here are all of the blogs co-hosting the Summer Virtual Book Club. Be sure to stop by and see what they’ve done. Toddler Approved, Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas, Rainy Day Mum, Reading Confetti, Inspiration Laboratories, Play Dr. Mom, Mommy and Me Book Club, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Two Big Two Little, Creative Connections for Kids, The Golden Gleam, Juggling with Kids, Taming the Goblin, Crafty Moms Share, Ready Set Read 2 Me, Famiglia and Seoul, The Good Long Road, The Educator’s Spin On It, Imagination Soup, 3 Dinosaurs, Royal Baloo, Being A Conscious Parent, No Twiddle Twaddle, Crayon Freckles, The Pleasantest Thing, Adventures in Reading with Kids, Smile, Play, Learn, Creekside Learning, and Teach Preschool
*Starting tomorrow we’re having a giveaway for Kevin Henkes books!
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