Fun with Fish

We studied seahorses and x-ray fish as we introduced the letter X and reviewed counting to eight. I vaguely remember learning that male seahorses were the ones to technically "give birth" to the baby seahorses but this lesson reminded me of that as we played two fun game number games.  For the first one, I numbered 8 "seahorse eggs" (folded pieces of paper) and hid them around the living room.  The girls took turns finding one, identifying the number and putting them in order.  The second one was focused more on counting.  They drew a number and that was how many baby seahorses they had to count and put in the daddy's pouch.  I really liked that this was a game I could send home with our friends to use with their parents later on.

We also talked about how seahorses aren't the best swimmers and use the ocean currents like wind, to drift along until they find a place to grab onto.  We danced to "Hey Mr. Seahorse" and drifted around the living room until I said "Grab" and then the girls would grab onto whatever furniture (or person) was nearest to them.  Miss M seemed to enjoy using a doll as her stand-in, which was fine with me. As long as she seems to be understanding the concept, I don't push her to participate exactly the way the lesson is written.

X-ray fish were the other ocean critter we learned about and had fun feeling the hard bones in our arms, legs and faces.  The art project was a blast.  I let them choose what color they wanted for their fish (Miss M has been very into orange lately, which is new for her) and we painted their hands, then they practiced squeezing the glue onto their papers in lines for the "bones".

Both the littles were a bit on the wild side so we only got through three of the planned activities (and circle time).  They seemed to need more movement, so we danced a lot.  Throughout this foray into homeschool preschool, I am trying to keep the fact that she is only two and this is supposed to be fun in the forefront of my mind.  The last thing I want is for her to start disliking our time.  I know she is picking up concepts, even if we only spend a few minutes instead of a full hour on "academics".  It's not always easy for me because the teacher inside is saying we need to finish everything but the mom in me is winning out most times as I remember the bigger picture.

Dance Class

Today I decided to do one of the dance class lessons that comes in the Dance N Beats program book.  It was so much fun!  The girls loved the music as always but there were also fun activities to do in between dances.

We started with the warm-up song.  Littlest is starting to know some of the choreography (at least I think she does.)  This is one of Miss M's favorites and I'm never allowed to go to one of the other songs first, we always start with our warm-up.

I chose to do Dance Class 4.  The math lesson was written for a larger group than the three of us so I modified it.  Instead of using ping pong balls number 1-20, I used leftover plastic Easter eggs numbered 1-10.  I spread them around the living room and the girls picked them up and put them in our "seahorse pouch" as we danced to "Hey, Mr. Seahorse".  Then we dumped them out again and put them in numerical order.  Miss M needed help with the concept of putting them in order (although she can tell you what comes next), not just in a line next to any random number so that was our focus.  I think I will use these eggs again in the future but fill them with a corresponding number of goldfish crackers or some snack so we can practice the concept of more/less and what numbers are big and small.

The language focus was on the following vocabulary words: sway, stretch, grow and float.  I wrote them on index cards and we looked at the letters and talked about what they meant.  Then we practiced moving together.  Littlest was ready for her nap at the point and Miss M was needing a break so we didn't push it further.

The last activity of the day was this fun jellyfish wand.  Miss M wanted to do stickers instead of coloring so she decorated the back, then we practiced cutting long ribbons and taping them on the straight bottom.  For some reason, she found the jellyfish really funny and made up a song which she sang to it over and over.  Unfortunately it's in M-ish (my name for her personal language) and the only word I understood was "jellyfish".  It is apparently an hilarious song though because she kept cracking up.

This was the first time I've done one of the lessons provided in the book and I really enjoyed it.  I think we might have to host a dance party on a Friday or Saturday with friends in the future.

Reviewing with Sea Turtles and Jellyfish

We combined two days today and I really enjoyed the review games from both units.  This month we are working on the letters O, W, X, numbers 8 and 18 and sight words WHAT, AM and I.  When I worked as a speech therapist, I found that I could get my students to practice their target sounds or concepts most easily if I couched them in a game, especially a game they could take home and use with their parents.  That's why I think these activities were fantastic for teaching/reviewing those academic concepts that have been introduced.

Since the girls are still quite young and new to playing games with other people, I simplified the rules as much as possible and concentrated on making sure they were reviewing the concept and taking turns nicely.  Strict adherence to "rules" other than waiting for a turn respectfully is not vital at 2 and barely 3 so I didn't push it.  If they wanted to share their pieces with each other so they could all have matches instead of keeping them to themselves, that was fine.

