Day Two

I know what you're thinking, what happened to Day 1?  My sweet husband took photos for me since it was my first day with the little learners and I wasn't sure I could coordinate talking and picture taking but we have not had a chance to get those off his phone so I will start with what I did alone with Miss M today and catch you up on the very fun but kind of crazy first day we had yesterday when I get the photos.

Since I am just doing the group class twice a week and there are so many fun topics and activities in this month's theme, I decided to keep doing this with Miss M on the days her friends are not here but we are going to do some of them out of order (I plan to give the craft project and ideas to the other kiddos to do at home on their days off).  We will also be combining days because we only have six more class days in March (we are going on vacation in a week).  We will be doing Days 2 and 3 on Monday.  Today we did Day 5: Clouds.

To be honest, Miss M was not in much of a mood to do school after we finished the calendar, although Littlest was completely absorbed in studying the theme poster before she noticed the number line was back up and proceeded to tear it down again.  At that point I decided they both needed to let out some energy so we popped in the Dance N Beats DVD and all got some exercise.  I compare it to Zumba for kids and the rhythmically challenged (that would be me).  I loved that I could actually follow the simple dance moves.  Miss M watched each dance a couple of times before joining in and Littlest loved when I moved her arms and legs for her to the beat (as much as I can keep a beat) or just held her while I "danced".  It was a fun little break.

After I put Littlest down for her morning nap (cheers that she still takes two naps a day!), Miss M and I tried some more school.  I showed her pictures in the book "Clouds" by Anne Rockwell and the art materials for the day.  She was instantly attracted to the googly eyes and all she wanted to do was play with them.  I wanted her to do a little more academic activity so we compromised and I modified the Cloud Letters activity a bit to include gluing.  She will do almost anything if she gets to glue.  Since she is only two, we are working on "writing" just her first initial right now.  I wrote a big M on an index card, we traced it with glue and then she stuck some small pompoms I had on it to make a "cloud letter" that we can display on the refrigerator.  We also brought some math into the activity by counting how many pompoms it took to cover the letter M and comparing their size to the bigger cottonballs.

I also modified the Pet Cloud art project in order to keep her working with me a little longer.  We counted cottonballs, pulled them into circles, squares and rectangles and then squiggled glue onto a paper plate and counted how many cottonballs we need to cover all the glue.  We added the googly eyes (and some spilled glitter that was still on the table from yesterday's art project) and that was it.  She took the rest of the googly eyes and was playing on her table while I wrote down some notes for the other kiddos.  When I turned back around, she had separated them into two equal lines so we talked about how they had the same number, then pushed one into a different line and talked about more and less briefly (very briefly because she wanted to play, not talk).  From there it evolved into a fun little fine motor game of table hockey.  She had fun trying to flick the eye from her side of the table to mine using one finger, four fingers, her right and left hands and the side of her finger and tip of her finger.

Even though she wasn't as in to it today as yesterday (I am pretty sure she woke up early and played in her crib for a couple hours this morning so she was tired), we still had a satisfying twenty minutes of "school" using our fun MGT activities.