Dancing in the Desert & with Bees and Butterflies

Dance N Beats

Fitness made fun for kids

We receive the Dance N Beats dvd and guide book with our curriculum from Mother Goose Time. It is a fantastic extra program, if I can get the boys to join me. It provides diversity for your day and gets the energy out of those wiggly little crazies.

So much is included in the guide book to enhance the theme further too.

In the beginning, there is a breakdown page of the different moves that are used throughout the dances.

 Also, is a breakdown to make a whole class out of the Dance N Beats add-on. We just usually turn on the dvd for a few and do whatever dances the boys are interested in at the moment.

My favorite part of the guidebook is the extra activities that are included with each song. There is usually a craft to correspond with the song and free dance ideas to make it come alive.

For the more musically inclined people, the book includes the actual music of each song. They are simple renditions and could easily be played on the piano. If ours was in tune and I had kept up my skills, I could play the songs myself... but I don't. It could be a fun way to put a spin on the music portion of the day.

Fast forward to the Bees and Butterflies theme for the month of April...
Today has been grey, rainy and dull. I've been in a poor unmotivated mood. I had activities from the MGT Teacher Guide, but Mr A kept changing his mind we started something. I had the Dance N Beats guidebook and DVD on the piano and decided we should look through it to find something to do. We found the page with the song Bee Body and a craft to make a bee from various shapes. Mr A started to gather the materials we would need to make a bee. Meanwhile, I turned on the Bees and Butterflies dvd.

We ended up dancing to a few of the bee themed songs. Mr A joined me. Mr Z watched from the couch, although he did do the warm-up song by bouncing and jumping on the couch first. Mr A and I always have a competition to see who can dance the best. I think it was a tie this time.
Bonus, we are so thankful that the choreographer we like is back on DVD leading the dances! (I tried to search for her name, but couldn't find it.) Her moves are fun, repetitive and don't make the boys frustrated from complexity.
Extra bonus, dancing to a few of these songs helped me be in a better mood too. Its amazing what a little bit of movement and music can do for the soul. After about 4 songs, we got back to our Bee Body craft. Mr Z was done watching anyway and kept yelling at me ... No more dancing Mom. No more!

Mr A had the idea of making his bee the same size as him. I don't know where that idea came from but he found the measuring tape and had me measure his body parts. He glued papers together, cut out some shapes and drew a face with hexagon shaped eyes. The wings were supposed to be same size as his arms, the stinger the same as his legs and the head and body are a bit off. But, he did the work himself! Its an interesting looking bee.

I helped Mr Z make his bee. I cut out shapes and he chose the colors and decided where to glue everything. He buzzed it around and flew through the house a few times.

If you just get up and do something, the day can turn out okay. We were all pretty glum, but we turned our frowns upside down and had fun moving, dancing and using imaginations to create a new craft from a picture of inspiration. What fun.

Problem Solving while Crafting (& free printable from MGT)

Kids learn everywhere.

I'm always amazed at how my boys connect and remember things from one day to the next (or months later). Things that I think are so simple as an adult, amaze me when my kids do it on their own.

This craft from Mother Goose Time, gave me one of those moments where I was impressed that my kid came up with the idea on his own and it was just so matter-of-fact to him.

We cut out green paper to make shapes of a cactus. Mr A made a snake shape as he called it and several strips to attach to its back to make a porcupine snake. When he started gluing, he was rather irritated that the glue kept seeping out of the sides of paper and getting on his fingers. He doesn't like that sticky feel. I thought he was finished with his paper since he got frustrated with the glue and he disappeared.

But he came back outside with the roll of tape.

"I got tape because I'm tired of gluing." Mr A said as he sat back down.
"Oh, because you're tired of getting glue on your fingers?"
"Yep, I solved the problem!" He was proud.
"Well good. That is a good solution to not using glue."

These wooden forks provided by MGT were a highlight. When the boys found out they would be painting with them, they went nuts. "Really! We're going to paint with these?!"

 The boys used a porcupine ball to make a new texture for cactus flowers.

What a great way to learn. Crafts offer so much brain power, hand-eye coordination and imagination. I 'm impressed that he was able to solve his problem without asking for help or suggestion.

(Mr A's cactus was of a snake shaped one that had fallen over because it grew to be too heavy.)

Enjoy Free Easter Coloring Sheets from MGT from the Inspired Learning MGT Blog

Anza Borrego Desert

Our Discover the Desert unit with Mother Goose Time is coming to a close.

We were finally able to take a trip to the real desert this morning. It was fantastic. We visited the Anza Borrego Desert State Park since it was only about an hour and a half drive. Though, it took us a bit longer with being stuck behind slow cars and trucks on a single lane highway and a bout of carsickness from one of the kids. (Going home was quick though.)

The drive was scenic and when Mr A finally decided to look out the window he began noticing all sorts of cacti spread all over the mountains were we driving through. He was getting excited.

We stopped at the visitor center for the morning to explore what they had there.

We watched a bee digging around inside of this pretty cactus flower for pollen and nectar.

Mr A noticed that this was the tyoe of cactus that Lightning McQueen fell into in the first Cars movie... a Prickly Pear.

A Beaver Tail cactus. I preferred the cactus plants with pink flowers and Mr A prefers the yellow.

Many cactus were lower to the ground. Probably from being young still. But this one had a nice tall stock/chute coming from the center.

We thought this one looked like a dried coral plant from the ocean.

 The Barrel Cactus (with the yellow flowers) was Mr A's favorite out of all the ones we found.

 I don't know what this one was called, but I liked how big it was and the red flowers at the very top.

 Mr Z thought this one was scary with how many needles it had all over. We steered clear of these one, though they did have great flowers on them.

