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.

Learning About Hedgehogs

It's been Christmas break around here for my two older boys who are a part of a homeschool charter school.  Yes we homeschool, so we could still be doing stuff here.  But since we don't have to, we have been taking a break.  What we have been doing is playing a lot of Pokemon battles, which motivates my boys to read and they have to do math.  So at least they have been doing something.

The other part that has been awesome about this break from the big boy school is that we have been able to do Mother Goose Time everyday!  It took two days to work through Hedgehog day.  We started on one day with Circle Time and ended on the second day with the Invitation to Create.

We've gotten in a pretty great pattern with our Circle Time.  We put the new day up, we say today's date, we count how many days there are left until Christmas, sing the days of the week song, then sing the months of the year song, Adam and I do a shape quiz, then a color quiz, and end with counting the number fish.

Then I follow the prompts in the Teacher Guide.  The discussion question on hedgehog day was, "what do you know that is pokey?"

Adam hopped right up and went over to the Christmas tree.  He is so right, it is pokey.

 While he was back there he found the foot to one of my Goofy ornaments.

Peter of course wanted to join in on the fun and they hid behind the pokey thing as a hedgehog would hide beneath his pokey parts.

So now here is my question for the Mother Goose Time development team.  Did you know that most people would have a pokey Christmas tree in their home when you planned hedgehog day and formed this discussion question, or was that just a lucky coincidence?

Next we did the daily rhyme.

They thought this was the best thing ever and I believe we did it about ten times.

Two hedgehogs sitting on the table.

 One named Jane and one named Joe.  Runaway Jane and Runaway Joe.

 Come back Jane . . . Joe is still hiding.

 Jane and Joe are hiding.

 And they are back!!!

Next we worked on the cover of our My Little Journal.  As with all the activities with Mother Goose Time we started with a discussion.  The question we were asked was, "What do you think a hedgehog eats?"  I have to tell you, I did not know the answer.  Thankfully, MGT provides the answer so you don't have to go Google it.  They eat bugs worms, small animals, vegetables and fruits.  They are omnivores.  This, of course, is life science for toddlers and preschoolers and heck, it's a great science discussion for my Kindergartner and 2nd grader too!

I did not get a picture of the process of making the cover because I had a cute little 2 year old curled up on my lap as I traced his hand.  It was a wonderful cuddle time and I cherished it.

We turned our hand print into a hedgehog and we turned our fingerprints into bugs.  Then I wrote his name and spelled it out loud as I went.

When he hopped down from my lap it was time to explore the theme poster.  He looked for hedgehogs and pine cones but discovered icicles instead.

At this point I lost their attention.  Probably because I was trying to clean up from breakfast or checked something on my computer.  We came back to the Invitation to Create the next morning.

They had a picture of a hedgehog sitting in green grass, a brown paper plate, a pokey ball, scissors, glue, black dot stickers and white paint.  I put Adam's pokey ball on a clothes pin to give him a little bit more to hold onto.

He made quick work of cutting his plate and I was quite impressed when he had cut it in half.  He has developed beyond the fringe cut stage.  When I saw the plate cut in half I held it up to the hedgehog photo and said, "look, it looks just like the hedgehog."  Then we worked together to glue it to the green paper.  He added spikes by painting with the pokey ball.  Notice how he is only painting on the brown plate and not all over the page?  I did tell him to paint spikes on the hedgehog and he knew the brown plate was supposed to be the hedgehog.  He is certainly getting more purposeful with his art and the decisions he makes while working.

He admired the paint on the pokey ball.  It did look pretty cool.  I am definitely going to use this clothespin technique again, it worked very well.  Otherwise, I am sure he would have had his whole hand covered in white paint.

 The last touch was to put black eyeball on his hedgehog.

I really enjoy these Invitations to Create.  You can really see your child grow as they work through them.  The Adam of two weeks ago, would have just splattered white paint everywhere.  The Adam of today carefully made spikes on his hedgehog.

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!