stART - Little Pea

Sis finished her Mother's Day Out program for the year, and we have officially begun preschool at home. Since literature-based activities are one of my favorite things to do with my kids, I thought it would be fun to join the moms doing stART at A Mommy's Adventures.

Our first story we picked was Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It's about a regular little pea... who must eat candy every night for dinner. "If you don't finish your candy, you can't have your dessert." Little Pea hates having to eat his candy...but he chokes it down with "yuck" and "blech," etc. He is THRILLED when he finally gets to eat his dessert - a big bowl of spinach!
My kids love and appreciate the irony. We own this book, but we hadn't read it aloud in awhile so Dash had this big smile on his face the entire time I was reading it. He's the pickiest eater out of three so he could particularly relate to Little Pea. (And he's not a big pea lover, but when he saw his brother and sister popping them into their mouths, he ate a few, too, just to show us he could eat them, too!) I love the funny story and the cute, simple illustrations.
Our first activity: I just gave the kids bowls of thawed frozen peas and toothpicks and told them to be creative. Sissy's style of choice was sticking a pea on each end of the toothpick, and then she made a long chain of them.

Here is Dash working on his "house."
I didn't get a good picture of Tornado's creative version of "Noah's Ark," but he was hard at work.
Of course, Tornado and Sissy couldn't keep the peas out of their mouths. (And guess what we also had for supper that night?) Sissy made (a leery) Daddy eat the peas off her toothpicks when he got home. (What a Daddy!)
Tornado also decided on his own to make letters in his bowl.
I also drew 9 numbered pea pods on green construction paper. Sissy had to put peas on the peas on the paper. She said, "This is really hard," I think because the peas are so small to manipulate. It was a good challenge for her to place them in the small spaces.

We counted them out together when she was finished.
I challenged her to find all of the different shades of green crayons from the basket.

She colored the pea pod I printed off online, and then she cut it out. When I told her she was going to cut it out, she said, "But I can't do that." She is not close to mastering cutting (I had to hold both sides of the paper as she cut; she had to work the scissors.), but she did great! She glued the pieces to construction paper.

She added some of her own peas with her green dot marker!