"Are We Still Naturing?"

Nature Detectives with Mother Goose Time

Week 1 .... Mystery in the Trees

We've had friends over a lot lately, so why not do Mother Goose Time with them. I thought it was a good idea and so did my 7 year old, Mr A. But, I didn't think that it would be as hard or frustrating as it was. Doing semi-structured activities with kids that aren't used to it, is tricky.

We had a fun time anyway... I think. And here's what we did while learning about trees.

Nature walks galore with the MGT magnifying glass for investigations.

Exploring different bushes and trees.

While all the kids were running around in a network of bushes and trees, I heard Mr Z yell, " Are we still Naturing right now?" That made me smile... Naturing. Yep, we are always Naturing.

We read the book of the month called Get Close to Nature! A Guessing Book. Only one kid listened... half way through the book. But we did find real mushrooms nearby as we read it.

Sometimes, the book falls apart. But now we can play 'Find the matching pages'.

Mr A found a fallen bird nest. We noticed how this one is made from one material and loosely woven. It is much different than the tight, compact, tiny hummingbird nest in our front yard.

Mr A enjoyed this stick that Little Miss found. He calls them Stick Tweezers and used them to pick a giant mushroom.

He also found these small flowers on a tree that remind me of Sea Stars.

The kids were looking up and down and all around. They dug under a big rock for while to look for worms. They did find a few and relocated to our tomato plants.

Mr A was the only one to make a peanut butter bird feeder. MGT time provided the seeds and pinecones. The others were off playing and climbing trees.

Little Miss helped dump the seeds everywhere though.

Mr A found a huge seed from a tree while on one of our nature walks. He wanted to see what the inside looked like and tried to cut it open with a kitchen knife, but it didn't work very well. Mr A noticed rather quickly that the shell was a very hard and felt like wood. He had his dad help saw it open. He found a large meaty seed in the middle, it reminded me of a macadamia, but bigger.

The Tree Bingo game to help recognize numbers. I was going to make it a bit more challenging for Mr A and have him tell me an addition or subtraction fact to go along with the number that was pulled. But, Little Miss is destructive and gets her hands and feet in the way.
While playing this we talked about the types of things that grow on trees. Since we had yellow, orange and red markers for the game, our trees looked like multi-fruit trees.

Sometimes there are mistakes in the curriculum. It happens. If we were to play black-out for the Tree Bingo game, 2 people would either have an advantage or disadvantage. One of the bingo cards has 2 number 3's and another has a 22. There are no number 22 cards since everything goes up to 20 ... ?

This was an interesting activity that didn't really work out as planned. We were suppose to make a tree with rainbow leaves. We had a rainbow spinner to spin the color to paint. We were suppose to take turns spinning the wheel to end up with a rainbow tree. Everyone had their own tree and it was supposed to work out in my mind. However, after one time around the table, I knew the spinner was not going to work out.
Kids were spinning the same color and waiting for the paintbrush for that color. One kid freaked out and threw a fit because he spun a color other than green for the leaves. So after the spinner idea didn't go as planned, I told them to paint their trees however they'd like.

This is what the pictures of rainbow trees ended up like.

We had a fun few days with trees. We had several discussions about trees and got outside several times to go exploring.

The Book of the Month

Mother Goose Time is such a well-rounded curriculum. It seriously has everything from lesson plans written for you to a music cd to materials for art projects. Each month a book is included to incorporate the theme of the unit also. This month the book was a new version of Goldilocks. Now that Mr A is improving his reading skills, he likes to attempt rading them also. While I read the book this time, the boys put together the matching puzzle. 

Mr A always has to make things a competition and a little more interesting, so he counted while Mr Z put together the puzzle. He was trying to see who could put it together the fastests. The boys love puzzles, so this a great activity to keep them busy while I read the book. Little Miss also likes to get her hands in the mix and help put it together. 

This version of Goldilocks, retold by Leslie Falconer is about the girl losing her Baby Bear stuffed animal after he room is such a mess. She can't find it anywhere and dreams that she finds a house in the woods that is also messy. She goes around cleaning up the mysterious house and ends up finding her Baby Bear after everything is cleaned up.
We talked about the importance of keeping rooms clean or straightened up so that things you want to use can be found easily. It's not much fun to play in a mess or not be able to find what you want because everything is messy.

After reading and discussing the story, Goldilocks, we played our own game of Hide-n-Seek. I hid a stuffed bear around the house and the boys had to search for it.

I'm not sure why Hide-n-Seek with objects takes so long with kids. Well, my kids anyway, don't like to actually search. They wander and look on the surface of things. It seems they always forget what things like under and behind mean. Anyway, the bear was finally found and the boys had fun rehiding it several times. I think its still missing too. Who knows. We've had a fun time with this version of the story Goldilocks from Mother Goose Time and doing coordinating activities. 

