Measuring Shadows

Our morning started with a friendly game of bingo... because Mr A loves that game. We used our bear counters as the markers that we received a few months ago from a different MGT unit. Mr Z just adds his bears to each square and calls it good. Mr A and I played a few rounds and it usually ends in blackout since the cards are small. Its a pretty quick game to only get three in a row.

We needed to be outside. I grabbed a few materials and out we went. The hands-on letters come in quite handy, no pun intended ha ha ha, very often. We use them for all sorts of things. We used them for measuring shadows the other day. Mr A noticed that the measurement of the shadow depending on how and where I held the letter. Was it angled, on the ground, in the air? Mr A does call inches feet though and so we will have to practice units of measurement soon.

Mr A experimented with holding up a few letters and how the shadow changes according to its angle to the sun.

He also did some shadow tracing. I tried to get him to trace the shadow of my body, but that was a no go.

We use our Shape Builder manipulatives for various activities too. I brought them outside with us. we sorted them by shape and stacked them by color. I think a few are missing already. But, we observed and compared the shadows they made while stacked...

Then the boys were off to go play.

The Water Bell Reindeer

Mother Goose Time has a wide variety of activities throughout the month to engage in different skills. We always call the lessons, activities because it seems less strenuous and boring than actually having to learn something. The other day we were straightening a few things up before getting to the fun stuff. My almost 3 year old, Mr Z, yelled out Because we going to do activities!? after I had told him to help clean up. He had excitement in his voice and I was excited about his enthusiasm. I'm not sure if he actually participated much though since he's in his own world without a schedule.

Before I go any further also, I have to admit that I've been having trouble personally the last several months. I am a Libra and am really about balance in my life. I've been having a difficult time with many things tipping my scales, including the boys MGT homeschool activities. I've been overwhelmed, frustrated but mostly depressed and therefore have been extremely absent from several priorities. All I have the motivation for is sleep because when you're sleeping, you don't have to deal with anything else. But, I'm trying to get my scales back to normal and its hard. Anyway, that's why my posts have not been consistent and pretty boring. I will get there, back to normal. I need to. Sometimes I guess to take care of the kids and everything else, I need to take care of myself.

Because I haven't been prepping the lessons properly lately, Mr A has been choosing to combine days and picking and choosing activities from the packets. Our days have been all mixed up. First he chose to put together his Reindeer Headband from the day about Animal Tracks. He enjoys the headbands. Then we went on to the science experiment from the Bells day.
Mr A loves the science experiments from Mother Goose Time. There are usually 2 or 3 throughout the month that correlate with the unit/topic. The cards are easy for him to read using the pictures. The steps are simple and it also explains what is happening in the experiment. At first I didn't think we'd be able to execute the Water Bells because I didn't think I had glasses that would work. But, I dug around and found some that were perfect. Mr A helped with set up. He decided how much water to put in each glass. We tested how each glass sounded. He noticed the glass with the most water had the lowest tone. We tapped on the glass where the water was, then tapped on the empty part to see if it made a difference in the sound.

But, Mr A needed color in his glasses.

So playing music with water turned into a color theory experiment also. He decided which colors would go where and watched what happened happened when he mixed a few of them. As we progressed through the experiment he continued to mix the colors... you can see how they change.

We also found that using a small spatula helped with the sound. The metal spoon didn't make a good noise and he was able to tap on the glass a little harder with the spatula. After a little bit, Mr A also moved the glasses apart a bit and began tapping in between two glasses making a few notes at the same time.

Mr A spread all the glasses and tapped between each pair while listening to the noise the two made. 

This is so neat. I didn't know you could make music with water like that.

The Same but Different

I showed Mr A the craft for the day... We already made a house with icicles on it!

Indeed we have made a house similar to this one before... last December with our MGT unit, Winter Wonderland. I thought it was funny that this was the first thing out of his mouth. This December our unit is Sights and Sounds of Winter, so there are bound to be a few similarities. I just didn't think that it would be that big of a deal.

I told him that I would make one with him too since Mr Z was off doing errands with Daddy. So, we got to working.

This is a little different than the other one we made. For the icicles on this house, the instructions asked for a paint/glue mixture to drip with an eyedropper. Mr A liked globbing it on the same few spots to watch it drip down his house. His desk worked perfectly for this actually because it is slanted. He needed icicles on the roof too.

Mr A realized that there are multiple ways to do the same thing. The craft from this year and last year had the same idea: icicles on a house, but were executed differently.

Dec 2014 vs Dec 2015 Icicle House craft

Science with MGT: Ice Fishing

Ice Fishing but with no fish!

Mr A likes the science experiment cards that are included with our Mother Goose Time curriculum. They are always the first thing he wants to do when he finds them with the day's activities. By looking at the pictures on the card he was able to figure out the ingredients and materials that we needed to do the experiment. Mr A found the right bowl, gathered opened bottles of water to dump in and decided how much ice was enough to put into the water.

First he tried a few ways to pick up the ice. He could use a spoon, his hand, the string and even tried to wrap the string around the ice while it was sitting on the spoon. Some things worked and some things didn't. Nothing with the string worked...

