Deer Day Part 2

Deer day part 1 started with the name tags and I wrote all about that in my last post about emergent writing.  Part of the name tag activity had us talking about the tracks a deer would leave behind and it encouraged us to get a tray of flour out for the children to write in.  I went a different route because we have a bunch of figures from Schleich.  These figures have accurate feet and therefore leave accurate foot prints.  So a horse will leave a horse shoe print and dog a dog foot print, etc.  When we were in Michigan a few years ago we bought three Schleich deer.

So I set up Adam with Play-doh and a Schleich deer to make foot prints with.  Then I added a few of our other animals for added fun and discovery.

 He tried out every animal at least once.

Mother Goose Time also tied the color white into this lesson on deer.  We discussed how some deer are called white tail deer and talked about what those deer do with their white tails when they are scared.  We flicked our white ribbon that we got with this months theme like a deer would flick it's tail to warn the others.

The last activity we did was to make the deer head bands.  This is one of the Make & Play crafts.  After you make the craft, you play with it, pretty self explanatory.  But of course Mother Goose Time gives you ideas on how to play.

First the make part.  We were given a brown piece of paper to trace our hands on, we then cut those out and used them as the antlers.  Adam really wanted to cut his hand prints like the big boys so I traced his hands twice.  One set for him to cut and one for me to cut.  He is only two and a half so he does not quite have the cutting skills to follow his hand print.  But he happily cut his paper to pieces.

 The other two very carefully did all their own cutting.

We assembled the headbands next and then moved onto the Play part!

Deer are great jumpers and leapers, so with our headbands on, we were to jump from a line and mark how far we were able to go.  This is where I had a lot of fun with my new fast camera.  I cranked up the ISO and the shutter speed so I could capture them mid air.

Here they go!!!!!!!

Leaping Lachlan.

Adam mid-air.

No feet on the ground for Peter.

 They were just too cute not to get a picture of all together.  Lachlan is a pretty tough deer.

I counted to three and had them jump all together.  Adam was a bit behind on the jump, but you can see him getting ready to go.

I took many photos but tried to pair them down a bit for the sake of this blog post.  Here is a slideshow with more of the action shots.

My happy deer.

To recap on this one day of lessons from Mother Goose Time, we learned a new color and talked about it in a context that really grabs a kids attention, like the white tail of the deer.  While we were on this topic we talked about emotions like fear and added a bit of science by talking about why a deer might be scared. Add in more science by talking about animal tracks.  We used our big muscles while jumping like a deer and we used our little muscles by cutting out our hand prints and assembling our headband.  Oh and of course, all the great emergent writing practice we had while making our name tags.  

Don't be fooled by all the fun, we learned a lot too!