Showing posts with label 2nd Grade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2nd Grade. Show all posts

Friday, February 24, 2017

Rhyme Time - 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe

This month with Mother Goose Time, the theme is Nursery Rhymes.  Honestly, I wasn't too thrilled.  Nursery Rhymes are kind of freaky.  You bake birds in a pie, humpty dumpty breaks into pieces, people live in shoes, etc.  Of course, Mother Goose Time does a fabulous job of highlighting the fun and silly, not the freaky.

So far, I have been so happy with this theme.  Knowing these nursery rhymes is kind of a right of passage for children.  It's not something I want to neglect my children.  It's also been excellent for their understanding of rhymes.  Especially this day when we learned 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe.
You can really hear the rhyming words in this one.  I read it one time through and then the second time I would read all but the second rhyming word in each line and they would finish it.

Since we say "3, 4, shut the door" in this rhyme our invitation to create was door themed.  I showed Lachlan and Peter the rectangular plates and the inspiration photo of colorful doors and they were hooked.  I offered to get them paint, but they couldn't wait that long, they jumped right in with markers.  They each picked a door in the inspiration photo they were basing their designs off of.
This is the inspiration photo that I stuck to my window.  I used this sticky strip made my post-it.  You can stick and re-stick items to it and when it loses it's sticky, you just wash it.  It's super sticky again when it dries.  I find when I hang it up here everyone can see it at the same time.  You can see Adam checking it out in the picture below.

It took me a while to catch up with the boys and actually read what was in the Teacher Guide for this activity.  I love the discussion questions and prompts they give us.  It gives another level to the activity we are working on and really adds to their vocabulary and their ability to share their thoughts.  The prompt in this activity asked "What do you think is behind the doors in the photo? What would you like to draw behind your door?"
This just flipped a switch in their minds and got them thinking up the details of what would be behind their door.

Lachlan and Peter were having a blast with the doors but Adam really likes to do serious "school".  He wanted his journal.  I was kind of teaching on the fly here, so I handed it to him and then quickly grabbed the Teacher's Guide to see what he is supposed to be doing on the cover.
 He was supposed to trace his shoe, but I was too slow.  He was already tracing his hand.
 His other favorite thing to do with our Mother Goose Time curriculum is to review the Circle Time display.  I updated the calendar and said the pattern from the beginning.  I asked him what today was going to be and he didn't want to answer me, he wanted to do his colors.  He is a determined and opinionated child.  I did push him a bit to try the pattern.  I really love how we are back to a pretty easy pattern.  At the beginning of the year we start with something like this, an AB pattern.  Then it gets more complicated.  So the last few months I haven't tried really hard to introduce it to Adam.  But here we are back at an AB pattern and it couldn't be more perfect timing for us.
I drape the color ribbons over the top of the Circle Time board and I lift one up at a time and ask him the color.  If he can't quite recall it on his own I make sound it out slowly.  Often when he hears the first sound of the color he can get the rest.
Next we count the fish and go over all the shapes that are on the clouds.

He studied the back for a while, where MGT has a fun matching activity. They could match the rhyming words and then follow the funny line between the two.
When he was done with the cover he turned to one of the inside pages.  There are directions on how to use each page in this journal in the Teacher's Guide.  But since Adam is only 2 almost 3, I let him use it a bit more freely.  Now these pages look like a bunch of scribbles.  But if you look closer, the page on the left where he was supposed to draw the capital I, he drew a bunch of lines up and down.  Then if you look on the page on the right, he tried really hard to follow the tracing lines.  I am so proud of him!
The older boys were just finishing up their doors at this point.  Lachlan made a blue and red door and was just getting started on the backside.

 I guess the blue and red door was bathroom door.  Uh, oh.  The door is open and the poor guy was exposed.
 Peter made a yellow double door, like a kitchen door in a restaurant.  But I guess I didn't get any photos of the front.
 On the inside he drew the chef in his kitchen.
He showed the backside of his door on the top, then the chef standing between his two counters with bowls of different colors.

