Learning with Roo - A Day with Frogs

This post kind of has a silly title so let me explain.  Roo, is Adam's cousin Riley's nickname and she and Colton were over for the day when I got out the Mother Goose Time day about Frogs.  She was so sweet and did the whole day along with Adam.  Then she created her own lesson and taught him to count to 20.  It warmed my heart.

But first we spent some time at our Circle Time display.  I set it on the floor this time and Adam got right up close.  He actually knocked it over so I put it up against a little bookshelf we have in the living room.  He started pointing to and naming all of the animals on the calendar, which I did not update.  It was actually the 29th of March when we did this.

But not to worry, the calendar is still good for something.  Fresh off learning about patterns with our pattern set the day before, we followed the animal pattern on the calendar.

Then Adam walked me through all the colors.  He asked me what color they were for the first few and then he called out the name of the color for the last few.

 While he was at the display I was sitting next to him putting together his frog mask. He could have done parts of it on his own, but he wasn't interested.  I thought once he had the headband put together he would get interested.  At first, he would wear it but didn't want me to take a picture, but when Riley AKA Roo got involved he was all in!

And there she is, Ms. Roo.  This young lady is the only girl cousin out of all the cousins on her Mother and I's side of the family - 6 boys and 1 Riley.  As they get older she gets a little more into the girl stuff and the boys have gotten a little more into the boy stuff, but she still puts up with them.  She is one smart and special young lady.  She loves anatomy and science, it has been a joy to watch her grow and I can't wait to see where life takes her.

So here they are, the two frogs hopping the toy frogs we got from Mother Goose Time onto the numbered lily pads.  I told Riley, that Adam doesn't know his numbers yet, so if she could say the name of the number when the frogs land on them, that would be super helpful.

 They played, she said the numbers and I took pictures.

 He wasn't sure how to jump the frogs at first and she gently showed him how.

 Here is one in mid air.  After playing this for a while, Adam started to recognize some of the numbers for himself.  He had one land on 7 and he said 7.

This is where Roo got creative.  She took the left over strips from the headbands, stapled them together and made a race track for the frogs.  She numbered the circles but her numbers when into the teens.  Then the froggies raced down the track.  After they were done racing she sat with Adam and had him count with her to 20.

The last activity had us roll the pocket cube with the letter F, a fish and a frog as well as two other letters of your choice. I chose Ks.  Adam was again super hesitant until Roo chose to join in.  They rolled the cube and got the frog, so they hopped across the pond or blanket.

 Next they rolled the letter f and so they were supposed to write f on a paper.  Adam came to the paper, scribbled all over it.  Riley didn't care and didn't tell him that's not f, she just went with it.

Then she took her turn, but of course she had to write her name at the top of the paper first.  I remember how important that rule was at school.  With that many kids in a class, if you didn't have your name on it, it got lost and the teachers always made sure we had our names on everything!

 Then they rolled frog one more time.

It was so nice to have a new friend to do Mother Goose Time with.  Adam and Roo had so much fun together.  It's fun to see another child teach a younger child.  What's neat, is that they have no preconceived notion of what Adam should or should not be able to do at this age.  So why not teach him all the numbers to 20?

Pattern Block Animals by Prekinder.com

I probably stumbled upon these pattern block animal patterns via Pinterest.  But when I saw them I thought the kids might be more interested in them than the alphabet letters I had at the time.  I love the concept of course of the alphabet letters but since my kids were entirely unfamiliar with pattern blocks I just needed a fun way to introduce them.  I printed them out, gave them to the kids and they took the pieces, laid one or two down and then threw the pieces around the counter and the floor.  Okay, we will just tuck these away and try again another time.

So about a week ago, Riley discovered them under the couch (I store things everywhere, not much storage at my house, besides the kitchen).  She pulled them out and started carefully forming animals with the pattern block pieces.  Soon everyone was intrigued, so I moved the whole gang to the counter.  They set up an animal, there was one fruit pattern one too and then see what someone else was working on and trade.  It was so great to see them in use.

Now that I am looking through PreKinders site there is a lot more there I need to snoop through.  Uh oh!  This could be trouble. 

