Dunes in the Desert

Week 2 of Discover the Desert with Mother Goose Time is about the Sahara.

We took a trip with our imaginations to Africa by visiting airpano.com. This isn't the Sahara desert, but we watched a video of the Namib Desert in Namibia instead. We looked at the dunes and how few plants there are. Air Pano video here After we watched that, we looked at pictures of the Sahara on google and found camels, palm trees, a snake and a scorpion in the photos. We came to the conclusion that not very many plants and animals could survive in the Sahara's climate. They had to be really good at having little to no water for quite some time.
The boys explored how dunes are made by blowing sand around through a straw. Extra MGT materials come in handy, even a few months later. I've been saving the left over sand from other crafts and today I'm glad that I had. Mr Z blew the sand all over the place. Mr A made craters and a Grand Canyon. I made letters in the sand.

Then we added ice cubes to the sand to see what would happen. It sticks! The sand sticks to the ice. Mr A noticed right away. Then the boys left it and the ice melted throughout the day. They kept coming back to check on it to play in the soupy sand.

MGT always provides at least one board game in the curriculum. This one was a Race to the Oasis. You had to collect or give away canteen card depending on what space you landed on on your trail. It even came with a different die than usual, which was extremely exciting. It had written numbers, 2 of each number 1 to 3. We have quite the collection of regular dice from all of the MGT games we've gotten over the months.

To survive in the desert, humans have to bring their own water. A good way to hold water is in a canteen. Mother Goose Time provided materials to make a canteen prop. The boys painted two small paper plates. They had to dry for some time since they, of course, got carried away with the paint.

After their canteens were dry and we finally got around to finishing them, they turned rather cute. I stapled the circles together after folding and overlapping the edges for a top. I put a hole on either side to tie the yarn and then we glued the paper cup to the flat part to make the lid of the canteen.

The boys have been having fun with all of their cowboy props and taking trips to the desert for an adventure.

FYI... so sorry for my horrible picture taking skills. I am not at all a photographer and do feel they are not at all of any good quality.

African Birds

We googled African Birds on the computer and looks at different videos and pictures of various types of birds found in Africa. We listened to the sounds they made and tried to mimic them. We watched videos of the Secretary Bird, Ostrich and other small birds.

I asked Mr A what he thought his longest body part was. He automatically sat on the floor to stretch our his arms and legs. He decided that his legs were the longest.

I asked the same thing about flamingos. He also decided that the flamingos legs were probably the longest part of its body.

 Mr Z wasn't really interested in the flamingo craft provided by Mother Goose Time. I helped him quite a bit. He wanted it simple with the legs taped on, one feather and a tiny dot for the eye.

 Mr Z played with his flamingo for a minute then ripped all the pieces off and ran away to play with something else.

 Meanwhile, Mr A taped his legs on and added a bunch of glue to attach feathers all over the body.

I thought adding feathers all over was a clever idea. But after looking at the craft instruction sheet again, he got frustrated. Mr A didn't like his idea anymore and had to make it look like the picture. So, he ripped off the feathers and tried to draw in the wing. But, he couldn't make it exactly like the picture and got upset again and left to do something else.

We love the MGT crafts. They are always Mr A's favorite activity. But, lately he's been getting annoyed that he can't make it exactly like the photo that is given as an example. It looks like adults made the craft that is photographed. Last year, MGT used photos of projects made my kids usually by two different age levels. Mr A loved these. He was able to see that kids do projects differently and they don't have to look the same. But because the photos now show projects done by adults, he looses sight of his own creative freedom and gets frustrated more often that he can't make his look like the picture. Oh well, we'll get through it.
Going on Safari is now over and we will miss it but we've started a new unit: Food and Fitness.

Dramatic Play Props

Everything about Mother Goose Time is a positive experience for the child that is participating. All of the subjects are included and delivered in a fun way that is exciting. Music and dance through instrument crafts, the Dance n Beats dvd or the music cds. Language Arts through the I Can Read booklets, hands-on letters, board games and more. Science through experiment cards. Math through board games, manipulatives, More Math & Literacy books and more. We love everything we do with MGT. Especially the crafts. The boys love them more and more with each one that we do. Their favorites this month have been the crafts that also encourage real-life dramatic play... their phones and computers!

These two crafts in particular have given them a relate-able source to play and connect with the world. They have their real tablets and play or watch on it a bit, but for the most part they don't use the real thing too much. They have toy phones too, but these they're drawn too... maybe because they made them. They put in the work and enjoy it more? But, I love watching and listening to them use props to make up their own games and scenarios.

Mr Z picked up his phone to have a conversation about his new computer.

Beep boop beep beep... Hi Nana. I have my 'puter. See Nana. What you doing? Ok Nana. Love you. Bye!

Then he starred at his screen for a bit.

I asked him where a few letters and numbers were and he tried to find them. He mostly guessed. Then started tapping the 'keys' with his fingers like he was typing something.

Mr A spent quite awhile adding more buttons to his computer and mouse. There's a mommy button, a happy face button, popcorn button and pizza buttons and more.

I need to charge my computer. It doesn't work anymore. Mr A flipped his photos around to make a blank screen and set the mouse neatly beside his computer.
After his computer was charged, they played quite well together just talking and doing various things on their computers.
Dramatic play offers a lot for children: Imagination, creative freedom, cooperation with others. If the boys would play nicely all the time together, I could listen to them all day long make up their own games. =)

People Live on a Boat!?

Today Mr A chose the topic of Houseboats to learn about.