So, we followed the next step of the instructions. we laid the wet sting over some ice cubes and sprinkled salt over it and waited a few minutes. While he was waiting for the string to do whatever it had to, Mr A decided that he needed to try an ice cube. He found one and scooped it into his mouth. He immediately spit it out. It was salty.

While waiting we noticed that the ice that had salt on it had little holes in it.

Mr A was pretty amazed when he grabbed the end of the string and pulled all those ice cubes with it.

We learned that the string sticks to the ice with salt because the ice melts in the water, but then refreezes with the salt on it, freezing the string onto the ice cube. Mr A had fun shaking the cubes off of the string.

Using Number Cards

What number is that on your card Mr Z?

SEVEN!

... I was impressed that he knew the number. Up until recently he would count 1, 3, 8 then repeat. Just the other day he counted consecutively to 11. That was a first and I was excited about it. I guess things just take a little longer for him. It's funny how, one day the boys will just do something out of the blue and you have that 'when did you learn that?' moment.

Anyway, in the Mother Goose Time curriculum, there are always 2 numbers that we focus on for the month. (This month its 7 and 8.) These number cards are included somewhere in the daily packets. Mr Z likes the one-to-one correspondence so he automatically starts putting something on the card. The right side always has the shape of the month, which is stars, and the left has the number. I pulled out the foam stars from a previous unit for him to match up to the card. He was getting pretty frustrated that the glow stars that were included did not fit the size properly. Mr Z also used the cardboard punch out number to match to his card.

Mr A counted his stars on the 8 card, but he was more interested in spreading all of the stars onto his desk to make a night sky full of stars.

Mr Z turned his number card over and realized something new on the back. This year, MGT has been putting Count and Clip problems on the back of the number cards. Mr A can do them just fine. He can find the number at the bottom of the picture that represents how many objects there are above.

But Mr Z needed buttons! There were buttons on his card and so he needed buttons. ... I found my box of buttons and he began matching them by size and making sure each circle had one on it. 

Pretty soon Mr Z had his card full of buttons and we counted as he put them on.

They played in the bucket of buttons for quite some time and found their favorites.

The boys also put buttons all around the cardboard numbers to decorate them up after they found some neat ones.

Simple activities like this are enabling Mr Z to get a better handle on his numbers. His recognition and counting are improving and its amazing to watch the development.

Story Telling with MGT

Early on in the month, a book is provided in one of the Mother Goose Time daily packets. It's usually introduced by day 5. The book corresponds to the unit in some way. The pictures are inviting and the story is fun.

This month, the book is based on the Bremen Town Musicians. Its called The Mississippi Musicians story by Leslie Falconer with pictures by Chris Lensch.

The animals in the story are basically abandoned, but come together to outsmart some thieves, take over their house and then remain happy together and play blue grass music by the Mississippi river.

As I read the story, Mr A used the story telling set that was provided in today's packet to act out the story. I read and he moved the pieces. After reading it once, we went back page by page and tried to remember what had happened by looking at the pictures only. Mr A retold the story in his own way and used the pieces provided.

Mother Goose Time has a nice way to incorporate all kinds of different ways to learn and reinforce what was talked about. We love MGT. The simple activities and great materials make learning for all of us a great time.

Winter Birds at the Park

I've been struggling recently with motivation, among other things, and have had lots of trouble actually getting to our lessons daily. So, when Mr A decided he wanted to take a walk to the park, I suggested we take out MGT activities to do while we were there. He was on board with that idea. So, I quickly collected some materials, the topic poster, teacher guide and the daily packet with the craft and other activities.

We started talking about the bird on the poster and I asked Mr A if he knew what type of bird it was. A red bird. So, I told him its name and he replied with; So, Cardinal is another way to say red bird.

We watched this video of pictures with birds in the winter... Winter Birds Video
Then I asked where they thought the birds actually lived while it was cold and snowing. Mr A had the genius idea of making a big bird nest. Honestly, I didn't want to do it because it would take too much time. But, it was a great idea and so the boys flapped their arms, tweeted and ran around the park finding sticks and leaves.

Mr A decided he was the daddy bird and it was his job to do the stick finding. I had to stay behind and build the nest. We started with a smaller circular nest.

 Mr Z took a break and pretended to be a bird perched in the tree for a few minutes.

Mr A decided that the small nest was not good enough. He wanted a huge nest around our blanket so we could do the rest of our activities in the nest. So, they go to hunting for more materials for a bigger nest.

When the boys were satisfied, we sat down for our craft from Mother Goose Time. They colored a punch out cardinal with markers, glued it to a pre-printed picture of some evergreen branches, added a few feathers to the bird and glued on stretched cotton balls as snow.

 A little bird gets sleepy after crafting.

Inside the daily packet of materials there were cards with different birds for matching. We set them out and found which ones we thought were winter birds. We matched them up.

I spread them out on the grass with the birds face up. We lined up and I called out a bird for them to find the matches of. This game turned out to be fun but dangerous. The boys were too excited and crashed into each other a few times. So, we modified our game.

I spread them out face down instead and we played a game of memory. But, I was getting cold and hungry so we called it quits and went home for lunch.

The change of scenery of being outside did us all good though. We had a great time being birds and building nests. Sometimes you just have to take school away from the house and find a new place to do it.