These Shapes are Fish

Using tweezers is always fun and great fine motor practice.
We explored water some more. Its been hot and water makes anyone happy when its hot. I gathered up our foam shapes and tweezers from Mother Goose Time and the shape cards we used a few days ago. The shapes were in a shallow pan of water. Mr A began picking some shapes out with his tweezers. I flipped over a shape card and he found all of that shape and transferred them to another bin of water.

They did this process for each shape card. While they were transferring the foam shapes, Mr A says We have to do it fast. They're fish. The fish will die if they stay out of the water too long. We need to keep them safe and put them back in the water.

Mr Z did a great job at picking out the shapes that were pictured on the card. Even though he doesn't know the name of all of his shapes, he can match them. If he accidentally picked up the wrong one, he knew it wasn't right and fished around for the correct one. I was impressed.

Another MGT activity we did was observe what happens to ice in the sun. We received these story cards to follow. Mr A remembered that he had water already frozen in the freezer, so they found a hot spot in the sun to leave the cups of ice. (We let these sit while we did the foam shapes activity.)

The ice melted quickly while we were busy doing other things. Before we could let the water evaporate over a little bit more time, the boys had the remaining ice dumped out and were smashing it all up with plastic knives and throwing them on the sidewalk. 

So, from playing in water to smashing ice, anything that has to do with water is always fun.

Digging in the Dirt

What can you find digging in the dirt? Dogs! Our dogs always dig in the dirt.

The boys started the day with a Mother Goose Time craft: Hedgehog Handprint. The basic outline of the hedgehog's body was provided in the daily packet. The boys were supposed to use the spikey ball as the "brush" to make the cool looking spikes of the animal. They both tried it for a few seconds and wanted a regular paintbrush. The little ball was too irritating to hold.

Every  month a small set of math story cards are also included in the curriculum. They rang in difficulty. 2 of the cards are more simple math problems and the other 2 are a little more challenging. These feathers were included also as a manipulative and have been used for several activities. I set up some kinetic sand and a bowl.
Problem #1: There are 3 feathers in the nest.
Mr A put 3 red feathers in the brown nest.

Problem #2: There are 4 feathers in the dirt. You find 2 more. How many total feathers do you have?
Mr A kept the feathers in the nest. Added his 4 feathers to the dirt and found 2 more to set aside. He had 9 altogether.

Problem #3: A bird had 10 feathers. He was digging for worms and got his wing stuck. He lost 6 feathers. How many does he have left?
Mr A and I stood up 10 feathers in the dirt and then he took 6 away. He counted the remaining feathers to find his answer.

Problem #4: You have been collecting feathers. You have 15 feathers and you make 3 equal piles. How many are in each pile?
(problems like these require a little more help from me to figure out the answer)
We gathered 15 feathers. I told him to start with one feather in each pile. We kept counting 1-2-3 as we added a feather to each pile until all 15 were used. Mr A counted each pile and found they all had 5.

 Mr Z used a feather to write in the sand.

I love the diversity of activities that MGT provides each month. Mr Z is picking up on things slowly, but learning just the same. Mr A is finding what he prefers to do and is gaining more independence in his projects.

Ants Live in the Dirt

What types of animals live in the dirt? Moles, worms, ants!\

Mother Goose Time provides awesome games every month in the curriculum kit. They are usually a hit. Especially the pieces that come with the game. This one is Ant Races and came with large plastic ants to use as the markers. The boys explored the ants for awhile and played with them on the floor and hid them in my hair.

We took turns rolling a large die and moving our ants down our tunnel. Mr Z just made his ant zoom up and down the tunnel.

I don't know what it is about the plastic animal figurines, but the boys have been loving them this month. They find all of the trees and plants and make borders or homes for the animals that the prefer at that time. I think they're using the trees more since we talked about trees a few weeks ago with this Nature Detectives unit.

MGT is such a great value. I seriously don't know what we would do everyday if this curriculum didn't come to our house every month. Activities, lessons, crafts, games, books, music... its all included and it keeps us busy.

Measuring Water with MGT

FYI: I was extremely busy with a few adventures last week and we didn't get any Mother Goose Time activities done. So sorry! This week we are playing catch up and wrapping up our Nature Detectives unit. Anyway, here's one of the boys favorite activities from the morning.

 

Where do you think the deepest part of the lake is? In the middle.

Why do you say that? Because that's where it has less dirt.

 

I set out 3 plastic containers; small medium and large, and filled them up with water. A metal washer and string was provided by Mother Goose Time in the daily package. I tied the washer to the end of the string. Mr A lowered it into the largest tub of water and we marked where the water hit. Then did the same for each container of water. Mr A realized that the biggest container had the highest mark of where the water. Mr A mentioned that the container with the most water would represent the middle of the lake and that's where sharks would be. The middle container would be where we could swim with the water going over our heads. The small container would be where we stand on the shore and get our feet wet.

I asked about the visibility of the water and they tested if they could see the washer through the plastic. The water was clean and so the visibility was good.

We added some dirt and weeds to muck up the water then tested the visibility of the water again. I mentioned that oceanographers use this string method to measure how far down they can see.

They liked finding the washer in the dirty water.

Then of course had to dump water from the other containers into the large one to see what would happen.

Mr A had to feel how the water felt with all the added weeds and dirt.

Then it obviously got dumped out and we had to retest the visibility of the water.

Mr A learned that water and a metal washer is a fun way to measure the depth and visibility of water. =)

An InLinkz Link-up

Many Things Fly

What things might you see flying in the air? Planes, birds, helicopters and insects were Mr A's answers. What makes things fly in the sky? Propellers and wings.

The craft provided by Mother Goose Time in our curriculum kit was called Flying Disc. The paper plates were provided for us. Mr A chose to use markers to color the plates. While I was gathering materials, the boys tested out tossing the plates around the room. They couldn't get them to fly very well as a single plate.

Mr Z loved playing with the plates and balancing landmark figures on top of each other.

 He finally did draw a couple of marks on his plates and was proud of his circles.

Mr Z decided to make a home for Finn McMissile with the markers and landmark figures. He was very excited to construct it himself.

Mr A helped me color my happy face. He enhanced it well with hair, a speaker phone, teeth in the mouth and some other things.

Mr A also helped Mr Z make a snowman on his disc. They both worked together to make Finn's house a bigger circle too. When all of us were done coloring our plates, I stapled the edges and we headed outside.

I took out some small laundry baskets to see if we could get the discs to fly into them. It was pretty hard with wind blowing.

 I took a try.

 Mr Z had really good luck making goals since he was never more than a foot away from the baskets.

 We tried laying the baskets on the side to see if that was easier to toss the discs in.

 We also tried just holding them and letting them drop.

 Eventually the baskets were just used as traps to keep the discs from flying away.

Later we played a game and made a craft at the same time. This blue bird cut out was in our daily packet. We used a couple of dice to take turns rolling numbers of feather to glue onto the bird.

After awhile we just glued feathers on without counting with dice.

We added a few large googly eyes and fun pompom bow and we have a very colorful bird to hang on the door.

We had a much better day today doing crafts and activities. Lately, I have been trying to have things done my way. That just doesn't work the majority of the time and I lost sight of that. But, today I let the boys take charge and whatever they wanted to do, that's what we did. It went more smoothly. Sometimes schooling at home, with just me and my kids gets difficult and frustrating... but you just gotta keep finding ways to work with each other.
I love that little bird.