Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Time For Tots: Caps For Sale

This turned out to be one of my favorite Time For Tot's day. For the last week, every night Alex has chosen Caps For Sale by Esphry Slobodkina for her bedtime story. This is a story of a peddler who makes his living selling caps, which he takes around with him by wearing them all on his head. The trouble begins when he takes a nap under a tree and a bunch of monkeys steal his hats!

One of my best friends from Mesa, told me how she and her kids acted out this story one day. So I decided to google Caps for Sale and see what I could find. I got a lot of the inspiration for this day from Teaching Heart and also Hubbard's Cupboard.

We began the day by acting out the story. I read the story while Lucas and Alex took turns playing the parts of the peddler and the monkey.

Then since I had just said the word "cap" who knows how many times while reading the story; we talked about words that rhymed with cap. Lucas and Alex helped me think of the words and I wrote them down.

We then did our monkey worksheets. There are dots on each hat and you have to count the number of dots and match it up with the right monkey. I made my monkeys a little smaller than the template because I am cheap to save paper. The kids cut out the hats and then matched up the right hats. We also talked about who would wear the different types of hats.


And since each cap costs $.50 as it says in the book, we got out some dimes to count out $.50 for each hat. Lucas ended up liking this part so much, that I wrote different money amounts on each hat and he sold me hats while I counted out the money.


And then, well we had to act out the story a couple more times. This time we put my photography backdrop stand to good use, and even had a tree that I quickly made out of construction paper.

And finally-the performance




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20 comments:

  1. I loved that book when I was a kid!

    Excellent performances by your budding young actors! :)

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  2. Darling! My son had fun watching it with me, and got excited when the monkey came into the story. I love this idea, and what a darling story!

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  3. What a wonderful performance! My daughter wants to do it now. I think I will dig out our copy of the book and we'll play caps for sale.
    You are such a good mom! I need to be more diligent in doing things like this with my youngest.

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  4. Loved it! Your kids are spectacular actors. Caleb watched it with me, and he was QUIET the WHOLE time, which means he was really into it. :) Hooray! Hooray! Bravo! Bravo!

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  5. what fun.

    the cup is munchkin and I got it at target.

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  6. Love your posts, Emily. Keep 'em coming! Good luck with Baby #3; it's exciting that you're having another boy!

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  7. Great Post Emmy....I am going to have to "borrow" this lesson!=)

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  8. What a fun activity! Your kiddos look like they really enjoyed it. Very creative!

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  9. Wow, that performance puts my pre-school efforts to shame! Your kids are going to love you (or hate you, I guess) for recording things like that; I wish my mom had more videos of me at that age!

    ~Elizabeth
    Confessions From A Working Mom

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  10. Wow! you will be able to charge admission! I never would have thought to do something like that.

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  11. CUTE!!!!!!!!!
    That is one of my favorite books from my childhood.

    You should change your name to Super Mom

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  12. Thanks for stopping by and linking up. Very cute!

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  13. A star is born. A really cute one at that.

    Loved the show.

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  14. Broadway worthy!

    I loved acting out "Caps for Sale" like that when i was teaching- especially since there were plenty of monkeys and caps to go 'round!

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  15. This is one of my favorite children's books. I love what you did with it! So much fun.

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  16. Emmy, one of my favorite children's books! What a great Tuesday!

    As for the baby boy, I just scrolled down to see... congratulations, so excited. How lucky of you to find out so early.

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  17. Oh Emmy!!! That looked like a blast. I think it is time to resurrect the plays that my kids used to perform in childhood...now that the next generation has begun the acting phase of childhood. I can hardly believe it...I feel so excited. I just love doing this with children!!!! (By the way, Kate...if we ever do this story again, you should wear your monkey pants!) Bravo and thanks for the delightful movie!!!

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  18. Great fun. What a good job by all. Thanks for sharing!

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  19. First of all, we love "Caps for Sale." It is such a great book.

    I love how you took the book and just ran with it and did so many creative and fun things. Your children are so blessed to have a mom like you.

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