(playful music) - Hello, little learners!

Welcome back to our Pre-K and TK classroom.

My name is Mrs. Lara, and I'm going to be your teacher today.

I'm so excited to have you with me.

Now, before I do our special letter and tell you what we're going to work on, I need you to introduce yourself, of course.

So if you can tell me your name as loud as you can, wherever you are, when I put my hand to my ear, I'll make sure I listen way over here in TV land.

Ready?

When I count to three, here we go.

Oh, I heard so many of you at once!

Let me see if I got your special letter correct.

Today, I'm going to use a big curve, and I'm gonna start at the top, and I'm gonna use a little line.

What letter do you think I'm making?

And another little line!

It's the letter G!

It makes the g sound, doesn't it?

And the g sound goes like this.

♪ The G says g ♪ ♪ The G says g ♪ ♪ Every letter makes a sound, the G says g ♪ Is this your special letter?

If not, don't worry.

I'll have some more letters for you throughout the week.

Now, today is day one of the five days that we're going to be together here on our "Reading Explorer" show.

And I'm going to be sharing a very special story that you may have already read.

It's called "Caps for Sale", and it has some really cool characters like monkeys.

Can you see them on my cap?

So why don't we get our day started with a song?

I'm gonna tell you what our song's about here, 'cause I have some props.

Now, you may have noticed that the weather is changing, and you're gonna need to start wearing warmer clothes, like a jacket, maybe a hat or a cap, just like in our story.

So I have a song that's gonna help us remember where things go, and the tune is "The Farmer in the Dell," and we'll sing it all week long so you can learn it.

So it starts off with a scarf, and it goes like this.

♪ The scarf goes on my neck ♪ ♪ The scarf goes on my neck ♪ ♪ Warm clothes for when it's cold ♪ ♪ The scarf goes on my neck ♪ Keeps our neck warm.

What else do I have here?

Ooh.

Do you know what these are?

Mittens, mittens, and they go on our hands.

♪ The mittens go on my hands ♪ ♪ The mittens go on my hands ♪ ♪ Warm clothes for when it's cold ♪ ♪ The mittens go on my hands ♪ And then I have, ooh, a hat!

The hat goes where?

On your head, that's right!

♪ A hat goes on my head ♪ ♪ A hat goes on my head ♪ ♪ Warm clothes for when it's cold ♪ ♪ A hat goes on my head ♪ And the last thing I have are these very warm boots.

And where do boots go?

They go on your feet!

♪ The boots go on my feet ♪ ♪ The boots go on my feet ♪ ♪ Warm clothes for when it's cold ♪ ♪ The boots go on my feet ♪ That's right, can you think of anything else you wear when it's warm?

Probably a jacket too, right?

Now it's time for us to see what Miss Maria brought for our letter, let's see.

(bell tolling) Miss Maria, here's our letter, and we're learning to track our words, because tracking is going to help us learn to read.

Do you remember which one's your tracking or pointer finger?

The one right next to your thumb, this one right here.

And when you point to the word, start on your left, slide to the right, and when you get to the end, don't fall off, no!

You return sweep and go back to the other side.

So let's read our letter together.

It says, "Dear Mrs. Lara: Yesterday it was so cold outside that I had to wear a thick jacket and warm cap."

Oh, it must've been very cold.

A thick jacket will keep you very warm, and the cap will help the heat stay inside so you stay nice and cozy.

"They kept me warm when I went outside to play."

Oh, it's so much fun to play in the cold breezy weather when you're bundled up, isn't it?

Well, today, I have a book that I want to share with you, called "Caps for Sale," and it's about a man who sells hats or caps that keep people warm.

So let's reach into our box and grab the book, and we'll read it together.

You're gonna have to help me make some sounds as I read the book.

It's no fun if I make them all by myself.

So here's the book, "Caps for Sale," told and illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina.

And look, here's the main character.

Can you tell what he's doing?

He's sleeping on top of a tree.

And you can't see very well, but behind the tree, there's these little creatures, and they're gonna do something very naughty to the man's caps.

So let's read the book and find out what happens to his caps.

"Caps for Sale."

And as I read, I'm gonna tell you, I want you to make a monkey sound, or make the face of the man when he learns something's happened.

