It's Spring!

As I mentioned in my last post, Mother Goose Time also provides activity ideas for bonus days, like holidays and in the case of March 20, the first day of spring.

Miss M and I celebrated during Littlest's morning nap.  I wrote the letters S P R I N G on a cut up 4x6 notecard, laid them out and we talked about what it meant that it was now spring.  We had driven past a field full of new lambs just an hour before and had noticed how many of the trees in our area are blooming or getting their new leaves.  Miss M decided she wanted to make up her own game rather than play the suggested one in the materials, which was fine because I like her to use her imagination.  She decided to quiz Mommy, holding the card so I couldn't see it and then asking "What letter?" I would guess several letters I knew it wasn't and then guess the correct one (I used a permanent marker to write the letters and could see just enough through the back of the card to cheat a little ;).  She would tell me no or yes and when I gave the correct letter, she told me the sound.  We did this with all the letters in the word and then she laid them out again in the correct order to spell it.  It kept her occupied for ten minutes.

Next I read a cute book published by Scholastic called "It's Spring!", all about animals that tell each other one of the characteristics of spring until the birds wake the bears up.  It was a good segue into the second activity, which was discussing hibernation and then hiding photos of animals that hibernate around the room for her to find with her telescope and "wake up" (which she did loudly enough to wake up Littlest).  We talked about the characteristics of the animals and she learned some she hadn't known before  (like bat--I guess we need to get Stellaluna on our next library trip).

Since Littlest woke during the hibernation activity and it was close to lunch, I got them both set up in their highchairs and Miss M did a cute little finger painting activity that is outlined in the materials while I made food.  We later turned the fingerprints into bugs.  I had her use an art project she had started at the BYU Museum of Art Van Gogh to Play Dough group we had been to the day before since she had already made cute tissue paper flowers for the bugs to enjoy (and, while I love her art projects, I liked the idea of having one less piece of paper to display).  I showed her how to draw legs on one of the bugs (and we practiced counting to six), then she did one and decided to decorate the bottom of the page as well before she declared the masterpiece finished.

It was a fun way to usher in a new season.