Along with other beautiful and enchanting books, such as “The very hungry caterpillar”, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? “, or “The Mixed-up Chameleon”. The book “Papa, please get the moon for me” by Eric Carle is a perfect way to start our unit about moons.
It`s a beautiful and short story about a daughter who asks her father to play with the moon. The father tries to get the full moon, but it`s way too big. The solution? It`s to wait for the moon to get smaller and smaller until he finally can pick it up for his daughter Monica. What a simple approach to the phases of the moon we have here!
Most of the children were familiar with the book, once it`s part of our permanent collection of books at Creative Minds, so, I decided to make a felt story out of it!
After our felt story, we simple wondered about the sizes and shapes of the moon.
Most of the children recognized right away the moon on the book`s cover. “It`s a full moon!”
How about if we make our own full moon today? What`s the shape of the moon?
Luigi: -“Roundy”.
Lina: “Like a circle”.
I handed each of them a white paper with a circle drawn on it. We also used foil paper to stamp the silver paint into our full moons.
We waited until our next group time to have our dry moons and finish our artwork.
I retold them the story again, this time, using the original book.
What does Papa use to get the moon for Monica?
Eve: “a ladder”!
With our dry silver moons placed on a black construction paper, we used wood sticks to make our latter towards the moon.
The older children had fun building their ladders and kept asking me for more wood sticks.
With the other children, I faced a situation that I didn`t expect as a new Educator I am…the very young ones are still learning how to use glue and manipulate small objects like wood sticks. Frustration was in the air for some of them. That day, I learned my lesson about the importance of showing each step into the artwork. Once they are developing fine motor skills, the steps make the whole difference during any project we do together.
After giving them a little help, the result was beautiful and they were very excited about finally taking their moons home!
