I can’t believe I am even going to admit this… even my husband said he read this book as a child… but I have NEVER read Caps for Sale! Thanks to The Peaceful Preschool, I got to read it for the first time… and many times over!
It always intrigues me which books children gravitate towards. The pictures are not flashy and the story line isn’t overly exciting… at least by today’s standard of over-the-top “shock value.” BUT my kids absolutely adored this book! They were asking me to read it several times a day. Perhaps it’s the silly little monkeys shaking their fingers and stomping their feet saying “tsz tsz tsz!” Perhaps it’s that they can relate to the emotion of being angry and how the main character reacts in a childlike manner. Regardless of why, we all enjoyed reading this book!
Not only is this an adorable story, but there are so many practical life applications that can be made for preschoolers! We “parked” on this book for a few days and pulled from some great resources surrounding this book. Here’s a quick look at what we did!
After reading the book for the first time, there were a couple themes to me that were glaringly obvious and they were something I thought was important to discuss with the kiddos.
First off, “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” This is especially important for my almost 5 year old son to understand as he interacts with his younger sister. Sometimes he doesn’t understand why she is doing what she is doing until I remind him that it is the EXACT same thing he did to her only a few hours previously. Why does she think she can take the toy from me? Maybe it’s because you had JUST taken a toy from her. Why is she trying to give me a hug while I’m crying? Maybe it’s because you’ve given her hugs when she’s fallen down. She’s always watching and learning from one of the people she looks up to the most… her big brother! She’s learning the bad AND the good!
Secondly I felt it important to discuss anger and our reactions to anger. Anger is a very natural reaction, but it’s what we DO with that anger that causes us to sin. “Be ye angry and sin not.” So we talked about ways that we can express our anger: which ways are God honoring and which ways are sinful and only make us feel good for a short while.
We then dove into the FUN parts! We practiced our counting and fine motor skills by building the Peddler out of play dough. Using a wooden skewer, the kids made “caps” and put them on the Peddler’s head. We counted how many of each color were on his head in the book and tried to replicate it. There were 12 caps for sale and 1 of his own… making a total of 13 caps on his head!
We talked about how hard it must have been for the Peddler to carry those hats on his head. We tried walking with some on our heads as well. My son was able to walk with 8 caps on his head, though only a short distance! Looking back, we should have measured the distance walked with a tape measure, but it was also great to just realize how some things people make look easy are actually quite hard! This taught my kids an appreciation for what others are able to do.
My son really loved the sewing activity from our Corduroy Bear activities the previous day, so we continued it by sewing “caps” onto a tree! I used a scrap piece of brown fabric cut it into a tree shape and gave him a big needle and cross-stitch thread to sew the buttons onto the tree. He loved this and because it took a while to accomplish, it turned into a great activity for rest time the next day.
My son has also been doing great with his phonics. We have been using Progressive Phonics the past several weeks, so when I found an activity using the ending sounds he was already familiar with, I decided to test his knowledge. He did great categorizing the words according to ending sounds and then we attempted to read them. He didn’t do it perfectly, but it is so much fun seeing his world open up with being able to read to himself!
One of the last activities we did based on Caps for Sale was we sorted money by type, talked about the value of each coin and counted how many were in each pile. The Peddler called out “Caps for sale! 50 cents per cap!” So we talked about how many of each value we needed to create 50 cents.
Then we picked out the “dirties” pennies and using two different mixtures (one was lemon juice and salt, one was ketchup and baking soda), we cleaned the pennies and determined which mixture was the most effective. The lemon juice and salt won hands down BTW. Both kids enjoyed mixing everything, and because it was all edible, I even let them taste it. I don’t think my almost-2-year-old was very keen on the lemon. haha!
We truly loved working through this book! If you are looking for ideas, there are lots of awesome printables on Pinterest! We especially loved the printables from Homeschool Creation.