First thing, I got out our shape manipulatives that were included in the daily packet for the topic. Mr A began making different designs of houseboats after he made our house first. I asked what shapes we have on our house and of course Mr A's first answer was I don't know. But then he realized he needed a rectangle for the door and a tiny circle for the knob and knew the house was full of shapes. I asked him if he thought it would be fun to live on a houseboat. His answer, Yeah. You can fish a lot.

We took a few minutes to look at pictures of real houseboats on the computer. Mr A grabbed the daily topic picture and mentioned we needed to try to find the same one. But we didn't have luck. We saw some with slides that dropped into the water, ones that looked like real houses, some made out of odd materials, a few had plants and several stories, a couple had grills on the porch, many were similar to the picture though. Mr Z has had a strange attitude lately and wouldn't settle down to look with us. He was all over the place.





As I gathered the materials for a few of the next activities, I realized they would be better done outside. The boys have been crazy lately. Being outside helps... sometimes. Mr A likes "reading" the science experience instructions that are provided by Mother Goose Time. First Mr A gently folded up the sides on his foil square. I helped Mr Z make his foil boat, but he liked playing with different toys in his bucket of water. Mr A placed coins on his foil and even got his wallet to float on his boat. After his boat finally sank, Mr A counted his coins. He was able to get 44 coins and a wallet to float before it sank. The next time, it was only about 25 coins. I talked a little bit about how boats have weight limits. If they get too heavy, they might sink. So, if we lived on a houseboat, we probably wouldn't need as much stuff as we have now.

The parachute made a fine ocean for a few minutes. We used the ripples as waves. I mentioned that weather over the water can effect the boat; Storms can make the boat capsize. And I demonstrated what it meant. Mr A didn't like that idea. Mr Z was too enticed with the bucket of water.

After playing with boats our boats in the ocean, Mr A had the idea to hang the parachute in the tree to use it as a slide for the boats and see what would happen. So, I found a few places to hook it on and placed the buckets of water below. Mr A experimented with trajectory to figure out where he needed to place the boat to get it into the bucket of water. The wind made it a little difficult, since the parachute was constantly changing.

Mr A had a great time with these activities. Its pretty hard to go wrong with boats and water. He thinks it would be fun to live on a boat, but not fun if there was a storm. I think, having him pick the theme each morning to learn about is helping him enjoy the subject more. He is taking charge of his learning. I am just trying to guide it. I still struggle with the I Can Read books and anything that has to do with language. The More Math and Literacy books are great, but he looses interest in those quickly and won't do much in them. We are working on it. I am working on it. We do what we can without getting frustrated with each other. Some days its hard... others its more fun. Learning to play and learn together is tricky sometimes. I am grateful learning about Houseboats was a better day. Maybe taking it outside helped. That's the great thing about MGT... you can take it anywhere!

Sea Turtles & the Galapagos Islands

While we waited for our friends to join us for MGT, we started building our islands. We had to stay on the different carpets so we didn't get attacked by sharks. Mr A instantly put some of the longer blocks between the two carpets to make a bridge. I thought it was pretty genius. We used our Safari LTD Toob of animals from the Galapagos Islands including a Sea turtle, Marine Iguana, Land Iguana, Blue Footed Booby, Tortoise, Penguin and several others. We looked over our World Map provided by Mother Goose Time in the Welcome Kit and tried to find the Galapagos Islands. (I would like to learn more about these islands. They are fascinating.) We watched this video about the Marine Iguanas too.

When blocks was enough, I got out the Sea Turtle coloring page from the Member Resources online. I shoved them into plastic page protectors and we practiced tracing... kind of.

On the back, I had quickly drawn outlines of a few of the islands in the Galapagos chain. The kids liked taking the paper out of the plastic and seeing the "picture" they had drawn.

We compared a tortoise and sea turtle using the photo/fact cards included in today's packet. We used more Safari Ltd figurines to compare the land and sea animals.

The kids loved playing with the tiny turtles, which led to our life cycle figurines. (Mr Z liked to hog all of the sea turtles, so it was difficult to get the adult in its rightful place on our chart) Our friend, Miss E,  loved our turtle activities. We tried to stack the little turtles on top of the largest one. It was pretty tricky. I could only stack 3 babies on the mommies back.

Since the kids were getting squirmy from being inside, we took MGT outside to dig holes for our turtle eggs. (I got left over plastic decorating eggs from Easter for $.50/dozen.) We dug holes with shovels (although using just arms would have been more fun) and counted how many could fit in the hole.

Mr Z dug a little bit, but he was more into over-seeing I guess. Miss E said "this is a lot of work". I would imagine its a lot of work for a turtle with only flippers to dig a hole large enough and deep enough for up to 200 eggs. We could only fit 7 or 9 at most in the holes that were dug... or just 1.

(We stepped away from our Sea turtle eggs to go play our game, then came back to find the eggs again).  The kids searched for the buried eggs and it was a little of a task trying to find all 24 of them. They seemed to have forgotten where all of them were buried. Again, Mr Z is over-seeing. Lol.

So while our sea turtle eggs were "hatching" in their sand holes, we  made our Who is Hatching Game provided by MGT. The kids practiced cutting and cut out their card eggs. I gave them their pompom ball and they had a great time tossing them around the yard.

Then, I set out everyone's cards and they played the game. You toss your pompom onto the card and wherever it lands, you find the matching egg of the space you landed on. The turtle hatches and from the egg and you place that turtle on the card until all the spots are filled.

Mr Z just liked putting his hatched turtle eggs on his card.

Mr A practicing a long shot to his card.

Yay, everyone wins! On the cards are some of the topics for the month, Letters O X & W, numbers 8 & 18, sight words What & Am

We had such a great time learning about sea turtles, the Galapagos and playing with friends! Mr A says his favorite thing to do today was burying the turtle eggs.