Singalong Saturdays: Play Along! The Box Song

There are so many things to learn in Hot Toast Music Co.’s songs each week. Let’s learn together and make discoveries! Each week’s Singalong Saturdays will include ways to connect ideas in the songs to fun at-home activities you can do together as a family. Simple activities are multidisciplinary and appropriate for a wide variety of learners. They include storytime, artmaking, science explorations, film suggestions, discussion prompts, and more!

Download Activity Guide

Step One:

Watch the song, and sing along!

Try this Next!
Join Miss Jenny and read Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

Talk about it!
Recycling means using materials you already have new ways. When we do this, it saves us money and reduces the number of things we buy from the store! One way to reuse and recycle is by using materials you might normally throw away, to create art! Anything from old t-shirts, egg cartons, glass jars, or bottle caps can be reused in a new creative way.
⦁ What materials do you have around your home that can be turned into art?
⦁ What are some new ways you can recycle things you use every day?
⦁ Earth Day is April 22nd, can you think of other ways we can be kinder to our planet?

Watch this clip from Sesame Street and sing along!
Watch Mister Rogers help his community learn about recycling!*

*Available with Amazon Prime. The episodes are under Season 5, episodes 6-11

Get Moving!

Get moving with indoor (or outdoor) Imagination Hopscotch! This is a great opportunity to work together to create and set up your own Hopscotch game!

What you will need:
⦁ Cardboard box or cereal box
⦁ Scissors
⦁ Paint or markers

Steps

1. You will want a grown-up to help you cut out shapes from your cardboard. They can be whatever shape you want, but make sure the shapes are about as big as your foot. Think of cutting squares, circles, diamonds, hearts, or a mix of all of them! Aim to cut 5-10 shapes, but this will depend on how much cardboard you have to cut from.
2. Once the pieces are cut out, you are ready to paint or use your markers! This is where you can also get creative: hopscotch is usually played where the shapes are numbered, starting with “1”. You can also play hopscotch starting with the letter “A”. However, I want you to get creative and design each pieces the way you want!
3. Once the pieces are decorated, arrange them on the ground in a pattern. Make sure they are close enough that you are able to jump from one piece to another. Use your imagination to create a fun route for you to jump. Maybe the floor is lava and you have to make sure you stay on the pieces!
4. Start at one end of your course and jump from piece to piece. Can you jump on one foot? Can you jump high? Can you jump like a frog?

Create your own cardboard puzzle!

Creating your own puzzle is a great way to work your brain and then work as a team to piece it back together.

What you will need:
⦁ Piece of cardboard. Think about how big you want your puzzle to be to determine what size of cardboard you will need. (side of a cereal box or side of a cardboard delivery box)
⦁ Scissors
⦁ Markers, colored pencils, stickers, any drawing material

Steps

1. Once you have your piece of cardboard, image what image you would like to create. Your image needs to take up the whole piece of cardboard! Color every blank space with artwork. Work with a grown up to cut your puzzles out.
2. Once they are cut out, invite your friends and family to try to put the pieces together and complete your picture! Can they do it?
3. Create a visual work of art out of magazines and newspaper!
4. Use those old newspapers, magazines, junk mail, or old books you have laying around to cut and create new images to make a wonderful collage! This recycles all that paper that would have ended up in the trash.

What you will need:
⦁ material to cut up
⦁ scissors
⦁ old paper to cut up
⦁ glue: glue stick, white glue, mod podge, etc. (clear tape can be substituted)
⦁ a piece of cardboard or paper to create your visual on

Steps

1. Creating collage can mean many different things. Think of these prompts when trying to create an image:
   ⦁ What color do I want to use? I love the color blue, so I will search for blue images in the magazines and cut those out. When I put them all together, it’s all my favorite color
   ⦁ What is my favorite thing? I love flowers! I love searching for flowers of all shapes and sizes to cut out. I am then able to create a field of flowers on my piece of paper.
   ⦁ What scene do I want to create? This one can be a little trickier. Instead of drawing your own picture, you are going to look for things you want to put together to create your picture. Maybe you want to create an ocean picture- so you would search for anything you’d want to be in your ocean! Like fish, or boats, or sea creatures.
2. After you have found and cut out your pieces to use, you will begin arranging them on your paper- anyway you want! You an arrange them anyway you want to create a new work of art!
3. Make sure to glue or use tape to adhere the images all around the page.

Download Activity Guide