Little Pea - Amy Krouse Rosenthal {October Virtual Book Club Blog Hop}

Learning with Peas

I can't believe the month is almost over, and I am just now writing my October Virtual Book Club post.  The featured author this month was Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  I have to admit I have never read a single book of hers before this month.  I'm thankful for the VBC, because my boys and I really enjoy her work!  I am featuring Little Pea.

Little Pea is an adorable story about a pea and his family.  My boys cracked up every time we read how Little Pea hates candy and considers spinach "dessert".  This has quickly become a favorite book, and they request it every night before bed.

One day during school time JZ (5) and I read Little Pea again, and we did some learning activities to go along with the book.  I gave him a bowl of frozen peas.  He asked me if peas really have a little smiley face, and he held several up to closely inspect.

I had him group the peas in piles of five.  I chose five for two reasons.  1.  Five is the number of candies Little Pea has to eat before getting dessert.  2.  JZ gets regular practice skip counting by ten.  We haven't touched on fives yet.

I had him make twenty piles of five, and then we counted by fives several times.  We also talked about how ten groups of ten make one hundred and twenty groups of five make one hundred.

Next I wrote the days of the week on small pieces of paper and had JZ paste them in order.  He has known the days for awhile, and this was a great way to work on word recognition.  He always "reads" them in order, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he could read them all and put them in the correct sequential order.

After pasting the days in order he drew a piece of candy next to each day.  Little Pea has to eat specific candy each day of the week, so following the book JZ drew the different types and colors of candy.

One thing I especially enjoyed about this task was watching him troubleshoot.  He chose to draw using colored pencils.  When he got to Thursday he needed to add pink polka dots to the candy.  We don't have a pink colored pencil.  He seemed particularly proud of himself when he realized he could use a pink marker for the dots.  It was cute.

Despite our slow start, it was a fun month.  Our other favorite Amy Krouse Rosenthal book is Duck, Rabbit!  Here are more of her books:

For more book activities visit my September post featuring Lois Elhert.