Preschool Activity with "Book Peek-a Who?" By Nina Laden
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Peek-a Who is a charming little board book that can first be used with babies and toddlers. With its sturdy construction, bright colors and peek-a boo holes on each page, it is sure to keep the attention of the youngest children. But it is also possible to use this with older preschoolers. Use the book as an introduction and then begin the preschool activities to use

with book Peek-a Who? by Nina Laden to work on thinking skills and rhyming words with your students.

Read the Book

Show the book to your students and tell them that you want them to practice being detectives! You may want to use a magnifying glass as a prop. Ask them, “What is a detective?” You may want to ask the children if they have ever watched Blue’s Clues on television. The show host asks the children to look for clues to solve a mystery.

As you read the book, the children should guess what is playing peek-a boo. Could there have been more than one right answer? Read the book again and ask the children to listen to the words. What do they have in common? They rhyme! Repeat the words so that the students can hear the rhymes:who-moo-boo-zoo-choochoo.

Activity

Objectives

  • To use clues to guess the picture (remember that one of the clues is that the answer has to rhyme)
  • To recognize words that rhyme

Materials

  • Cardboard or poster board
  • plain paper
  • pictures (can be drawn)

Preparation

Write the words “Peek-a Who?’ on the top of the cardboard. Cut a squiggly hole similar to the one on the book.

Use magazine pictures, photos or hand drawn pictures of the words below. Make sure you make them large enough so that only part of the picture shows through the hole. All of these words continue the theme of the book. They rhyme with who. But you could easily use other words and pictures to extend the activity.

Word list and ideas for the picture:

  • chew- show a person or animal that is chewing
  • glue- a glue bottle
  • few- an audience of a few people and many empty seats
  • shoe
  • you- a mirror
  • mew- a cat
  • brew- a bubbling witch’s cauldron
  • blue
  • Sue- a girl with a nametag that says Sue
  • do- show a person doing something
  • new- a toy with a price tag
  • two- the numeral or two things

Guess Who!

Instruct the students to look carefully at all their classmates. Notice clothes, shoes, hair, etc. Choose one student to be “it” and ask him to step out of the classroom into the hallway for a moment. Then choose another student to hide behind a solid sheet of bulletin board paper. You could also use a large chart or anything else in the room that will completely hide the student but that can be moved slowly up, down or sideways to expose the shoes, hair or clothing of the “mystery” student. “It” must try to use clues to guess who the mystery student is.

This simple board book can be used as a lead-in to a thinking skills activity. Preschool activities to use with book Peek-a Who? by Nina Laden will help your students practice recognizing rhyming words. They might also become better detectives. But it won’t take a detective to realize that they will also have lots of fun!