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I love using storybooks to teach most of the domains, if not all of them, and my favorite one to start the new school year is The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. This book is a story about a little raccoon named Chester that is afraid to go to school, and his mother shares a family secret and kisses his hand to let him know that her love will go with him, no matter where he is.
I think many of the children that start school might be feeling like Chester, and this book can give them a little reassurance. Its beautiful illustrations will also encourage their curiosity about their world and, let’s face, who doesn’t find raccoons adorable, right? giving you a perfect opportunity to use the story for a science lesson.
Benefits of Teaching Science to Preschoolers
Since curiosity is as natural in young children as breathing, we must take advantage of their natural curiosity and help them develop their scientific thinking, in a fun and interactive way, which will provide them with many benefits, such as:
- Use their interest in exploring and experiment to establish a positive connection to science and encourage them to love it and stay interested for many years, if not thorough their entire life.
- Stimulate their scientific thinking and helping them make sense of the world around them, and understand the why things happened and how they work.
- Extend their vocabulary promoting the development of language using scientific words, their communication, team work and cooperation, reasoning and problem-solving skills. In fact, you can use science to teach every domain, because it can easily tie up to literacy, math and art. Therefore, always encourage your children to ask questions, observe different types of natural phenomena, experiment and explore, but, most importantly, give them plenty of opportunities to do just that by offering fun, interactive and hand-on experiences.
The Kissing Hand Science Activities
There are many science activities you can do using this storybook as a base, and I wanted to mention some of the activities I like to use.
Explain What is a Raccoon and Some Important Facts
Show them a toy raccoon and/or real pictures. Ask them what they know about raccoons using KWL charts (K = what they know; W = what they want to know and L = what they learn).
Write down everything they know about a raccoon in the K column and everything they want to know under the W column. At the end of the week, when you review what they learned about raccoons, write down the information on the L column). Keep it up to allow them to come back to it, discuss the information and ask questions about it.
Top Raccoon Facts for Kids
- Raccoons grow to be as big as a medium size dog.
- Raccoons are mammals, which means that mommy raccoon carry her babies on her tummy and feed them breast milk when they are born.
- Mommy raccoon can have 2 or 3 babies called kits, and she keeps them safe.
- Raccoons have very distinct markings like rings on their bushy tail and a black mask across their faces.
- Raccoons live 2 or 3 years, because they can be hit by a car, eaten by a predator or get sick.
- Raccoons are wild animals, and they can bite. Some can carry rabies.
- Raccoons are very intelligent and can climb trees super good.
- Raccoons are omnivores, that means they eat almost anything like plants, vegetables, clams, fish, insects, nuts, fruits, small animals and even human food.
- Raccoons are nocturnal, that means they sleep during the day and play and hunt at night.
- Raccoons live in Canada, United States and Mexico, in woodlands, farms and cities.
- Raccoons have thumbs like us and they can open drawers, doors and even refrigerators.
These interesting short videos from YouTube show raccoons’ characteristics very nicely.
Learning the Body Parts of a Raccoon
Print the picture of a raccoon in white cardstock and laminate it. Add tags with the name of its body parts previously printed in white cardstock and laminate them, using Velcro. Teach the children the name of their body parts and what are they for. Children can practice matching the name of the body parts with the parts of the raccoon.
I added a printable as part of the FREE science pack to use with this activity. Just click on the link to download it.
Nocturnal Animals
Explain that nocturnal animals are those that sleep during the day and are active at night, like raccoons. They also have special physical characteristics that make their lives at nighttime activity easier. For example, many nocturnal animals have special eyes that help them see well in the dark, such as raccoons, owls, and cats. Other animals use echolocation to find their ways like bats and shrews. And others have excellent hearing like rabbits and mice.
If you want to dig more into nocturnal animals, Stay at Home Educator has a simple lesson plan that you might be interested in. You can find it here.
It is also a good idea to show them a video for them to see some of these animals, instead of imagining them. I found the following video from YouTube that you might want to use for this purpose.
Other Animals in The Kissing Hand Story
I suggest keeping it simple and sweet and just talk about raccoons. Maybe you can say the name of the other animals that appear in the story and a couple of facts about each of them, but I will suggest coming back to this book during the school year if you want, and introduce more facts about those other animals at a later time.
I found beautiful pictures of the animals in the story in Pexels and Unsplash, and I wanted to incorporate them into this FREE pack, so you can have them handy. Just click on the link below to download them.
The Kissing Hand Name Match Activity
The story shows other animals throughout, and even when I don’t recommend talking much about those at the beginning of the school year to avoid overwhelm your preschoolers with information and confusion, it is a good idea just to mention the names of those animals, which most probably are already known by your students.
With this in mind, I created an activity to encourage the children to match these animals’ names. The activity comes with 8 pages with 2 sets of cards each, for a total of 30 cards. Each set has one with the picture and name of the animal and another card with just the picture, plus labels. They include 15 different animals: raccoon, possum, dragonfly, skunk, bird, squirrel, tortoise, fox, deer, frog, woodpecker, rabbit, snail, bee, and owl.
You can find this FREE activity in the link below.
Books About Raccoons
As usual, I like to include books in all my activities. Place them in all your centers to encourage your preschoolers to see the pictures and ask questions about them. That way you will increase the possibilities of teachable moments, and enrich the learning process of your kiddos. These are some of the most interesting books you can find.
You can use these ideas by themselves, but I will invite you to combine them with the literacy and math activities I created for this beautiful story, The Kissing Hand, to take advantage of the opportunity this book offers. Remember that for a more comprehensive and complete educational process you should not divorce literacy from math, science, or any other domain. They intermingle together and complement each other.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.D. Please let me know if you like any of these ideas worked for you, or you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you came up with different ideas and want to share them, I will love to post them as well.
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