We continue to recite this rhyme and it's been days since we did these activities.  The boys think it's fun and it's really tuned their ear to listening for rhyming words.  I read another children's book to them that has this same rhythm and rhyming and I would stop before finishing the line and they had a lot of fun figuring out what word would finish the sentence.

We continue to learn and be challenged by Mother Goose Time, even though my oldest is in 2nd grade and my middle son is in Kindergarten.  It really can be adapted to fit many levels of learning.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

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!

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Firefighters & Doctors

We started in our on Community Helper theme with hopes of being more consistent with our Mother Goose Time routine.  We started with our day all about Firefighters.  I went for the less messy activity first.  It was a great counting/numbers tool that went along with our manipulatives for the month.
Each fire house had a number on the top and then it had that many corresponding garage doors for trucks. We started with putting one truck in each garage door but ended with putting them all in a line.  We kept up the counting practice and the one to one correspondence by touching one and moving down the line as we counted.  One through five were pretty easy but he got a bit carried away and took off zooming his fingers across the trucks as he counted the rest quickly and out of order. But hey, we are making progress.
The next day I finally got out the gumption to get the paint out.  I gave them yellow and red paint and set out the fire inspiration photo.  I asked "can you paint fire?" and left it at that.  For Adam, I took the fork, pressed it in the paint and then pressed it to the paper, just to give him an idea of what to do.
He wanted a brush so I gave him one, then he asked for white paint, so I did that too.
At the end I came to take a picture and I pointed out the yellow in the flames and I said, I think there could be more yellow, what do you think?  He took his brush, stuck it right in the yellow paint and put it on the paper.  The only reason I did this is because yellow is the color we are focusing on this month.  It turns out, he knows what yellow is!  A little on the go assessment.
 I had the camera out and my oldest wanted me to take a picture.  I mean, how cool is that dude?
 I sure do love him.
At this point we were about to start in on the Doctor theme when I realized we had not done our name tags fromm Firefighter day.  It looks like Adam is doing a magic trick in this picture be he is actually celebrating his ability to write his name or at least follow a line.
I wrote his name first with yellow marker and then showed him how to follow the line with the pencil.  Then I handed the pencil to him and he tried.
 Writing on a fire truck name tag while wearing a fire truck shirt.
 I love how much he was concentrating on this task.
He has mostly followed the straight lines so I showed him how to follow the curve in the d of his name.
 "I did it!"
Next we moved into the D is for Doctor activity.  I adapted it by only using the phonic photo cards for D, V, and U.  Then I covered them up with a tissue and had Adam lift it off and tell me what was in the picture.
 He is very familiar with an umbrella.
As Adam was exploring the pictures I asked the older boys to tell me what letter each item started with.  Lachlan rattled them off easily which made me happy.
The next thing we discussed is what you do to stay healthy.  The boys chimed in saying that to stay healthy they need lots and lots of screen time.  Nice try, but no.  Finally we got the topic of exercise and I asked them if they could jump like a star.  We moved to the living room to give it a try and I turned up my ISO and my Shutter Speed so I could catch them in mid air.  It was a lot of fun.
 I could look at these all day, so entertaining.
The numbers we are working on this month are 3 and 13.  So Mother Goose Time recommended we do either 3 or 13 jumps.  I chose 13 for the big boys.

So we covered counting, one to one correspondence, art, decision making, the color yellow, writing, phonics, letters, shapes and physical fitness.  I know some people have critiqued MGT for not including all of the basics in their learning.  But the problem is that they disguise the basics so well into play that even the grown ups might not see it if they aren't looking closely.

And that was just in two days while not even doing all of the activities on each day.  We didn't do the STEAM station on day 2 where we were supposed to play with the letter cookie cutters and play-doh.  It also doesn't include our time during circle time and exploring the circle time displays which we do everyday.

On top of all those basics of learning we discussed firefighters, fire safety, fire trucks, doctors, staying healthy, what we do when we get sick and who helps us when we get sick.  So much learning and so much fun.