September - Brothers & Sisters

I have discovered that the best place to do Circle Time in our home, is at the breakfast table.  We talk about the question of the day, we do the Opening Rhyme and we talk about the weather and the day of the week.  When breakfast is over we head to the display wall and place the calendar piece up and do the weather.  On this day it was a late breakfast.  I couldn't get Lachlan to sit down and eat and Peter had eaten earlier.  So about 10 we sat down, Lachlan, Peter, Riley and Lucy.  The question today was, how are brothers and sisters different?

It was so perfect that Riley was here on this day.  I was able to ask, is Riley a sister or a brother?  Sister.  Is Riley a boy or a girl?  Girl.  "Aah, I see, so a Sister is a girl and a Brother is a boy." as if I had a moment of revelation.  Yes, they told me, that's right, you figured it out Mom.  Yay for me.  This was a fun topic because in February Lachlan and Peter will be getting a new brother or sister.  I keep asking them if they want a brother or sister and they always say brother.  I wasn't sure if it was because they only know what a brother is or if the knew the difference and still wanted a brother.  When I asked them again after this conversation, the answer was still brother.  So we shall see.  I want to take them to the ultra sound and have the ultra sound tech tell them if its a brother or sister rather than tell me if it's a boy or girl.  I thought that would be kind of fun.  We might need to keep working on this vocabulary between now and then.

Next we did the Opening Rhyme along with it's hand movements.  They put down their spoons for a second and played along.
Two little siblings sitting on a hill,
One named Jack, the other named Jill.
Go play Jack.  Go play Jill,
Come back Jack, come back Jill.

We used our fists for Jack and Jill and had them climb the hill and go back and forth just like the rhyme.  They really enjoyed this and had me do it over and over. 

Next I asked them what they did with their brothers and sisters?  Lucy is an only child but she immediately looked at the boys when I said this.  Very sweet.  Both the boys talked about all the different things they play with their brothers.  Then I got out the Jack and Jill Rhyme Time Poster.  I read the rhyme of Jack and Jill.  The first time reading it through slowly, pausing to talk about what might happen next.  I ended up reading it several times through and had them repeat it after me.  When I asked them if they wanted to act it out, they were game!
It was a wonderful breakfast!  Everyone was done eating and we hopped down to start acting it out. 

Lucy played Jill every time and Peter and Lachlan took turns as Jack. 

This is the hill they walked up each time.

They always came running back towards me to tumble down.

Awe

Two Jacks and a Jill.

 Here they come running to tumble down the hill together. 

Next we looked for Family Members in the Theme Poster.  We got out our Look and Find Glasses and I gave one to each child and two to Peter.  He was the most excited about this.  They took the Look and Find Glass to the poster, found the object and then gave the glass back to me so I could read the question on the back.  One of them that I remember clearly was when we found the Dad in the poster.  It asked what color pants he was wearing and if there was anything else in the poster that color.  His pants were blue and we spent a lot of time at the poster finding everything else blue.  So fun and simple. 

Peter seemed to want to find things with his foot.

I don't have a picture of the pails Mother Goose Time provided but they are so cute.  Little silver pails for them to collect green and yellow circles in.  Green and Yellow are our colors this month and a circle is the shape.  We got foam shapes that I punched out and they sorted the colors between the pails.  They sent a green and yellow ribbon, one to tie to each pail.  So we had one pail for green and one marked for yellow.  Still have this one set on the counter at the top of the learning tower. 

At the end of the day with just my two boys we did the art for the day.  It was a large piece of paper with a well at the top of a hill.  The hill was blank for us to paint green.  But we didn't just paint it green, we used blue and yellow paint to mix green on the page.  One brush for yellow one for blue and we acted out Jack and Jill with the brushes.  As we tumbled them down the hill the two colors mixed and turned into green!

August Day 10 - Wagon

We started our day with the Rebus Reader.  A story titled My Wagon which instead of some of the words there were pictures.  So as you read the story you could pause and point to the picture.  The kids could finish the sentence.  This is great for kids who can't read quite yet to feel like they are reading.  We read through the story several times at the children's request.

Next we worked on making a Big Wagon Wheel.  I got out strips of paper and tape.  I thought Colton would be hooked right away, he loves tape.  But it took him a while to get interested.  It was Riley and I mostly working on the project at first.  The idea was to tape the paper strips together to make a really long strip then make it into a circle to see how big around it is.  A wagon wheel was usually 5 to 6 feet tall.  So we made what seemed like a super big strip and then when we made it into a circle it was only 1 and a half feet tall.  Darn it, we had to keep going.  Eventually Colton joined in, we taped and we taped, then Lachlan joined in.  We made a circle a couple more times, 3 feet, then again it was just over 5 feet tall.  Perfect, the size of a wagon wheel.  Mother Goose Time gave us the idea of having the children lay down in the middle to see just how tall it is.  Colton laid down and it was bigger than him. 

