Picnic & Play: Ten Little Grasshoppers

Zac has been asking me a ton of questions about how animals live, so we are going to do Animals as our topic in August. Starting with... grasshoppers!

So today we built a fort out of sofa cusions, went outside and thoroughly washed all of our mud kitchen pots and pans and utensils, had Circle Time (below), and went to Sandwiches & Strings, a live lunchtime concert at our small local art museum Artspace 304.

Circle Time

#1 - "A Ram Sam Sam" song
from the Seven Times the Sun CD, track 17

#2 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#3 - "Good Morning Feet!" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 65

#4 - "The Door's Shut Tight!" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 73

#5 - "We Wrap, Wrap, Wrap Our Little Bundle..." verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 78

#6 - "The Elephant" verse
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 17

#7 - "Two Little Blackbirds" finger play
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 20

#8 - "Rocks to Stones" finger play
from The Breathing Circle, page 84

#9 - "Ten Little Grasshoppers" finger play
from Rhymes for Fingers and Flannel Boards, page 90

#10 - "Grasshoppers Three" song
from the Seven Times the Sun CD, track 15

There are a lot of animals which we could explore but I decided to start with the grasshopper because I knew we would be going to Sandwiches & Strings today at noon. This month's guests were The Banjo Boys playing live Americana tunes on fiddle and banjo. What could be more perfect than that? When you looked around the gallery you could see that everyone's toes were tapping. It was great!

If you're doing this topic with a little one and you also have a slightly older child, you may enjoy the Songs of Insects: A Guide to the Voices of Crickets, Katydids & Cicadas website. A nature walk is also a wonderful follow up.

"The high-pitched songs of crickets, katydids, grasshoppers, and cicadas are a prominent element of summer and early fall in most of North America. These wonderful musicians chirp, click, zip, rattle, and lisp from trees, shrubs, lawns, fields, woodlands — from just about all habitats, and sometimes from inside our homes.

Finding and identifying a singing insect can be a wonderful challenge. These pages will expose you to over 80 common and widespread species, and will help you identify many of the singers that you will hear in your immediate surroundings and in the countryside far from home. With the help of a flashlight and considerable patience, you will be able to track down individual singers and perhaps even view a singing performance firsthand!"

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