With the sea turtle hatching game, I kept the board with just the letters, numbers and words intact and they rolled their giant pompom on it so they knew which one to look for, then named the color of the sea turtle hatchling on the back.  However, I thought of three alternate ways to use these materials that were slightly more difficult (and better suited to late preschool/kindergarten age).  Option one involved turning the turtle cards over so you couldn't see the letter/number/word and then trying to find the match to the concept your pompom fell on.  Option two is harder and more true to the rules of Memory; you cut up two sets of turtle cards and then find the matches of the concepts, ignoring turtle color.  Option three is the opposite of number two, trying to match the turtle colors and having to name the concept you are turning over before you can take a turn.

The other game the girls liked was the initial letter sound review and they actually did a lot better than I expected.  We played it like it was written, turning over the sea creature cards and taking turns drawing a card and matching it to the beginning letter.  You could up the difficulty level a bit and cut up both sets, turn them over and play a matching game that way.


The jellyfish hats were a big hit, partly because of the chance to cut with their new scissors and partly because hats are fun.  We counted out eight tentacles and talked about which ones were long and which ones were short as we taped the ribbon onto the shower caps.  After they were done, they donned their hats and danced with Maria to "Jellyfish Jiggle" on our Dance N Beats DVD.

We ended the day with an island picnic while watching a documentary about ocean life on Netflix.  They loved watching the pretty fish and eating in the living room, which is not an everyday occurrence (you can see why in the photo).

Loads of Learning in the Deep Blue Sea

Have you noticed a few changes I've made to the blog?  If you know me, you know I love digital scrapbooking/family history preservation and one of my favorite online places for kits and classes is Jessica Sprague.com.  She is currently have a sale on all of her online classes through the end of the month (60% off and you get lifetime access, as opposed to some sites where you have to keep paying a membership to access content).  I decided to take her Bloom Your Blog class and spiff up my run-of-the-mill Blogger site.  What do you think?  The header paper and cute little clipart are by one of my favorite designers, Carina Gardner.  By the way, I'm just putting this out there because I really love her site, not because I get any kickbacks, although that would be super cool...

Back to school stuff.  We were happy to have one of our friends back with us on Wednesday, although Miss M was running a slight temperature which kept our other friend understandably at bay.  Next week should (hopefully) see everyone well and learning more math, science and literacy skills as we talk about cool sea critters.

For math this week, we introduced the number 8 and talked about octopi and their eight tentacles.  I did not know they used two as legs to push off of things and the other six as arms but I guess it makes sense.  See, even the big people can learn new things from this curriculum.  We also played a fun game with a die and bingo markers that had them counting a lot to fill up our octopus with all its suckers.  We had to do a little training on how a game works (Miss M kept trying to give her bingo chips to her friend, which was nice sharing but not exactly part of the game).  When Littlest gets past the stage of putting everything (and I mean everything!) in her mouth, this would be a fun game to be able to have available for Miss M to play on her own to practice counting but for now it does require supervision.

The kids had a great time cutting, coloring and counting stickers for their octopus windsocks.  I showed them the theme day photo of the octopus and its suckers (which prompted a discussion of how these suckers are different than the ones they got at Easter).  I got some clam shells out of the manipulative set for the month and showed them how an octopus would use its suckers to open the shell and slurp out the insides.  If you thought teaching your child science meant having to do messy, potentially dangerous experiments and introducing complicated topics, it's not true.  Talking about how the world works is science.  Introducing animals and their behaviors is science.  Pretending to be an octopus opening a clam shell for dinner is science (when you're 3).  Science doesn't have to be intimidating.

For literacy, we introduced the sight words WHAT, AM, and I, then read the cute included book "What Am I?".  It was repetitious (perfect for teaching littles), stimulated the use of prediction and fun.  At the end, they got to draw their own ocean animals and read the books to daddies later that night.

We also got caught up in our monthly journals.  I really love this part of the curriculum.  It is a great way to review the skills that are introduced and gives the child something they can look back on later.  We are doing very simple journals right now, mostly practicing pre-writing skills, color identification and shapes but we will be adding in more dictation and sentence "writing" in the coming months.

A Whale of a Time!

Our quarantine continues.  Both girls have colds but are hopefully on the mend, however, we were also unintentionally exposed to Fifth's Disease and since you don't know if you have it during the period you are most contagious, we are staying home and away from people for a few more days until we are sure it's safe (Fifth's isn't particularly serious for most people but can cause serious complications in pregnant women and we live in an area with lots and lots of those).  So, we had another day of school with just Mommy and the girls.

