Day: September 4, 2019

A is for Alligator

Dear Sis,

Our Daily Reading

Today’s fiction selection was There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer and the non-fiction selection was Who Lives in an Alligator Hole? by Anne Rockwell.

Alligator Cookies – Step 1

We melted some Green Candy Melts and dipped a half dozen Nutter Butter cookies. While the candy coating set, we did our letter craft.

“A” is for Alligator Letter Craft

Parent Preparation

  • Print A is for Alligator Template Printable, on white card stock. I found this free template on Miss Maren’s Monkeys blog. 
  • Cut out the template letter A, trace it onto green construction paper, and cut out the green A.
  • The teeth can be cut directly from the template card stock. The extra rigidity makes them easier to work with.
  • Supply a full sheet of craft paper, we chose brown, 2 large wiggly eyes and a glue stick.

Student Assembly

  • Paste green “A” to the full sheet of craft paper.
  • Paste on the wiggly eyes.
  • Paste on the teeth.
  • Write or ask your grown up to tile, name, and date your work, for your homeschool portfolio.

Alligator Cookies – Step 2

Melt a few White Candy Melts and have a grown up help you pipe eyes and teeth onto your alligator cookies.

Making an Alligator Hole

Who lives in an Alligator Hole? by Ann Rockwell, described how Alligators find a naturally occurring mucky place in their wetland environment and thrash around to create a gator hole. Then, other creatures: insects, fish, birds, plants, etc. move in to. Creatures that are necessary to the lives of various other creatures are keystone species! If a keystone animal’s population suffers, so do the connected animal populations. We referenced our book to have this discussion before and after making our gator hole.

Activity Materials/Process

  • A dish bin of soil. We used about 4 inches we dug up in the back yard:)
  • Water and a scoop. Add the water gradually. Saturate the soil, without flooding it, to simulate wetland soil.

  • Use a toy alligator, we found ours at Dollar Tree, to move around in the soil in the center to hollow out a gator hole.

William enjoyed playing in his gator hole for a while before we cleaned it up to move onto the next activity:)

Alligator Cookies – Step 3

Melt a few Milk Chocolate Candy melts and have a grown up help you pipe the centers of the eyes and nostrils onto your alligator cookies.

Alligator Dentist Counting Game

Traditional Crocodile Dentist game play passes from player to player, one tooth pressed down at a time, until someone gets chomped! We renamed it to “Alligator Dentist” for the day and counted aloud as each tooth was pressed, until someone got chomped! 

After our game, we ate lunch, so we could sample the much anticipated Alligator Cookies:)

Love,

b