Under the Ground

We had a lot of fun with school on Wednesday, even though I was sick.  Daddy was working from home and joined Miss M for class.  We learned about roots and worms and played several fun learning games.

Madeleine has decided that using binoculars makes everything more scientific so I gave her a pair of free ones we got from listening to some sales pitch a few years ago.  They're light and fun for her to use, which she does any time we have to look at or for something in school.  She calls them her "noclars" and if we try to start class without them she gasps, holds up her hand and says "Wait, wait, need my noclars!" and goes running with that cute little 2-year old wiggle to fetch them.


We actually did the Soak It Up activity on Tuesday and that was really neat!  We looked at the roots of a weed I pulled up, sang the song of the day about how roots bring food to plants (she enjoyed doing the actions to that) and did this little experiment with two cups of colored water.  I didn't have the red food coloring called for so we used blue instead (which Miss M insisted on liberally applying to the water by herself) and ended up with this lovely green by the end of the day.



I used the worm cards to make a game to teach color words.  I wrote the word on a piece of index card (using the appropriate color marker so right now she's mostly matching color to color but at least she's seeing the way the word is spelled) and spread the worms on the rug.  Daddy wanted to participate so he held up a word and told her the sound it started with and she searched for the matching worm.  She seemed to have a lot of fun with this game so we will be doing it again.


I modified the Digging for Y game a little.  We started by playing "What's Missing?".  I showed her 3-6 objects, she covered her eyes and I removed one of the objects.  She was able to tell me which one was missing every time.  To make it a little more difficult, I starting hiding the object in a blanket and she had to guess what it was by feeling it.  This was a great way to practice descriptive words like hard, soft, squishy and bumpy.  She loved the game.  We took turns being the hider and the guesser. It went on for a much longer time than I had allotted to it but since we are at home and not on a strict schedule, I have the room to be flexible.  I really love that I can let her spend as much time on a learning experience as she wants without feeling pressured to get to the next task.

The worm painting was lots of fun.  Since she was the only kiddo today, she used two of the worms provided in the kit.  She insisted that her worm needed eyes, a mouth and a nose (that's the blue dot between it's eyes).  It's been raining so much lately, now that I'm feeling a bit better, I think we will go on a worm hunt later so she can see them in person.





For the matching game, we went through the pictures and talked about the animals and plants that live under the ground, then I hid one set around the room and she used her trusty binoculars to find them and match them to the second set.  I'm not sure how she would do playing a true memory game with them at her age but for now, this was fun and she learned the names of some new critters.  Later in the evening we read one of her favorite books about a rabbit who takes a nap in his burrow and she could really see how his house was under the ground.  I love being able to link new concepts with familiar experiences!

I cannot say enough how much I love these materials.  They are so great for teaching a variety of concepts as well as giving us fun activities to do throughout our day.