We started in our submarines for circle time.  After Littlest dumped herself on her face and Miss M tripped twice getting into hers before popping it up into her lip, I decided to sink the idea of the subs for now.  It was an interesting idea but maybe better for older kids with longer legs.  For now, I'll just deal with the wrangling.  They are great for building sea caves, though, so I won't be sending them to recycling just yet.

I introduced the letter W today and decided to modify the activity a bit by having Miss M use the dry erase crayons to trace it (I laminated it first but you could also put it in a sheet protector instead).  She really liked this activity and actually decided to keep at it for about 15 minutes, even after I told her the next activity involved painting.  I decided to take all the letter and word cards from March and put them in her learning folder (an accordion folder filled with homemade education games) so she can do this activity whenever she wants to.  I'll continue to add the previous month's cards so we can review them.

This was a really cute art project.  We talked about how whales breathe through their blowholes and watched a couple YouTube videos of whales spouting.  I had her practice blowing cotton balls across her table so she could get an idea of what it was like, then we headed outside to paint.  The activity calls for blowing the paint across the whale cutout with the straw but my paint was pretty thick and Miss M is pretty little so it didn't work all that well for us.  Instead, I had her use the cotton balls and sponge paint it, which she really enjoyed.  She crumpled up the tissue paper herself and I helped her twist part of it so it would fit into the straw and taped it in place.

We continued school after lunch by taping a line on the floor that was about 14' long, the size of your average beluga whale.  We talked about how some whales were as long as our house and then found things to measure on our tape line to talk about whether they were longer or shorter (we didn't actually find anything longer than the whale but could compare against each other).  Miss M liked it when I laid down on the tape and she used a pen to mark where I came on the whale.  We measured her and Littlest, as well as their favorite stuffed animals.  After she tired of measuring, she used the tape line as a balance beam and practiced walking fast, slow and backwards, crawling, swimming and skipping.  Littlest enjoyed pulling it off the floor when we were all done with it.

We hope to have our friends back with us on Wednesday as we learn about more really fun ocean animals.

Caves, Crevices and Coral Reefs

We did another day of lessons just the two of us while Littlest napped on Tuesday.  Miss M was just starting to come down with the spring plague (aka a cold) and wasn't overly interested so we just did a couple activities.

When I pulled out the shell manipulatives for the month, she really perked up.  We worked on describing and classifying them by size and color.  I told her how some of them had held small animals like crabs and others had been homes to clams and oysters.  The crab shells traveled around the ocean floors but the clams stayed pretty much in one place.  I compared the clam shells to the oyster project she did on Monday so she could get a better idea of how they would have functioned.  It was a really simple way to get some science in our day.

Next, I wrote the numbers 1, 3, 5 and 8 on post-it notes and we took turns picking a number and then choosing that same number of shells.  This was fun for a couple of rounds and then she was done so we counted how many we each ended up with total and then she put all the shells in a ziploc bag while I counted them (there were 52, which is a little beyond her right now).

A little while later she was ready for some more so I showed her the theme picture for the day, depicting ocean caves.  We talked about how octopi like to live in caves and so do eels.  Then I used the diaper box "submarines", a few couch pillows and a blanket to build her a cave (the boxes were great, given better stability so it didn't fall down every time she lifted the blanket).  She had a lot of fun pretending she was an octopus and then a bear.

Today was supposed to be a preschool day but since we have been struck with the above mentioned spring plague, no one wanted to come play with us (go figure).  Littlest went down for a nap and Miss M and I spent a little time looking at the pictures of coral provided in today's activities.  Her energy level was even lower today but she did have fun doing the Sea Fan Coral art project.  She has recently been introduced to cutting and was very excited to cut the plastic canvas with her new scissors my mom bought for her this weekend (they are Fiskars for ages 3+ and have a little spring in them that makes it a little easier for newbie cutters) but they wouldn't quite do the job so we did a little hand over hand cutting with my scissors.  At this point she got a little sidetracked by wanting to do some cutting "by self" so I gave her a few little post-it notes to cut (small so she could still see and track where her other fingers were in order to avoid snipping them).  She needed reminding to keep her thumb pointing at the ceiling but otherwise did well and enjoyed it.  After about ten minutes she was ready to do the rest of the coral project.  I had to help push the eye of the needle through the canvas but she pulled the yarn through and decided where the next stitch would be.

