P is for Puff the Magic Dragon
Have you been following along with our Learning Phonics series, “sss is for sounds?”
We have so much fun with these day-long mini-unit studies, which utilize Orton-Gillingham & Jolly Phonics ideas to explore a specific letter sound (phoneme) for an entire day – using gross motor activities, crafts, and even food to help reinforce the letter sound.
This week, we explore “P” is for “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
If you weren’t interested in using this as a phonics unit, these ideas would make a great Puff the Magic Dragon Unit Study or Book Study.
We use a combination of Jolly Phonics phoneme awareness through associating sounds with related objects and physical activity, and Orton-Gillingham, which encourages the use of crafts that mimic the shape of the letter.
For more on our approach to learning sounds, please check out my Learning Phonics Sounds page.
Puff the Magic Dragon Craft
We usually don’t do paper crafts like this, but as a bit of a change from the norm (and because we were also doing a craft-type project for our Dragon Bubble Breather, below) we made a P-shaped paper dragon craft which the kids assembled and glued shapes onto to make their own customized dragons.
This was a welcome opportunity to incorporate shape identification into our day.
Check out the full post on this Puff the Magic Dragon letter craft on Learning2Walk.
Puff the Magic Dragon Song & Book
The classic song is sweetly illustrated in this picture book, which is a favourite in our group. We’ve been playing the song at lunchtime for almost two weeks now, and the older children and I have been using the book as a way to slowly learn the lyrics.
Puff the Magic Dragon Dance
We used our Dragon Dance craft to revisit the fun we had learning about the Chinese New Year earlier this year, and had some fun dancing along to Puff the Magic Dragon while “following the leader” with our Dragon.
While dancing, I encouraged the kids to emphasize the “puffing” noise to make a “p” sound by dancing around and making the sound myself.
Puff the Magic Dragon Snack
The kids loved this simple grilled cheese lunch cut with this dinosaur sandwich cutter. I used raw spinach leaves for the grass (which they gobbled up) and carrot shreds for the fiery breath.
Puff the Magic Dragon Bubble Breather
We made a simple dragon bubble breather, inspired by this craft at Twodaloo.
I added some red paint to our bubbles to create a “fiery” colour effect. (Food dye would stain clothes, so avoid using that unless the kids are in bathing suits or clothing that can get stained.)
Materials Needed for Dragon Craft:
- empty plastic bottles (we used yogurt drink bottles)
- craft foam
- googly eyes
- hot glue stick
- Cool Touch hot glue gun
If you liked this post, be sure to check out the rest of our sss is for sounds series, or consider subscribing to my free daily or weekly e-mails, full of parenting inspiration, hands-on learning, and easy family recipes:
Super cute ideas. We love Puff 🙂 The sandwich is so cute. pinning this!
This is so adorable! I loved Puff the Magic Dragon as a kid – my son is too young still for this, but I’ll be keeping it bookmarked! Thanks for sharing!
I love your fun activities to go with this book – the lunch idea is my fave!
This makes me want to go out and get the book, so I can do all these fun ideas! I’d love if you linked up at Bookshelf, a permanent subject-specific linkup resource. This would be perfect under book themes!
http://www.dearhomeschooler.com/bookshelf