Our Learning Space

I thought I'd do a post about what our learning space looks like, since I love looking at other people's space. :)

Our living room is long and narrow so we've always had the couch moved up a bit from the window.  When the littles came along, it became a great place to put their toys.  Our DVD storage case became a toy storage, thanks to three canvas boxes from JCPenney and reused baby puff, diaper wipes, nut and cottage cheese containers (I'm still trying to figure out a way to make the cottage cheese containers prettier--spray paint wasn't great and paper would get tore off within seconds of hitting the shelf).  They are especially great for storing all of the wonderful math manipulatives we receive every month from Mother Goose Time.  I would dearly love cutesy, matching organizational bins and containers but right now I'd rather save the money so we can build our home (complete with an actual school room!) sooner rather than later.

We keep a selection of books and our newly acquired BOB books (thank you, Costco) on the top shelf along with a few other toys.

This little play area is a great place for me to sit with the girls and interact as they play in the kitchen or with the dolls.  A lot of language learning goes on here as I name the toy foods and comment on what they are doing at the moment.  We also do lots of imagining, which is so essential for children.  The kitchen, drawer unit and table/chair set are all from the glorious world of IKEA.

We do our "structured" preschool time in the living room and kitchen, for the most part.  I am really happy with our new circle time display.  I ordered a 36" x 48" science board, laminated everything and put it all together in an evening while watching "NCIS" on Netflix.  I used hot glue to attach the clothespins, Velcro dots for the months, calendar, day of the week and weather icons and removable glue dots for the clouds and other items.  We've used it a couple times already and it's holding up to Littlest quite well.

The back of my board is printed with manufacturer information and not pretty so I decided to use my wall for a few of the items that wouldn't fit on the front, such as the new world map and the beehive.  I also laminated an extra copy of the weather icons for Littlest to play with now that she's pretty gotten over putting the sticky tack in her mouth.  I keep the calendar numbers and current lesson materials in the glass compartment of my entertainment center so they're close at hand.

For art and science, we move to the kitchen (I bring in the second IKEA table when we have friends over).   I keep those supplies in our understairs closet, which would take more hours than I currently have free to make photo-worthy.



That's it.  It's not super Pinterest-y but it works for us.

Fun with Bunyan

We had so much fun with our Paul Bunyan tall tales this week.  I love that Littlest is able to participate in these activities; she thinks she's just as big as everyone else and it's pretty easy to help her take part.

We started by reading about Paul Bunyan's birth.  The girls all worked to build a "raft" in the living room and pretended to sleep on it (and then proceeded to roll off into the "water" and have to swim back to the raft--it was great fun).  First, they all wanted their rafts but after experimenting, we found that when we worked together we could make one that was even bigger (and thus, more fun).

We did return to individual rafts to practice our upper and lower case letter identification.  Rather than make a bed for the letter as outlined, they decided it would be more fun to be in bed, too.  I assigned each girl a letter and used the upper and lower case alpha cards from last month's kit.  I shuffled the cards and held one up so the correct Alpha Mommy could claim her baby letter and put it to bed.  Littlest didn't really understand but she liked being given cards to play with like the big girls.

The story pieces are always a huge hit with everyone.  I've been collecting them all week in a big bag and keeping them easily accessible so both girls can play with them anytime they want.  I really need to make a bigger flannel board though.  This one is 12x12; I used one side of a Shutterfly box and hot glued inexpensive felt to it.  It works great but I think I'd like it to be about twice as long.  I'm just waiting for the right box to come from Amazon...

I loved the measuring activity!  Miss M still refers to it when she watches LeapFrog Shapeville Park at lunch and they get to the measuring portion.  We kept it up and both girls walk up and measure themselves periodically (or stuffed animals).  I cut little leaves out of the leftover paper to mark the height of the various objects they chose rather than use the nice big ones in the template.  I'm keeping those to use to mark their height changes over the next few months.

Our second class this week was centered around Babe the Blue Ox.  I did the activities pretty much as outlined except for the art activity.  Instead of paint and paper, we used food coloring in water and paper towels.  The kids got to watch the colors bleed into each other on the paper towels to form green and I had a lot less potential mess to clean up.  It was really fun.  I think I might try a tie dye project using this technique sometime soon (thanks Mom, for the inspiration).

Two other exciting preschool events occurred this week--my September box came with my new circle time display (I'll blog about it specifically next week) and Miss M attended her first open house.  I have her enrolled in a playgroup at the local preschool one day a week to help her broaden her social skill use and she's very excited.  I think it will be a good way to supplement the wonderful curriculum we get to use at home.  She already impressed her teacher when she walked into the room and immediately declared "It's a crescent moon!"while pointing to the stuffed moon hanging over the story area.  Thank you, Mother Goose Time.

Learning with Literature

Our Fables and Folktales theme continues and I'm loving it!  We've done a lot of lessons this week but rather than review everything, I'll just give you the highlights.

On Tuesday we read "The Grasshopper and the Ants" with our friend during school and did some more of the activities.  They were both very good at hopping.  We modified the counting/comparing activity a little, using popped popcorn instead of the unpopped kernels since Littlest was wandering about and still sticks things in her mouth from time to time.  I gave the Ant card to Miss M and the grasshopper to her friend, then they took turns take a number card and putting that the many pieces of popcorn on their card.  It was a little hard getting them to wait long enough to see who had more before they ate the popcorn but I think we got a good introduction of the concept into their heads.