After Littlest woke up, I remembered that I actually had photos of a coral reef that my husband and I took on trips to Cancun and Hawaii (pre-children) so I showed her these albums.  She really liked trying to find mommy and daddy in the photos and I even had a picture of an eel and an octopus hiding out in caves so I was able to tie in yesterday's subject as well.

I have been grateful to have some fun activities during this time of sickness to break up the requests for Daniel Tiger and Dora (she was pretending to be Dora in the top photos, which is why she's wearing a backpack).  Hopefully next week we will be able to do our Ocean Plants unit with our friends.  I have a fun little science extension to do with that one. :)

Little Oceanographers

We started our ocean unit on Monday and I'm really excited for what we have in store for us this month.

We covered ocean water and the ocean floor today since we were starting a little late.  The kiddos loved searching for objects on the theme poster using the empty looking glasses that came in the kit (I used the one from March, too, so two could be up at one time, which helped them take turns a little more easily).

I'm trying something new this month, inspired by my recent Amazon mom diaper delivery.  Miss M loved her "rocket" box last month so I thought this month we would make "submarines" for them to sit in during circle time to see if they can stay in the area with a little less cajoling.  If you have more children in your Mother Goose Time class, you could probably ask each parent to bring in a box (these large diaper boxes work great) for their child.  I plan on having us decorate them soon.

We had fun with the name tags.  I bought some dry erase crayons and they got to choose a color.  We helped them write their name the first time and then gave them a second color to practice tracing over the letters on their own.  I think this will be something I try to do with Miss M a couple times a week.  After that, we took the name tags back into the living room and practiced mixing them up and having them "swim" to find their own name (with only two children, this wasn't particularly difficult).

I adapted the Under the Sea activity to use the name tags since the concept of moving like different ocean animals (besides crawling along the ground for swimming) seemed a little above their heads right now.  We played a kind of Simon Says with the name tags, having them place them in, on, in front of, behind and under objects in the room (or me).  Behind and under seem to be concepts we need to work on a little more.

We did not end up doing the primary science activity, which was mixing up sweet and salty water to taste.  Our school friend had a rather unfortunate trampoline accident on Saturday that left his tongue in rough shape and I was afraid it might be too painful.  We may come back to it when he's had more time to heal.

We introduced the letter O and they had fun moving around a large tape O on the floor, either swimming if I held up an octopus picture or flying if I showed them an owl.  It made for a great race track a few minutes later when they decided they were done and wanted to play with cars.  After that was done, I pulled up the tape and gave the ball to Littlest, who enjoyed the texture for a few minutes.

The oyster pearl craft was a fun one and a great math activity.  We talked about how the plate was the same shape as an O and had them practice drawing circles/O's on it before they colored it however they wanted to.  I told them a little bit about how pearls are made while they colored.  We counted out 10 beads, then they strung them onto the pipe cleaners while counting again.  We bent them into circles and I slid a bead over each of the ends to help protect them from that little bit of wire that always pokes out.  They enjoyed making the oysters bite people and I noticed Miss M using the bracelet a little later as a sort of abacus, counting to herself.

It was a great hour of activities that kept them engaged the entire time, which was fantastic.

Bunnies and Eggs

Today we used the Mother Goose Time Bonus Days lesson for some Easter fun.   My parents and nephew are in town for the week and got to participate with us.  I loved the little craft where we made Easter bunnies with their handprints.  Miss M loves anything that involves in paint, although it took a little practice to figure out how to hold her fingers to get the ears right.  First, we measured their ears and compared them to each other and a few objects to see what ones were bigger, smaller or the same.  We also talked about how rabbits have really long ears (we could have talked about how they use their ears to stay cool but I didn't think their attention span would allow that).  I added a little yarn cutting activity to help her practice her scissor skills and we used pompoms for the noses instead of drawing them, which gives a  fun 3-D effect.  Overall her cousin and she had a fun time putting these together.  I'll add a photo tomorrow of the finished product.

Next we talked about eggs, which leads into our Focus Topic for the month--science!  We aren't talking about atoms or electron microscopes, just how we help our kiddos learn about the world around (and inside) them.  The easiest way to do this with children in this age-group is by putting out those things they see in their everyday lives, as opposed to setting up complicated and unconnected experiments.