"Once there was a peddler who sold caps, but he was not like an ordinary peddler carrying his wares on his back.

He carried them on top of his head."

Now, take a look here.

You can see as he's selling his caps he's carrying them on top of his head.

"First, he had on his own checked cap, then a bunch of gray caps and a bunch of brown caps and a bunch of blue caps, and on the very top, a bunch of red caps too."

So take a look at the top.

He has different color caps all on top of his head.

Do you think that you can walk with those caps on your head?

I don't think I can balance them very well.

"He walked up and down the streets, holding himself very straight, so as not to upset his caps."

This reminds me of a book we read last week, "10 Apples on Top."

All the characters had to walk very straight like this as well.

"As he went along, he called, 'Caps, caps for sale!

50 cents a cap!'"

Now, this is the part where you can help me.

So when I say he called, "Caps for Sale," we can all say that together.

"One morning, he couldn't sell any caps!

He walked up the street and he walked down the street, calling..." Now, remember, this is the part.

"'Caps, caps for sale!

50 cents a cap!'

But nobody wanted any caps that morning.

Nobody wanted even a red cap.

He began to feel very hungry, but he had no money for lunch.

'I think I'll go for a walk in the country,' said he, and he walked out of town slowly, slowly, so as not to upset his caps."

So I want you to think about how he's feeling right now.

He hasn't sold any caps, and he's super hungry, but it has no money for lunch!

Now make a prediction.

What is going to happen next?

Who's he gonna meet in this town, and will this story have a happy ending?

Let's read on.

"He walked for a long time until he came to a great big tree.

'That's a nice place for a rest,' thought he, and he sat down very slowly under the tree and leaned back little by little against the tree trunk, so as not to disturb the caps on his head.

Then he put up his hand to feel if they were straight.

First his own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the brown caps, then the blue caps, then the red caps on the very top."

Now, who lives in trees?

You think insects are gonna get his caps?

Let's see.

"They were all there, so he went to sleep.

(snores) He slept for a very long time.

When he woke up, he was refreshed and rested."

But look, how many caps does he have on his head?

(gasps) Just the one cap!

What happened to the other caps?

"But before standing up, he felt with his hand to make sure his caps were in the right place, and all we felt was his own checked cap!

He looked to the right of him, no caps!

He looked to the left of him, no caps!

He looked in the back of him, no caps!

He looked behind the tree, no caps!

Then he looked up into the tree, and what do you think he saw?"

So there he is looking up into the tree.

I'll give you a clue.

It's an animal that makes this noise.

(grunting) Monkeys!

"On every branch sat a monkey, on every monkey was a gray or a brown or a blue or a red cap!"

Look at all those monkeys with the caps!

Oh no, they needed to keep their heads warm!

"The peddler looked at the monkeys.

The monkeys looked at the peddler.

He didn't know what to do.

Finally, he spoke to them.

'You monkeys, you!'

He said, shaking a finger at them.

'You give me back my caps!'

But the monkeys only shook their fingers back at him and said (hissing).

They were not giving him back his caps.

This made the peddler angry, so he shook both hands at them and said, 'You monkeys, you give me back my caps!'

But the monkeys only shook both their hands back at him."

And do you remember what they said?

(hissing) "Now he felt quite angry.

He stomped his foot and he said, 'You monkeys, you better give me back my caps!'

But the monkeys only stomped their feet back at him and said- (hissing)."

They are not listening to him.

"By this time, the peddler was really very, very angry!

He stamped both his feet and shouted, 'You monkeys, you!

You must give me back my caps!'

But the monkeys only stomped both their feet back at him and said."

(hissing) It's like they're copying him, huh?

"At last he became so angry that he pulled off his own cap, threw it on the ground and began to walk away.

(grunts) But then, each monkey pulled off his cap, all the gray caps, all the brown caps, all the blue caps and red caps, flying down out of the tree."

There they are.

"So the peddler picked up his caps and put them back on his head, first his own checked cap, the gray caps, the brown caps, the blue caps and the red caps on the very top."

Let's see what happens.

"And slowly, slowly, he walked down to town, calling."

Do you remember?

This is the part you can help me.

"'Caps, caps for sale!

50 cents a cap!'

The end."

So what did you think of the story "Caps for Sale"?

