Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller
Book Summary: Children will enjoy listening to you read this delightful book about egg-laying animals and their unique eggs. The colorful illustrations in this story are vivid and make the book come alive with fascinating detail. The words in rhyme tell this story in an informational, but highly interesting way that will attract children. This is one of my favorite informational books!
Bible Verse: Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:25-27)
Vocabulary:
In the book, Chickens Aren't the Only Ones, we learn a new word "Oviparous" which means egg-laying. We practiced saying this word a few times. Since it is a long word, we count the letters...9 letters long! Jonah was so proud of his new "grown-up" word! (In full disclosure, I didn't learn this official word until my first year of teaching!)
"Tap, Tap, The Egg Cracked. Who is oviparous?" Discovery Activity:
I placed pictures of all the animals mentioned in the book in plastic eggs. As a reinforcement to reading the book, we opened the eggs and talked about each one. Each time we said "Tap, tap, the egg cracked. Who is oviparous?" to practice our new vocabulary word. If you have small animals that would fit in your egg it would be more fun. Sadly, I didn't have many of the animals that I needed, so I just used the pictures for this activity. (Download available)
Science:
We watched a video of chicks hatching from eggs from the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago. We watched it several times. After watching this video, I got interested in what other egg videos we could find. I headed to YouTube and did some searches. Warning: Use your own "mommy discretion" with YouTube videos and ALWAYS preview them before showing them to your child. There were tons of options for videos, but we liked this one...
Hatch, Hatch Little Egg Game: Take turns curling up into a ball and pretend to be an egg. You or your child will pretend to be an animal hatching from their egg. Make sounds and movements for the animal and see if the other person can guess the animal.
Fine Motor Skills: Jonah used tweezers to pick up "chicks" (yellow pom-poms) and place them in the compartments of a recycled egg carton. For added difficulty, have your child place the "chicks" into plastic eggs and closing them before placing the egg in the carton.
"Who is Oviparous?" Sorting: I gave Jonah pictures of oviparous animals mentioned in the book and some that were not in the book. He sorted the pictures and glued the pictures in the right section of a T-chart. Our headings were "Lays eggs" and "Does NOT lay eggs". (
Download available)
Letter Sounds Matching:
I wrote the beginning letters of oviparous animals on plastic eggs and gathered enough various animal puppets and manipulatives to match the letters. Jonah had to place the animal in the corresponding egg, depending on the beginning sounds. Example: O for Octopus (If you don't have enough animal manipulatives, use the pictures from the download available.)
Math: We are still working on identifying and matching the correct number of objects at our house, so we did a simple number/counting activity using some frogs and turtles counting manipulatives I had around the house.
Just for Fun: I pulled out a favorite of Jonah's just for fun. The
Lucky Ducks Game is easy and Jonah enjoys hearing the ducks quack. To make it an independent activity, I made cards with the shape that appear on the bottom of the ducks for Jonah to match the duck with their shapes. We also played "by the rules" a few times, too.
Downloads Available To You: I have posted the printable pages for the activities mentioned above on my blog.
Feel free to download them and use them with your tot! 