Connecting with Animal Homes

We've been learning about animal homes with Mother Goose Time this week. We were excited to find one of the days was about nests since we recently found a hummingbird nest in our front yard tree. We love connecting with nature and Mr A's first response when I realized what I found was, "That's so neat. It's a new discovery and only we know about it."

Mr A and Mr Z were so curious about it and constantly climbing the tree to check inside. When we first found the nest they said there were eggs in it. When we decided to get a closer look several days later with a ladder, we found 2 babies.

The hummingbird nest is small. I have small hands and it is smaller than my balled fist. The nest is also wound aroundthe small branches in the fork of branch...  at the end of the whole branch. The nest sways and moves with the branch  in the wind. Sometimes it looks like it will fall out of the tree, but the nest is securely woven around the twigs.

I found it fascinating how their beaks are short... though it makes sense. The beaks grow into the long thin one as they get older.

The babies are rather ugly the first few days after hatching. Each day they will get more of the fine hair allover their bodies and then grow in their feathers after that.

Here's the Momma nesting (below). We researched that she will nest for about 50 minutes every hour and probably feeding the other 10, so food must be near. She deosn't stray too far either. One time while she was gone another hummingbird came close to the tree and she hurried right back to chase it out of her nesting area. Then she stuck around the tree, flying to different branches. She was defending her space and babies and I thought that was amazing.

What a sight this has been the last few days. Mr A has been loving checking the changes every day of the babies. Even neighbors have been curious about it. We shall see what happens next with this little bird family.
A matching game that was included in the Daily Pack for Nests is called What Goes Together? with a set of blue and a set of green cards. One set had pictures of different animal or human homes and the other set had the animals or humans. We played a few games of memory trying to match the thing to its home. Then Little Miss came along and stomped on or kicked the cards around. Things can't be done for too long if she's around.

Here are some updated pictures of the hummingbirds from today. They have continued to get more of the fine hair and the beaks have gotten dark and longer.

We haven't seen the Mama in a few days, so I hope she's just hanging out nearby since the babies have gotten bigger and there's not much room for her in the nest. Mr A said, "She could have been eaten or is trapped somewhere."

Homes for Everyone

June's theme from Mother Goose Time is about homes. It's called Alphabet house. So while reinforcing the alphabet through activities, we are also talking about homes.

We talked about our home and what makes it special to us. Mr Z said, "I love our house because it's so fun." Mr A said, "I like our house because it's just the right size." ... such great answers. hehe.

I tried to get the boys to understand that different families have different needs and wants and things that make their home special. Its always a trick to get the boys to be empathetic or to put themselves in someone else's shoes. I tried to get them to know that what we think is amazing in a home, other people do not. Mr A is a bit more sensitive to others and was able to get it. Mr Z on the other hand is a bit more hard-headed.

After talking about our home and what makes up a house, the boys headed outside for some free play time. They were playing nicely together, with no arguing. Every parent knows that you don't interupt happy playing between boys! So, I left them be. I was grateful for their cooperative playtime since this was a day was full of extra fights and yelling most of the time.

Mr A ran to find me after awhile and wanted me to see what they had done. He showed me this... a Fairy House.

They made an entrance in the fortress walls. Several hideouts, caves or homes were sprinkled around and lots of flower clippings were added.

Since attitudes seemed to simmer down after making the fairy house, we were able to get a few more things done. We tackled the Invitation to Create... painting a house.

Mr Z mixed all of his paint colors together to make one color.. for the most part. He was intrigued that as he mixed the paint, all of the colors seemed to lightly show through the brown color.

Mr A had more detail... a door and a window.

Little Miss painted slightly on the paper house cutout and ended up covering her body instead. She is my little artist that loves exploring different art mediums.

While the houses dried, and after Little Miss had a bath, we focused on the letter Aa for a bit. The boys practiced upper and lower case on the white board while Little Miss scribbled and erased.

I also wrote down words that had the \a\ sound in them. Mr Z made sure that I underlined the \a\ in every word. Mr Z copied a few of them too. I am rather impressed with him lately. He has been trying to copy letters because he wants to and has also been taking more time in his drawing and adding more detail than he has in the past.
Since Mr A is doing well with his reading, he was quick to think of words that started with an A or had an A in them.

And here is how the houses turned out with the inspiration photo. We loved these colorful houses in the photo.

I've never had a use for these MGT art notes since I only have my kids. They are meant to explain the art project of the day if this is done in a daycare type setting. I do like the concept of a simple note to help reinforce the child's day after they get home. It is a great way to connect with each other.