Next we got out the Wagon Shapes Shape Mat.  There were foam shapes provided in one of the day bags at the beginning of the month.  I set it down with all the shapes and all the kids wanted to jump in.  They were all working on putting the shapes in place.  The only problem was we didn't have enough shapes to fill in all the spaces at once.  I think we have been slowly losing them each time we pull them out. 

We conducted the Rolling Experiment next.  I first asked the kids if the cars would roll better over the kitchen floor or the carpet.  They all exclaimed kitchen!  Then I asked will this car or this car roll further?  That's all I had to ask to start a frenzy of car rolling in the kitchen.  Always a favorite activity.

Lastly we built our wagons.  All the supplies came in the day bag.  We were having so much fun building that I didn't pick up the camera until the end.  But you can see the very awesome finished product.

Straws were the axles and they provided foam wheels for our wagons.  A tongue depressor for the handle.  Colton decided he wanted to make a lid for his wagon and then the others wanted to as well.  He really has an engineers mind.  Peter exclaimed one day when Colton was here, "I want a plane!"  Sorry bud we don't have a plane.  I responded.  Colton gets all excited and you can see him start to light up, "but we can make one.  We just need a box and some tape and . . ." As he starts the design in his head.  Again, a big let down, when I tell him Jeff just took out all the recycling and we don't have any boxes.  Oh man!

August Day 7 - Flashlight

When would you use a flashlight?  In a cave, says Lachlan.  We started our day with making these super cool flashlights.  Everything provided by Mother Goose Time of course.  First they decorated their tubes and put the on off switch on.  These were stickers, provided in the bag.  Next we had to color our souffle cups yellow to tape on the end of the tube as the light.  Lastly, we went outside to find "batteries" for the flashlight.  I think everyone picked out rocks and some sticks.  We put the batteries in the tube and finished it off with a cap.  They felt like real flashlights in your hand. 

Next we played What's Missing.  Peter was the first one interested.  This is so simple, you could play this game while waiting somewhere by just pulling things out of your purse.  MGT had us put out 3 things, have them close their eyes, take one away, and have them tell you which one is missing.  3 seemed to be way too easy for Peter, so I added 3 more items.  Everyone did really well at this.  Riley would even answer with her "eyes closed" it was spectacular. ;) Peter kept on answering for everyone else, before they could get an answer out.  He is really good at memory games. 

Here are the random things I grabbed.  Set them on the seat of our 1970s chair.  Snazzy huh?

We learned about the Life Cycle of a Firefly along with the flashlight lessons.  Pretty clever, I thought.  MGT made this awesome little wheel with a window on the front.  As you turned the back wheel it showed the different stages of their life cycle through the little window.  We also had matching cards.  First we went through the four stages and had the kids act that stage out. Egg: Pretend you are an egg by curling up into a small ball.

Larva: Crawl around the floor.  (Larvae are often called glow worms at this stage.)

Pupa: Pretend to dig a hole in the ground.  Explain that this stage often happens underground and is when the larva turns into an adult.

Firefly: Pretend you are a firefly and flash your light.

Lucy's firefly, she kind of freezes when I get the camera out.

Next I spun the Firefly Wheel and the kids took turns finding the matching card.  Here is Peter with his matching Firefly card.

Not only did we get this awesome Firefly Wheel but we also got a board game.  The Inventor's Challenge.  You can have up to four players.  Each player has their own track across the board.  They rolled the dice (also in the bag) and moved that many spaces.  Some of the spaces had things like, forgot your screw driver, go back to start (which was a toolbox).  Riley played twice and never landed on one of the spaces that made you go back so she just sailed right through and won.  Lucky girl.  But the others ended up going back and forth and had a little more fun with it.  I laminated the game pieces and still have it on the counter to play again sometime soon.  I need to start a box of these MGT games to keep.  That way if we are in the mood for a family game we can dig through and pick one.  More to choose from than just Candyland. 

