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.