I hope that you go back and reread it by checking it out at your local library or on the Sora app.

This is a good one to read again and again, because each time you read, you find a different detail in the text that you may have missed.

So I'm gonna put this down, and we're gonna practice a foundational skill now that's going to help you learn to read.

So we're gonna practice our rhyming words, and I have a fun little song to help us recognize the words that rhyme with ap, ap.

Okay, so here's my song, and I need to make a rhythm, so it goes like this.

(hands clapping) ♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ So we're looking for words that rhyme with ap.

Let's see, ap.

How about this one?

Do you know what this is?

It looks like a missing tooth.

It's causing a gap.

Gap, ap.

Do they rhyme?

Yes!

Gap, ap, they both say ap.

All right, we're gonna put that down here.

Let's look for another one.

♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ Look at this one.

Oh, it's my favorite thing to do.

It is a nap, nap.

Does that rhyme with gap and ap?

Does it sound the same at the end?

It does!

Nap, gap, and ap all say ap at the end.

Let's do another one.

♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ Let's see, oh, this one.

I'm glad I'm not a mouse, because if I saw this, I'd be scared.

It's a trap, trap!

Does trap rhyme with ap?

Yes.

We found so many rhyming words.

Trap, gap, nap all say ap at the end.

Let's do a few more.

♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ How about... Ooh, you can do this with your fingers.

It's a snap!

Snap.

(fingers snapping) Snap rhymes with gap, trap, and nap.

All right.

♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ Oh, this is my favorite.

When people do this to me, I feel so special.

You know what this is?

Clap, clap!

Clap rhymes with snap, gap, trap, and nap.

Last one.

♪ Monkeys, monkeys in the tree ♪ ♪ Throw the rhyming word down to me ♪ And this, you might know it as a faucet, but it's also called a tap, tap.

That's says ap at the end like all the other words.

So let's review.

Rhyming words that end with ap are tap, trap, snap, clap, gap, and my favorite, a nap.

That's what the peddler did under the tree.

Right, now we're gonna move to our project place, where I have some things that I want to show you.

We're gonna be making a t-shirt by sewing.

All right, let's walk over there.

So here at our project place today, I brought something from home that I want to tell you about.

This is called a sewing machine.

Now, your family might have a sewing machine as well at home, but I wanted to show you the different parts of the machine.

So if you notice on your clothes, if you look really closely, you'll see that they're put together by stitches, and they're usually done by a machine like this.

So I wanted to show you, this is called a spooler, and this is a spool of thread, like this.

You have to thread the thread through the machine like this.

You have to follow the path, there's arrows, and it goes down here, and the thread goes through the eye of the needle.

Now, the needle doesn't really have an eye like you or I, it's just a hole in the needle where you put the thread through, and the needle is quite sharp.

This right here where the needle is, is called a foot.

Like you, you have a foot, don't you?

It's called a foot, and that helps guide the cloth as it goes through.

And I'm gonna show you what it looks like when it goes up and down.

See that part going up and down?

Now, if I were to plug it in and press on the pedal, it would go really, really fast, and the cloth would go through the fabric and it would create stitches.

So that's how people sew clothes very, very quickly.

If you have one of these at home, ask your family to take it out so you can explore and take a look at it.

Maybe even draw a picture and label the parts for a writing activity.

Now, speaking of activity, we can't sew with real needles, but I thought it would be really, really fun to do a quick sewing project with some recycled materials.

Now, we may not have time to finish the whole thing today, but we'll finish it tomorrow.

So the first thing you're going to need is a paper bag, some scissors, a hole punch, and some yarn, and optional, some paint, if you want to decorate.

So first thing you're gonna do, like we've done in many of our projects, is take a paper bag and we're gonna cut down the side.

You'll notice there's lines.

We're gonna cut down one of the lines.

And this is gonna give us some nice paper to use for our project.

Now, at the bottom of the bag, there's a shape called a rectangle.

See right here, we're actually gonna want to cut that out.

I was in a three-year-old class.

Hi, Miss Mayer!

And we were practicing scissor skills, and she has a really good way to teach children how to hold scissors.

She says that the fingers are like a family, so the thumb goes through.

I'm not holding them correctly.

Miss Mayer, don't get mad!