The very last activity of the day I did with just my boys as we were sitting down to dinner.  The other children had gone for the day.  The instructions from MGT were to write letters on pieces of paper, fold them up and put them in a bag.  Instead I grabbed some letters from our flashcards and put them in a bag.  This made it a little harder for them to grab easily but it saved me some time and paper.  After they pull out the letter, they put it down on the table, take their flashlight and shine the light on it and tell me what the letter is.  I grabbed some of the more well known letters and a few more challenging ones.  Lachlan drew out L, T and S.  He got all of them right.  Peter wanted his turn, again I underestimated him.  He just keeps surprising me.  He drew O and P.  Both of those he got no problem.  Next he drew M which he needed a little help with but it was fun to sound it out with them both and try to find words that started with M.  Mom was one I pointed out right away. 

August Day 4 - Hold It Together

Day 4's activities fell on a Wednesday when Colton and Riley are here.  We were learning about things that hold stuff together.  Like paperclips, staples, even band-aids. 

Peter was the only one interested in the Sticky Bandage guy.  I had him climb up at the counter and worked with him on coloring the little man cut out.  I read the little poem on the cut out.  It said:

I was twirling in a circle,

(Roll hands and twist)

Then I fell and scraped my knee

(Hold knee with a sad face.)

My Dad gave me a bandage,

(Pretend to put on bandage and smile.)

Then kissed away my owie!

(Blow kiss.)

As I read, I acted it out as it describes.  Peter then put the bandage on the little cut outs knee.  I have to say, he thought it was pretty cool to use a bandage in a project.  Both boys love them and go to get them anytime someone is hurt.  Even if Mommy says "ouch" they run off to get one.  They can, as you know, make all things better.  I explained to Lachlan and Peter that band-aids hold our owies together until they get better.

What Begins with B?  Instead of getting out a piece of paper and writing the letter B on it I just grabbed a B flashcard.  I held it up and made the sound /b/ band-aid, /b/b/ blocks.  Then we explored for a little while other words that begin with the /b/ sound.  The flashcard had a picture of a bee on it, so that was one more word.

The two littles were taking naps so I gathered the big kids at the counter.  I gave them each a piece of paper as instructed in the Staple the Letters activity.  First I instructed them to cut their piece of paper into smaller pieces, 3 or more.  Once that was completed I had them write the letter B on each piece.  Colton whizzed through this and Riley too.  She is great at writing.  Lachlan, has not been very willing to practice writing.  He especially doesn't like just free handing but enjoys tracing better.  All of it helps.  But for this exercise he had to free hand.  I was encouraging him to give it a try and so was sweet Riley, but it was just getting him more frustrated.  Finally he began to try on his own.  He did one of the round parts on the front of a B first and then the other and then the line.  I tried to show him to draw the line first and then the two bumps.  Again he got pretty mad.  He really likes to figure things out on his own.  However, it is much easier to write each letter in the correct order then to do it all backwards.  So I need to find a way for him to sit down on his own and work it out but a way that shows him the correct order.  I have a couple letter tracing apps but it's tracing.  I sure would love for him free hand.  I might just have to try to show him the ones that have the arrows and numbers showing him which way to start.  Or maybe this isn't that big of a deal at this point?  Any thoughts from all of you? 

Eventually he listened to my verbal instruction.  First the line, then one big belly, then the other big belly.  He got a couple B's just perfect. 

When all our B's were written we stacked the papers together and stapled them on the edge to make a B book.  They all loved the stapling part and all the books were quite sturdy for their size with many staples holding them together. 

The next project we did with the three big kids was the Paperclips and Shapes.  For this one we were to create paperclip chains.  Then take the chains to make different shapes.  This was right up Colton's alley.  He loved this project.  He wanted to make the longest chain, so did Riley and Lachlan of course.  So it quickly turned into a paperclip chain making competition.  But it is such a good fine motor task.  They spent forever working on this.  At the very end we connected all of our chains together to see just how long they were. 

Everyone getting to work.

Riley's chain so far.

Checking the length of his chain.

All of the chains paperclips put together.  They stretch all the way from the kitchen through the living room.

I told Colton he should play a prank on his Dad.  He should buy him a brand new box of paperclips and hook them all together.  Then put them back in the box and then wrap them up for his Dad to take to work.  Then when he goes to grab a paperclip he will get a lot more than he intended.  Colton liked the idea.  I don't think Travis reads my blog, so hopefully I'm not giving it away.