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As spring is rapidly approaching we are having fun pulling out some of our favorite spring books. In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming is a favorite spring book... though we love to read it year round.
In the Tall, Tall Grass is filled with collage style illustrations that are beautiful along with a simple portrayal of what a caterpillar sees in the tall, tall grass. The language is gorgeous and descriptive and I love how the book rhymes too. My little preschool class sat captivated while I read this book to them and then loved acting out what was happening on each page!
Here are five ways that we crafted and played along with In the Tall, Tall Grass at preschool...
To begin, when the preschoolers arrive they check in at school by finding their photo on the wall and hiding themselves in the tall tall grass. This is a simple way to take attendance and make sure everyone feels welcomed.
Tall Tall Grass Attendance Activity
Next we read the book In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming together and acted out each page.
As we read each page we listened for the verb and then acted out each one briefly. I love giving the kids this opportunity to be active while we were reading. The kids love munching like caterpillars, humming like bees, and darting like hummingbirds. As we acted out some of the new-to-them words I was able to briefly explain the definition of new vocabulary words and then reinforce the definition as we moved our bodies!
After that we created paper plate rainbow snakes, since the kids loved gliding like snakes as we read the book!
Click here for my rainbow snake tutorial
Once the kids made their own snakes they got to make them glide too.
Next we made a simple In the Tall Tall Grass Paper Craft.
We got the idea from Speech Room News & Simply Speech and we adapted it a little bit. We downloaded the animal images from Simple Speech.
The kids loved making their own Tall Tall Grass filled with animals and thought it was fun to hold their grass closed and see if I could guess which animals were inside!
Lastly, we made Fruit Loop Caterpillars... and then we munched them all up. Yum!
There are so many other fun ways that we could have created and played along with this book but we ran out of time!
Here are a few other bug crafts and activities inspired by some of our favorite children's books.
I love the "In the Tall at all Grass craft. It's a really good idea.