For this activity I took an uncooked egg and one I had hardboiled for egg coloring and we observed their similarities and differences.  Miss M noticed that they were both white and her cousin commented that one of them was sort of speckled.  They were both proclaimed to be smooth but one was warm (having only recently been hardboiled) and the other cold (coming straight from the refrigerator).  We spun them both and noticed that the cold one did not spin very long before rocking to a stop.  We talked about how the it was uncooked and so the insides were still liquid and slowed it down.  My dad helped them crack it into a bowl so we could see how it sloshed around.  He mixed it up and then we popped it into the microwave for one minute after predicting whether or not it would still be liquid when it was done cooking.  Presto chango, it became a solid!  They poked at it and smelled it and voila, we have science.



I used the introduction of eggs to segue into egg coloring, yet another easy and fun science experiment.*  I showed them the water and the vinegar, which they smelled.  I boiled the water and as it steamed in front of them we talked about how water can be a gas, liquid and a solid (they enjoyed playing with an ice cube for a minute).  Obviously, we didn't go into a lot of detail because they are five and two but just the introduction of these concepts associated with actual experience will stick with them until they are prepared to learn in more depth.

We counted drops of food coloring, talked about the colors of the rainbow and how we can make other colors by mixing two together (we did purple).  They each colored on one egg with a crayon to do a color resist technique and colored two solid eggs.  We talked about how the longer you leave the eggs in the colored water, the darker it would get but neither could wait that long (I guess we still need to work on March's virtue--patience).

I look forward to starting our Ocean unit on Monday and finding more ways to bring up science in our every day interactions.

* Side note:  Using a whisk to hold the eggs worked brilliantly.  Thank you, Pinterest.  You've almost redeemed yourself from the homemade starch debacle on Monday. 

Galaxy Gloop and Rockets

We finished off our space theme on Monday.  There were so many fun ideas and activities that we went way, way over our usual hour, which was just fine with the kids.

The littles were a bit loony at first so we turned on our Dance N Beats DVD and worked out the wiggles with the warm up song.  They liked it so much we used it in between every activity as a transition.

We worked on size sorting and comparing more and less with the assorted foam stars.  I tossed them onto the carpet and assigned each of the three kiddos a size to hunt for and count, then we used the number line to determine who had a lot, a few and a medium amount.

The glitter galaxies were a huge hit and I love my nephew's name for his (Dragon Breath Galaxy--can you tell he's five?)  I had some little paper cups leftover from another craft and used those to hold their glue/paint mixture.  They worked perfectly.

The rocket shape game was fun and good practice for taking turns and following directions as well as reviewing shapes and colors.  For the playing pieces, they each chose a different moon from the Balancing Moon Game and we discussed the colors, patterns and sizes of those before we started the game.  We also practiced using a spinner, which is something you might not think you need to teach but is important for future board game use.  Unfortunately I had my hands full keeping everyone on their own space paths and couldn't take photos but I have found in my work as a speech therapist that using simple game boards is a great way to couch any sort of "teaching".  I would create game cards using my student's target sound or vocabulary but you could use any skill you are working on (colors, numbers, letters) and require one card be worked on before each turn.  Kids love it and don't see it as "work".

Another favorite activity was the Rocket Twirler, which quickly became a kite when held aloft by swiftly running toddlers yelling "5-4-3-2-1...BLAST OFF!!"  They decorated with star stickers, crayons and crumpled crepe paper "flames".  I try not to direct how they choose to decorate their crafts although I did help them assemble the pieces in the correct order on the yarn.  Other than that, I let them explore and use their own artistic processes.

Oh, Galaxy Goo, how excited I was to make you, never mind the littles.  Oh, Janai, when will you learn to stop substituting ingredients for those called for in the recipe?  In my defense, I realized Sunday night that I didn't have any liquid starch and since I don't shop on the Sabbath decided to turn to Pinterest to save me.  I followed a popular recipe for making your own liquid starch (reasoning with myself that I was saving money at the same time because I only need 3/4 cup and not a full bottle but have since been informed by my art teacher mother than liquid starch is a fabulous crafting material to have on hand in greater quantities).  Alas, our goo was more gloop and did not thicken up to a useable consistency, although the kids did really enjoy getting to take turn adding the "starch" and glitter and then stirring it all together.  Some day soon we will attempt this again.  Maybe I will dye it blue and make a primeval ocean sludge for our ocean unit.

We will be starting our ocean unit on Monday, thanks in part to another round of illness but tomorrow I will be using the Bonus Days curriculum included for Easter with Miss M and her cousin so check back for that post in the next few days!