Little Miss Muffet at The Virtual Vine

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,

Eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider,

That sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Information provided on this page is for classroom use only; not for reproduction

thevirtualvine.com 2006

Things You Need To Know -

Whey - The watery part of milk, separated from the more thick or coagulable part, especially in the process of making
   cheese.

Curd - The coagulated or thickened part of milk, as distinguished from the whey, or watery part. It is eaten as food,
   especially when made into cheese.

Tuffet - A low seat, such as a stool.

Nursery Rhymes Pocket - Check out the Jack and Jill page to see further details. Also included will be a mini booklet on real spiders, a flap book, Things We Sit On activity sheet, poster, and an adapted dangling spider prop from the Literature Pockets resource book. I also made the emergent reader that you can print below.

(click to enlarge)

The flap book is neat because on the top part it says "Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet" on the first flap and then you ask ... "What did she sit on?" and they answer "a tuffet" and you lift the flap and there's the picture. Then it goes through the whole rhyme like that. (The reason every thing is done on yellow paper is that I was running out of white paper!) :)

(click to enlarge)

Little Miss Muffet reader - I didn't have a printable reader that I liked, so I used illustrations from DLTK to create one. You can print it out below.

printable Little Miss Muffet reader

Little Miss Muffet coloring pages

http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/missmuffet/color.htm

Spiders - Learn facts about real spiders.

Little Miss Muffet Counting Book - Make a counting book with spiders on each half page along with the number or number words. Make the spiders using the students' thumbprints and have them use a black crayon to add 4 legs to each side of the thumbprint. You should stretch the project out as it takes a while when you get up into the higher numbers (8, 9, 10) and you need to monitor the leg process if you want it correct ... otherwise you're going to have any number of legs going every which-a-way and they'll look like black suns! :)

Dangling Spider Prop - The Literature Pockets resource book has a pattern for a dangling spider. I'm going to use the pattern but adapt the spider. The pattern is circular similar to a sun with a wedge missing. When you cut it you, you overlap the pieces to fill the missing space and it forms a cone of sorts. The pattern has two eyes and I'm going to copy it on black paper. Then before gluing it closed I'm going to have the TA insert a nut with a rubberband slip-knotted through it. The rubberband will come through the top of the spider and the nut will be hidden beneath the cone. The nut will give the spider a little weight to dangle on the rubberband. The kids will love it! :) Oh, they have to fold up the legs, too. Once they're done I'll take pictures and hopefully this will all make sense. We may even glue wiggly eyes over the ones already there.

Poster - If you can't get your hands on the Literacy Centers & Activities for Nursery Rhymes resource book, this printable would make a perfect poster for your nursery rhyme pocket: http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/carl/Document/Mother%20Goose%20and%20Fairy%20Tales/

Little%20Miss%20Muffet%20poem.pdf

Pocketchart - I also have this rhyme in the pocketchart (somehow missed taking a picture of it). It's commercially produced with a nice big picture and the word cards to match to the text. (the text in black, word cards in red) We use a pointer as we recite the rhyme to reinforce concepts of print and one-to-one print correspondence. The kids love to "read" the rhyme individually themselves with the pointer.

Math - Dig in your Halloween box and pull out some of your spider counters and web math mats to use with this rhyme and they'll do dual duty.

Act It Out! - I have a small stool (tuffet) that I'll take in for the students to use with their dangling spiders to use in acting out the rhyme. They'll LOVE doing this!! :) Don't forget the curds and whey! (I would think you could let them try cottage cheese for this)

Quilt - This quilt was done around Halloween, so it takes on that tone. The spider is 3-D and was made using a pattern from loooong ago. It has the rhyme printed on the spider's back and once it's cut out, you fold the legs to make them stand up instead of lay flat. The picture of Miss Muffet I created from a picture that someone gave me with the rhyme on it. I loved the spider and the rest of the quilt, but I'd liked to have done something different with Miss Muffett. Maybe next time ... :)

Culminating Activity - have each student say the rhyme individually and reward them with a spider ring. Then everyone enjoys a spider cookie (link to recipe below).

Resources:

Literacy Centers & Activities for Nursery Rhymes PreK-1(TCM 3397)

Literature Pockets: Nursery Rhymes Gr K-1 (EMC 2700)

Mother Goose Peek-A-Books PreK-2 (Scholastic)

Links:

Little Miss Muffet coloring pages

http://www.niteowl.org/kids/muffet.html

Little Miss Muffet Nursery Rhyme

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/nrhymes/msmuffet.htm

Spider Cookies

http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/halloween/recipes/spidercookies2.html

Little Miss Muffet's Curds and Whey