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.

Porcupines in an Orchard

Each week with Mother Goose Time is themed within the month. For example, this month is called In The Orchard. The four weeks are broken down into Life Cycle of a Tree, Fruit Trees, Animals in the Orchard and Skins & Shells. It really helps to have the unit broken down. We can really dive into the topic in an easy to understand way for the boys.
Week 3 we were learning about why different animals would visit or live in an orchard.
Porcupines were talked about on one of the days. I personally didn't know that they could live in orchards.
One of our friends works at a local zoo and collected a few porcupine quills for us. The boys loved them. Mr Z stuck them in his fingers and pretended his hand was the porcupine. These quills were a lot shorter than I expected, but there are several species.
But, we talked about why porcupines have quills and why they help the animal. We talked about what they do in the orchard and why they are mostly nocturnal.

For some free play time, the boys wanted kinetic sand. They used the Safari Ltd trees and fruits to make an orchard and had a game going with a few different animals... including a hedgehog, because we couldn't find the porcupine. Mr A liked to have the 'porcupine' dig around in the dirt for the fruits.

Crafts with Mother Goose Time are always fun, even though its like pulling teeth when the boys don't really want to participate. This one was a porcupine puppet. Mr Z just slapped a few things on his paper. Neither of them wanted to color any fur on it. Mr A made his double-sided since there were extra materials.

I never thought about how much learning goes into using liquid glue. As a parent, I usually tend to take over this aspect of crafting, mostly because it can get so messy so quickly. The boys are learning so much with one simple (to adults) thing. Gluing is such a process and I completely forgot it takes awhile to learn it.
Squeeze too hard and you get a puddle of glue. The cap isn't open enough for the glue to come out. The angle of the bottle makes the glue come out differently. Steady pressure vs quick pulses makes different amounts of glue. Hand and eye coordination for where to put the glue on the paper/object.
Gluing is hard. Its hard for kids to learn and its hard as a parent to watch. With something as simple as gluing, I am trying to take a step back.
While doing this craft Mr A asked, Can you help me? I don't do it as fast as you.
I was taken back and a little annoyed at myself. He is not learning anything by me stepping in all of the time besides that I can do it faster or better than him. I am not doing the boys any favors by always helping with crafts and essentially doing it for them. I tried to explain to them and it is a learning process and it takes time and practice. Mr A wasn't convinced. He is a great problem solver but just lazy... If I can get Mom to do it for me, I don't have to and it will get done faster.
So, I guess that's my mental note... take a step back. Let them make messes and problem solve on their own. 

The Lion & Mouse: Helping Others

A new month brings a new unit with Mother Goose Time. August is Fables and Folktales. I was excited when I glanced at the daily bags and the focus questions. Many of them cover core values like kindness, service, helpfulness. These are all subjects I need to get better at to pass along to my children.
We love transitioning to a new theme. The boys are always enthusiastic about finding out what we will be learning about at the beginning of the month. I'll admit, I struggle with consistency of doing our activities and lessons, especially towards the end of the month. The boys just get so antsy with everything and I get lazy. But lately, Mr A has noticed if there is not a new daily poster on the wall. There's nothing there. What are we learning about today? Are we doing any activities? he says. So this morning, he was excited to see a new picture on the wall hinting towards the subject of the day.

Aesop's Fable: The Lion and the Mouse

While writing our names and drawing on our new name tags, I asked Mr A a few questions.

How can you help animals? By feeding them. If an animal is stuck in a hole, what could you do? I'd get the duck out.

What do you do to help others? Help them when they're in trouble.

What can you do to help your brother? I'd grab him and run with him if a bad person was trying to get him.

We played a game, throwing balls into different size containers. After a few minutes of playing Mr A had them all lined up. He needed to measure their sizes and put them in order.

While playing, I asked him what kinds of animals can catch other things. Mr A's answer: Cheetahs... they catch animals smaller than them. The containers were 'catching' the balls like an animal would catch something its hunting.

Our theme poster for the month has several different animals from various stories. We explored it for a little while. I found our plastic figurines and the boys matched them up to the picture. One of the magnifying glasses has ants pictured. Mr A found the ants on the poster and counted them all.

One of the other magnifying glasses has a picture of a turtle. Mr A found the turtle on the poster and I read him the prompt on the other side. It asked if the child could walk like a turtle. He started to crawl, but then realized his safari hat was on his head. Turtles don't have shells on their head, they go one their backs, he said. So he asked for help on putting the hat on his back like a shell. He did very well crawling slowly like a turtle, then tried to tuck himself away when he reached the other side of the room.