The thumb goes through the big hole, and the rest of the family goes through this hole right here.

And so one of the students was telling me, "Well, this is my brother finger, and this is my sister finger, and they need to cut."

So maybe practice that with your child at home, making a finger family that they use to place their fingers correctly when they're cutting.

'Cause they're gonna be cutting their whole lives.

Imagine you get to college and you don't know how to cut?

Wouldn't happen.

Okay.

So once you have that, you'll see that you have a very large piece of paper that's been free.

No cost to us, and recycled.

So I'm gonna fold it in half so that it looks like this.

You can do lots of things with this, but what I'm going to do today is make a shirt.

You can make any article of clothing that you'd like, but I decided I'm going to make a shirt.

You're gonna fold it in half and then draw a shirt shape.

So you're gonna need a neck, that's where our neck's gonna go, and you're going to need some sleeves.

I'm gonna make my shirt short sleeves.

I'm using a Sharpie so you can see, but you might want to use a pencil so that if you make any mistakes and you want to change anything, you can easily erase it.

I'll show you what it looks like.

This is what my shirt is looking like.

Next, you're gonna want to hold both pieces, one on top of the other, and cut the shape out.

I'm gonna show you how to do this a little bit, then to make things faster, I have one already cut out.

So you can see that I have both pieces together as I'm cutting.

You want to try to keep them as still as you can so they're both about even.

Once you do that, you should get something that looks like this, two shapes like this.

You're going to want to put them right on top of the other, because for the next part of the activity, we're actually going to be sewing our shirt pieces together.

Now, tomorrow, I'm gonna show you a pattern, which is what seamstresses use to make clothing like dresses.

So this is just kind of a way to do sewing very quickly.

So I'm taking my hole punch, and I'm creating holes all the way around like this.

And this is gonna allow us to sew our shirt together.

Now, you can use a real needle if you feel comfortable with letting your child use it and with supervision, and just take some embroidery thread, but usually in the age group that I teach, I tend to use toothpicks.

They make great needles, and you can get about 100, 200 of them at the place where everything's a dollar.

Okay, so it's gonna look something like this.

So next, you're gonna take a toothpick just like this, and a little bit of tape and a little bit of yarn, and you're gonna tape the yarn piece to the toothpick.

And I have that done here for time sake.

It's gonna look like this.

Basically, you're creating a needle and a thread like this, and then you're going to start at one end of the hole punched piece, and you're gonna knot it, very first thing.

Oop, my tape fell off.

Come on, needle.

There you are.

That happens.

All right.

Then you're gonna knot it at one end like this.

If I were doing this in a classroom, I would definitely do this over a couple of days, because you want children to be cutting the pieces out, sewing them on, and you want to be having a discussion about what it means to sew and the different techniques maybe that people around the world use to sew.

In fact, I was at a school that celebrated Dia de los Muertos, and they wore beautiful dresses that people sewed with a technique called embroidery.

So you kind of get the idea here.

I'll try to finish it up for you as quickly as I can.

You're gonna want to sew all the way around, and you can stuff it with newspaper to make it extra thick, and you can paint patterns on your t-shirt, which is what I'm going to do now.

So I'm gonna do a blue and red striped pattern.

Once you're done sewing, you can do that, and I'll show you the finished product here before I have to say goodbye.

This shirt reminds me of the book, "No, David!"

Do you remember that book about the naughty little boy?

And in the end, he wasn't so naughty, was he?

He was just learning like all the rest of us.

All right, here we are.

Of course you can do any color you want, and yours does not have to look like mine.

So once you sew, this is kind of what you're left with, a shirt that will allow you to practice your fine motor skills, brings in a little bit of art, and of course my favorite, uses recycled materials.

So I hope that you join me tomorrow, because we're gonna be doing some more sewing.

We're actually gonna be using some styrofoam plates, embroidery thread, and our needle and thread again with the toothpick or real needles.

Ooh, should be fun to create different shapes or letters.

So come back again tomorrow, we're gonna continue learning about clothing.

There's lots of fun activities planned.

Until then, Mrs. Lara sends you a big smooch, (smooches) and a big squeeze, and reminds you to read, play, and to use your imagination every day.

We'll see you later.

(upbeat music)