Do you hear what I hear?

*This post may contain affiliate links. 

In Oregon we heard much needed rain fall on our rooftops and on our forests.  As soon as it rains I consider it candle lighting season and I just couldn't choose which one to light so I lit them all.

In the second week of the My Amazing Body theme we learned all about the five sense.  On this day we were focusing on the sense of hearing and we made our very own musical instrument out of a bowl.  First he colored the paper bowl, then I helped him stretch two rubber bands over the bowl.  When you pluck the rubber bands it makes an awesome sound.

We did things a bit backwards (for us) and did the Make & Play craft at the table as we were eating breakfast.  Then, after breakfast, I moved the Circle Time board to the living room so we could sit on the rug and try to work through the full Circle Time routine.  I asked the opening question about hearing, we checked the weather, talked through the days date, and I set out a few of the tools we were going to use that day.

This month I put all the calendar pieces on the calendar and created a gold star that I could use to mark the current day.  I was putting the dates up as we worked through the month but if we got a few days behind it would take a lot of time to catch up on our dates and delay the start to our day.

 Here is a close up of the gold star.

Once we completed all the Circle Time stuff we moved into the My Senses Game.  We were given a beautiful spinner with the five senses and cards with photos of items we could either hear, touch, see, smell or taste.  Some of them we could do multiple things with of course.  You can smell a skunk and possibly touch a skunk.

He spun a nose, I asked what he could do with his nose, smell of course, then asked which item he could smell. He found the rose first.

Next he spun an ear and I asked him what he does with his ear.  He pointed to his ear but gave me no response so I held my hand up to my ear like you can see him doing and asked again.  Honestly, I don't think we ever talked about how our ears hear, so he couldn't come up with the word.  See! Even the topics you think have been well covered by your little one in everyday life haven't been.  The information was never put together for him in this way.

Now we were off to find something we could hear.  He pointed straight at the french horn.

Here we go, spinning again and this time we got the mouth.  What do you do with your mouth? "Eat something" he said.  True.

Then he found the banana picture at the same time he happened to be eating a banana.

So I asked him, what does a banana taste like?  That's when I got the face you see below.  He took a bite and looked up as he chewed and thought about what a banana tasted like.  "A banana" he said.

Fair enough.  I am not really sure how I could describe a bananas taste either.  But it was fun for him to ponder.  The older boys were around as we were discussing this and I asked them which part of the mouth tastes.  Lachlan knew it was the tongue and that we had little bumps on our tongue that did the tasting.  I am assuming I can thank the "Magic School bus" for this scientific understanding.

At this point I lost Adam, he was ready to move on.  We had only one more activity to do to complete the day and it was a science experiment.

So I gathered all of the supplies and put them together and left them by the Circle Time board.  I figured there would be a natural time in the day where Adam would become curious and we could pick up the items and we would get started.  We were to drop the items in this metal bowl one at a time into the bowl and sort them by which items were LOUD when they hit the bowl and which were quiet.

This month all the Blog Ambassadors are talking about their routines.  Ours has always been pretty simple, we start at breakfast, usually doing Circle Time while we eat.  I ask about the weather, we talk about the date, study the pattern on the calendar, count along with the numbers, talk about the letter and the sound it makes.  Sometimes we sing the alphabet as I point to all the letters along the bottom.  We almost always sing the days of the week song and the months of the year song.  Usually by that time Adam is almost finished with eating breakfast and I get out one or two of the days activities that can be done at the table.  When he is ready to get down he is free to do so and I gather supplies for any remaining activities and leave them out for us to grab later in the day.

However, on this day we did things a bit different. We have been going to a preschool co-op where they are using Mother Goose Time and doing a formal Circle Time with other preschoolers once a week.  This inspired me to try to get him down in front of the board on the floor for a nice one on one formal Circle Time.  It went pretty well and I think I might try to incorporate this slightly switched up routine into our weeks more often.

Since our Circle Time has always been so informal I have never done much research or looking into how to do a good Circle Time.  But recently I have been watching videos and gathering ideas from the other Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassadors and hope to keep testing and trying out a variety of options to see what works best for us.

And now it's the big kids turn.  Lachlan finished up his writing assignment and then spend quite a while building a Lego RV.