A Rootin' Tootin' Fun Time

I'm sick but I wanted to briefly share some of our other favorite activities from this week.

We started with some tree dancing.  It was hard for the girls to stand in one place and just move their arms like they were branches but as you can see they all got into it. It was good for them to have some constrictions placed on their movement, it helped them think about what they were doing in order to make sure they were following the rules.

Journals are always a favorite activity.  I let both girls write their initials without any help this time.  I was impressed with Miss M's M.  Costco recently had a dry erase activity book for sale and I picked one up to use with her when she was ready.  I think I'll be pulling it out in the next couple of days.  She also really loves our dry erase crayons; I've been laminating coloring sheets to use in the car and church but I think I'll add some tracing sheets to our collection.

I'll be honest, it took some puzzling for me to figure out how to demonstrate the function of roots using a piece of yarn and a twig from my salvia bush but I was really happy with the result.  I cut the yarn into four pieces, tied them to the twig and taped them down at equal distances from each other, creating enough tension to keep it upright.  I talked to the girls about how the roots act like straws to help suck up water for the tree and to keep the tree from blowing over.  Last week we were in the Sequoia National Park and were able to see trees that had blown over, including their roots (apparently that's the main cause of death for sequoia's, due to their shallow root system).  The girls did their best to huff and puff and blow our twig down but the roots held it fast.

I pretty much let the girls do what they wanted to with the tangrams.  They attempted most of the designs (some were a little hard for them figure out) but their favorite activity was using the shapes as colored sunglasses, since this month's set is clear plastic.  Even Littlest was doing it, although I restricted her to the hexagons so she wouldn't poke herself in the eye.

The tree friend craft was really fun.  We watched the YouTube video of a little critter popping out of a tree that was referenced in the Teacher Guide (can't for the life of me remember it in my cold-addled state--it was white and related to a weasel, I think a mink) and then the girls had a blast making their own.  I adapted the craft a little, having them glue the green festoon to the inside top of the brown paper before we rolled it up and taped the sides, it was just easier for them.

I love all the materials we get each month for math practice and I've come up with a couple of ideas for new games using some of Miss M's favorite manipulatives.  I'll share those next time.