The girls really enjoyed our class today, it was quite refreshing after last week. We did Circle Time as usual, then practiced our song of the day; well, I sang and they acted out the lovely, lazy lion sleeping and then waking to roar. We did this several times because they couldn't get enough roaring. Littlest got in on it the last couple of rounds.We also reviewed the shapes we've learned so far this year. Rather than cutting out new shapes, I used the ones that I've been posting on the wall each month. I had three stuffed lions so I gave one to each girl, scattered the shapes around the floor and then told them which shape their lion wanted to eat. This would be a fun game to make a spinner, cards or cube for so they can choose their "food" shapes themselves. The older two didn't have much difficulty (after a reminder about what a rectangle was) and I was shocked that Littlest identified circle, star and triangle completely on her own. I can see us playing this one with other stuffed animals and when Miss M is at playgroup.
The lion masks were fun but took quite a long time for the girls to put together. We talked about emotions and they had fun making appropriate faces for me to photograph. They chose not to cut a circle out of their plates and instead settled on an emotion to draw on their lion's face. Miss M chose happy, our friend wanted to draw sad and they decided that Littlest's lion was surprised. Miss M's cutting skills have come a huge way since we started using the Mother Goose Time curriculum in March 2015. Littlest was determined to cut like the big girls but flatly (and loudly) refused to let me help her position the scissors on her hand, which led to further frustration because her way wasn't working. She's a very independent and stubborn child but also very observant; I would point out how the others were holding their scissors and she did a decent job trying to imitate. I'm sure in time she'll pick up this skill (or maybe decide to let me help).
I liked the interactive nature of the story retelling of the meerkat Mo and the discussion questions at the end. The girls all paid attention and could answer the questions when I asked them. I also liked the story because it was a good segue into a conversation about liking ourselves just the way we are instead of looking at other people and lamenting our differences.I changed up the Bee Patient/number game because we were running out of time and they wanted to eat snack, too. I laid out all the zebra cards, numbers down, and handed each child a lion card. They took one turn looking for the matching number on a zebra card and then had to practice waiting patiently for their next turn. When they got a match, I gave them a new card. It actually worked pretty well; I think having a snack to distract them between turns helped.
That was our morning; all in all, I am pleased with how it went and looking forward to another day with MGT.
Lion Day was awesome!
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