Inside the Visitor's Center we saw some old fossils that were found in the area of giant extinct zebra's jaw, giant camel's jaw and a few others. The boys were off to these tortoise shells pretty quickly.

We talked a little bit about taxidermy since the animals in this desert replica looked like they used to be alive. We figured the animals used in this may have been sick and died naturally or having lack of water or food. There were rams, a bobcat, fox, rabbits, hawks, a roadrunner, snakes, a coyote and more.

While we were inside, we watched a short film about the seasons and a few animals in the Anza Borrego Desert. Winter is unpredictable weather and flash floods can move tons of dirt, rocks and debris quickly, but the floods will be over and completely gone in less than an hour. Spring is great for the birds and flowers and several types of seeds wait 10 or more years to germinate. Rams are an endangered species but monitored in the desert. When they need moisture during the summertime, they break open a Barrel Cactus to eat the insides. Snakes hibernate during the colder weather and the ground can reach temperatures of 180*F while the air is around 124*F in the summer. It was an interesting little video and the boys enjoyed seeing the different animals.

The small oasis on the path in front of the Visitor's Center was great to observe for a minute. There were several tadpoles, a few tiny fish and lots of bees. Mr A didn't want to stick around those busy bees getting drinks of water.

While we stopped for lunch, Mr A finally drew a picture on the cover of his My Little Journal from MGT. His favorite cactus, the Barrel cactus with a flower on top and several desert animal friends: hummingbird, owl, lizard, snake and coyote.

Before reading the story, The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta, the boys were distracted that scurried under the picnic table. The followed it for a bit and Mr A noticed it had dark spots, a long tail and was really fast.

I also brought several of the daily topic posters that we used throughout the month. As we looked through them, we talked about if we had seen them on the trails as we walked around earlier. Most of them we hadn't seen. By this time, Mr Z was ready to leave. He kept trying to get us back to the car. We all were ready. It was great weather, but sunny and that made it hot. There wasn't much to do since we didn't want to take a guided tour and the boys were getting a little bored.
But it was so fun and exciting to see real cacti in a real desert.

Nighttime in the Desert

In the nighttime at the desert, you are able to see so many stars because it is so dark. We started our day from our Mother Goose Time curriculum with written letters on black paper. This was the suggested activity in the Teacher Guide for your 'circle time'. (I love how everything is planned out for you in the Teacher Guide. Some things require a small amount of preparation and sometimes the materials are provided for you.)

We each got a toothpick and the first thing Mr Z asked after picking his up was, "I can poke it now?" He immediately started jabbing the toothpick randomly into the paper. Mr A followed the lines of the letters on his paper and said "I had no idea this was so much fun". After a few minutes, Mr Z followed suit and concentrated on poking holes only on the lines. When they were finished, we headed to the bathroom. With the lights off, I let the boys use a flashlight to explore the holes in their papers. But, they didn't really know what they were looking for. So, I shone the light from the back of their papers. "Wow!" they both were impressed the light came through those tiny holes. "They look like stars." We talked about how you can see so many more stars in the dessert at nighttime because it gets so dark and we made our own letter constellations.

We made a desert fox den out of blankets and the dining table. Luckily, we got a new (to us) table awhile ago and its bigger, so it was nice and spacious under there. Mr A had the great idea of doing our Desert Night Art in the den. I gathered the materials and added a few flashlights so they could a bit better. I was surprised that Mr Z colored for as long as he did. After we were done drawing our desert scenes, we used watercolor to make the sky dark like the night. The drawings with crayon resisted the watercolor paint and the boys thought that was neat.

I love Mr A's story/narration that he told to go along with his desert scene. This was the first time he really had a purpose for his drawing and such an elaborate story.

"There is a pygmy cactus owl at the top of the cactus, that's me and I'm watching the baby owl because the mommy and daddy owl left to go look for food for us. And there's a baby lizard on the rock that's trying to get up. His brother and daddy are trying to get up the cactus to be safe from the coyote because the coyote wants to eat them. The owls and lizards are friends, but the coyote is not their friend."

Mr A was also very proud of the moon he drew because he made circles on it and that's what it looks like at night... the craters.

Playing desert animals and using flashlights as the moonlight in the night. I asked them what they thought 'nocturnal' meant. I actually don't remember Mr A's answer, but it was wrong. So, we talked about how armadillos usually slept during the day and came out at night to eat. Since we have a figurine of an armadillo, I asked what they thought the stripes on its back were for. Mr A answered that it was so it could bend and get away from predators. He curled up into a ball to demonstrate. He also tried to bend backwards, but that was much more difficult. I asked what he thought an armadillo looked like if it was stuck on its back. Mr A laid on his back and wiggled his arms and legs. It was really funny.

The boys ate lunch in their desert fox den. But watch out for that coyote trying to get in to steal the food! Good thing there were under the protection of their home and she couldn't get in.

The boys took the desert animal figurines outside to play 'Desert'. They have been playing different versions of Desert, Mojave Desert and Sahara Desert using tons of scenarios for each one. I overhear them talking about predators, cacti, getting lost, finding the oasis, howling like coyotes and so many other things. Its so fun to hear (and watch) them connect to the monthly theme.

Desert Night Bingo
A simple game for the whole family to play provided by Mother Goose Time. Mr Z liked matching the picture cards to his bingo board. We practiced taking turns picking a new card and identified all of the different pictures used in the game. Such a simple game, but so much learning going on.
Mr A was a little excited that he finally won a game after 5 rounds.

What a fun day! They boys have been playing all day and have really been enjoying the desert theme. They can't wait to take a trip to the real desert too.