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TEACHER’S GUIDE

Mies van Hout Surprise (Lemniscaat) You long for it. You dream about it. Finally. Surprise! Longing Preparation Bring ten plastic eggs that can open to the classroom. Put a small chenille (Easter) chick inside each egg. Cut the strips below into individual activity strips. Roll them up and place them in the eggs with the chicks. Put the eggs in a nest. Use a wicker basket or a hoop filled with branches. Introduction Open the book Surprise and show the bird on page 1. Ask the children what they can see. What could the little birds drawn on her body mean? Read the word accompanying the illustration: longing. What is longing? What sort of things can you long for? Do the children long for things sometimes? How does it feel when their longings are fulfilled? Tell the children that the bird on page 1 longs to have small birds. This is why she put the eggs in her nest. Show the children the nest or put it in the circle. Count the eggs. In the coming period, the bird hatches an egg every day. One of the children is asked to choose an egg and open it. A chick will appear together with an activity. ACTIVITIES

1. Move to the playroom or outdoors. Put balls and (PE) sticks out. Divide the group into teams of two. Two children stand opposite each other and pick up two sticks by the ends. Put a ball (an egg) on the sticks. The children carefully walk to the other side while trying to avoid that the egg rolls off the sticks. If the egg does roll off, the children have to start all over again. Make the route more difficult by placing obstacles, such as benches, pawns and a seesaw.

ISBN: 978-1 -78807 -015- 7 | Hardback | 26.9 x 21.7 cm | 32 pages | Age: 4 + | Price: £ 9.95

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2. The egg cracks open. Draw a large egg on a sheet of paper and cut this into pieces. Put the pieces in the circle. The egg has hatched. Ask the children to complete the egg puzzle. Follow this by giving each team a paper egg (make multiple copies of one egg). One child is given a pair of scissors and is asked to cut the egg into four. The other child completes the egg puzzle. If they manage to do this, the team gives the egg pieces to another team who put the puzzle together. Pass on the separate pieces again.

3. Move to the playroom or outdoors. Ask one of the children to be the bird. This child sits in the hoop with their back to the group. The children sneak up to the bird. When they get close, they shout: bird, leave your nest! The bird gets up and ‘flies’ after the children and tries to tag them.

4. Pass the opened egg around the circle. Ask every child that is holding the egg to find a word that rhymes with ‘egg’. Suggestions: peg, leg, beg, keg.

5. Put a real chicken egg in the circle. Study the egg and carefully pass it round the circle. Ask the children to come up with various suggestions as to what you can do with a chicken egg. Boil and fry eggs. Look at the eggs again. What do they look like now? What are the similarities and what are the differences? Taste the eggs.

6. Open the book Surprise and look at the illustration accompanying ‘marvelling’. A chick is born! What does the chick look like? Tell the children that the mother marvels at the chick’s small and downy feathers. Explain what ‘marvelling’ means. Print colouring pictures with a bird on it and put out feathers in the same colours as those on the colour dice. Give each child a colouring picture and a colour dice. The children throw the dice, look at the colour thrown and put a feather of the same colour on the bird. They continue until the bird has beautiful and colourful plumage.

7. Put musical instruments in the circle and let the children decide which instrument best corresponds to bird song. Play this instrument a couple of times. The children clap their hands in keeping with the rhythm. Pass the instrument to one of the children who pretends to be the bird. The bird ‘sings’ and the rest of the group clap their hands in keeping with the rhythm.

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8. Open the book Surprise and look at the illustration accompanying ‘caring’. What is mother

bird doing? Which small bird gets a worm? (the second or the middle one). Choose five children to pretend to be a small bird. Provide a worm (a lace or a piece of string). Tell the children that mum feeds every young bird a worm. Start with the first bird. Give him the worm. Now give the worm to the second child etc. Say the ordinal numbers as you do so. Follow this by giving the children some assignments. Tell them which bird is being fed, give the worm to one of the children in the group and let him feed the right bird.

9. Look at the birds in the book Surprise. Ask the children what birds they know. Suggestions: pigeon, seagull, chicken, sparrow, swan, penguin, goose. Show pictures of these birds on the digital board. Ask the children if they know what a flamingo is and name some of the flamingo’s characteristics. Move to the playroom or outdoors. The children pretend to be flamingos. One of the children is a tourist who would like to take a picture of a flamingo. He runs after the flamingos. The flamingos run away. They cannot be tagged if they stand still and lift up one leg. When the tourist tags a flamingo, it means that the tourist has taken a picture. This flamingo temporarily drops out of the game. Once three flamingos have been tagged, the first one can join the game again.

10. Look in the back of the book Surprise at the illustration accompanying ‘letting go’. All the eggs have hatched. The birds have been nursed into adulthood. Give the children a black sheet of paper. Look at the birds in the book again. Name the various body parts: beak, feathers, legs, eyes. Ask the children to draw a picture of a bird on the black paper with crayons. Once everyone is finished, they can look at each other’s pictures and you can display them around the room.

Lesson suggestions written by Anke van Boxmeer and Els van Dijck