On Wednesday it was "The Tortoise and the Hare".  The girls ran around fast and then walked slowly as I read the story a couple of times.  We played the folder game that came in our day bag and filled out our journals for the day.  They both wanted to go ahead and do more in the journals but I managed to persuade them to wait.  Since we had a little extra time, I also read "The Dog and His Reflection" and we made the dog masks, which they used later as they each pretended to be puppies.

Friday morning we only had a few minutes so we read "The Crow and the Pitcher" and talked about the /p/ sound.  We found the /p/ card in one of our alphabet sets and I held it up every time I said a word that started with that letter.  When I was a speech therapist, we would do a hand motion that corresponded to a particular sound that we were working on to help the child develop more awareness.  For the /p/ sound, put your hand close to your face, close it and then open it quickly like it is popping open (corresponds to the way your lips "pop" open to make the sound).  We had really good success with the method in children with articulation disorders.  For phonemic awareness, I'd display the letter and use the hand signals while reading the story.  It's a variation of the Lindamood-Bell LiPS system, if you're interested in doing more research.

After breakfast today we re-read "The Crow and the Pitcher".  I found a recording of crows online and Miss M flew around the kitchen cawing like one for several minutes before we settled down for the science experiment.  We used the "pebbles" included in our theme materials to show how the water level rises when you add things to the container.  Since it was just me and I wanted to take pictures as well be there to catch Littlest (she's in a climbing/standing on the chair phase), I modified the lesson by using a 2-cup measure with the lines printed on it rather than a glass and a ruler.  Both girls enjoyed putting the pebbles in the cup and we will be able to refer back to it when they take their bath tonight.  After the experiment they made these super cute crow musical shakers that I am sure will get a lot of use (although the wings may not last very long).

Also this morning we read "The Boys and The Frogs".  Miss M and Littlest had fun pretending to be frogs, finding green objects around our living room.  We also used our "Five Little Speckled Frog" book that I got on clearance at a local bookstore several years ago to sing and practice counting and number recognition.  The game board that came in our day bag looked like lots of fun but Miss M wasn't able to make the frogs hop like they were supposed to so instead of getting frustrated, she got creative.  She turned it into a color matching game where she got to be the teacher and tell me what to do  ("Take a card, Mama.  Oh, you got blue!  Put it here!").  I loved letting her take the lead.

An InLinkz Link-up

Fabulous Fables

I love literature and reading.  I have so many books, I can't even put them all out and have to keep some in storage until we can build my dream library.  So I was very excited to see that the August theme for Mother Goose Time is Fables and Folktales.

We had school on Monday with one of our friends, did a little bit on our own and used the activities to have fun with cousins who made an unexpected trip our way.

 We read "The Lion and the Mouse" on Monday and practiced listening for the word "lion" while making their best lion faces.  We read this story a couple times from the book, then I retold it in a little simpler language and we watched a version of it (from YouTube, of course) so they could get the story firmly in their minds.  I like to read various versions of stories.  It helps introduce new vocabulary in a familiar context, makes for good opportunities to compare and contrast how different versions tell the story and is a good way to let kids know they don't have to use the exact same words when they tell the story to you; it's ok to use your own words.  We made the stick puppets included in the lesson as props for them to use when telling the story with others.  Unfortunately, Littlest got a hold of the Mouse and I have yet to locate it but I'm sure it will turn up at some point.

 On Tuesday Miss M's cousins from California joined us for "The Bundle of Sticks".  They are two and four years older than her respectively and they both loved looking at the theme poster, listening to the story and participating in the activities.  The favorite was using the Counting Sticks provided and spinning the spinner to see how many they would be able to use in their play dough creations.  They were a little more advanced in numerical knowledge than Miss M so we did a little addition ("Ok, you got 4 last time and now you get 3, so how many do you have altogether?").  It was great fun for them, although apparently my homemade dough was a little on the oily side, which they made sure to tell me.

On Wednesday it was just Miss M, Littlest and myself in the morning so we read "The Grasshopper and the Ants".  This is one of my favorite fables, probably because it seemed to be my dad's motto growing up.  We only made it to one activity, which transformed into just talking about the letter A into putting all of them alphabet cards in order and making the initial sounds.  Miss M has been enjoying putting our letter magnets in order for the last few days, much to Littlest's chagrin because she usually ends up taking all the letter magnets and not letting her sister play with any of them.  She got through D on her own and then we sang the alphabet song up to E and so on until she got all 26 laid out.  I was proud of her tenacity.  After that, though, she was pretty much done and as I've mentioned before, I don't push school if her heart isn't in it.  I do hope to go through and finish the rest at some point, though, because they looked really fun.

The rest of the week has been taken up with outings, scary bears (our local life science museum has a 9' tall Kodiak in the lobby that growls when you enter--not Miss M's favorite) and swimming, all of which have provided us opportunity to talk about things that have been previously introduced in various Mother Goose Time lessons.