But, tucking into one tiny shell was hard... so he needed shells all over to cover him up and be protected. Kids can be so creative, if you just let them do their thing. Its very amusing what they come up with.

While reading our storybook that came in our curriculum kit, Aesop's Fables for Preschoolers, the story of The Lion and the Mouse, we used our Safari Ltd lion and mouse with string to act out the story as I read it aloud. The first time through, I read slowly so that Mr A could figure out what to do with the props. 

Then we acted out the story and took turns playing each roll. Mr Z was waiting patiently as the lion stuck in the toilet paper net.

(I'm really trying to pay attention to the boys' answers more. They sure are funny... but it also helps me know them better and what goes on in their little heads.)

Find additional activities from the day... HERE!

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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.

Castles! with MGT

A new month equals a new theme with our Mother Goose Time curriculum. This month the theme is Alphabet House. We will be learning about where people live, how to decorate different rooms and what they are used for, how to be a helper around the home and different types of animal homes.
Part of our "circle time" for this unit, is to build a house out of small alphabet cards. I drew a crude outline with pencil of where each piece should go with the corresponding letter. Each day we will review one or two letters and add them to our house to see it develop. Mr A came up with words that started with Aa on his own while emphasizing on the /a/ sound: apple, airplane, asteroid.

This month I am going to try something a little different with the boys. I usually have one out and we go in order according to the lesson plans. Instead, I taped up all of the daily focus pictures for the week onto the wall. I let Mr A look at them all and decide which one he wanted to learn about. So, we started the new unit off with Castles! Giving Mr A the choice of what he wants to learn about for the day gives him authority to take charge of learning. So while, the boys played (or fought), I put together some of the activities.

I grabbed our Knights and Dragons figurines from Safari Ltd and quickly taped a "castle" outline on the rug. They played for a little while. I made our green pet dragon from materials that MGT provided in the daily package. Mr A named him Orion. We tried to go on a dragon hunt, but the boys just fought over the play sword. It is encouraged in the lesson plan to hide the dragon over the next few days and go on a hunt for him. We will try again later to find Orion. I asked who lives in a castle. Mr A knew it was a home for Kings and Queens. I also explained that knights lived there too a long time ago. They were special guards to protect the king and queen. Sometimes they went of missions to fight off evil creatures that they thought lived by castle. Mr A was intrigued, but didn't care at the same time. Sometimes talking to a 4 year old is like talking to ten different people at once and they are all trying to make some kind of comment.

We made a block castle too. They boys added towers and number walls and cement blocks on the floor. I asked the boys while building, "What would be a good thing to make a castle out of?.. wood? rocks?" Mr A's answer was Something strong! Cement for protection. I was impressed. I guess he was paying attention when we were talking about knights protecting the people and castle.



Our craft for today was to make a crown. I grabbed our bag of big jewels and the materials provided by MGT and the boys began gluing. Of course Mr Z had to dump them all out. A king can never have too many jewels I suppose. I liked how Mr Z grabbed only the large circles to glue onto his crown and grouped most of them together. Mr A used quite a variety and covered the length of the paper. His is drying since he gets glue happy, but I don't know how it will fit on his head... maybe a royal sash will be better for the amount of jewels he added.

The boys hide-and-go-seek with the jewels and knights too. Its fun to watch what kids will come up with on their own. Without interference they play quite well with made-up games.

After the boys had a play break outside with a friend, they came back ready to do a few more things. We made name castles. I helped Mr Z with his, but Mr A and his friend found the letters from their name and glued them together.

 Mr A figured out that the jewels stick to skin and experimented with that for awhile. He was making a jewel smiley face.

Mr A also had the idea to make a big castle that we could all fit in. The one that I had taped to floor wasn't good enough I suppose. So, everyone got their own roll of tape and made rooms: dragon rooms, treasure rooms, a dungeon, kitchen, sleeping room, a sleeping bag storage room, a doorbell room, the king & queen's throne room and so many more rooms. They kept taping allover the house making the most humongously big castle ever! (their best friend from next door helped too)

We also watched this castle virtual tour! on airpano.com. It is a fantastic view of the castle that is pictured on our daily focus picture. The Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.

 

Ok, honestly, I was rather confused by this months theme. I didn't know what to expect. Alphabet House didn't sound like much of an interesting topic. But since digging into the curriculum packet and enjoying our first day, I can tell it will be fun! No matter what Mother Goose Time gives... its always great!

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