Playing Doctor

We have continued to struggle with illness here this week, especially Littlest.  She has been pretty much permanently glued to me, making it difficult to do basic activities, let alone full blown preschool.  We did have a window yesterday where they were feeling a bit more chipper after some medication so we pulled out our Teacher Guide (this is a great resource for direct teaching and inspiration for activities outside of "school") and used it to help us come up with a fun play schema we haven't explored much--Doctor.  Since we were just at the doctor's office on Monday to see what he could do for us, it was fresh in their minds.

I brought out the Check Up unit and read through the days activities.  Miss M didn't want to decorate her doctor's bag, just fill it up with anything she could think of like lots of bandaids, tongue depressor, a stethoscope, and a "poky thing" to give shots (we settled on a pipe cleaner as the safest option).  We have one of my husband's old white shirts in our dress up box and it became the perfect doctor's coat. Her flashlight from Grammie was just the thing to use as an otoscope.  We procured a patient (Mr. Henry Bear, a most favorite stuffed animal) and the examination commenced.

I loved how thorough Miss M was with her examination.  She checked his throat and ears, just like she remembered her doctor did.  We even used our new in-the-ear thermometer to check his temperature.  He was diagnosed with an "owie", treated with a bandaid and a kiss and sent on his way.  It was really fun watching her talk to him, listening to the new vocabulary words she picked up at her appointment and was able to use correctly in context.  Play is such a powerful learning tool.  

Littlest played Nurse to Doctor M, which had me smiling like a crazy person.  I am so entertained by my children, I really don't need a TV.  After a while, Miss M decided she was done being a doctor, though, and we played a game of Fitness Dominoes.  I've never been a big dominoes player but I was really enjoying the game and was a little disappointed when her attention fizzled half way through.  It would be fun to challenge her to see what kinds of shapes we could make or put two play figures on either side of the playing area and see if we could build a path to connect them both.

We are leaving town tomorrow and I plan on going through the remaining units to see what will travel well to keep the girls entertained in the van.  I think will bring along the dominoes game, it would be a fun one to play with the grandparents.  I also recorded myself several of our books with my new camera and my husband will be uploading them to their iPads so they can read in the car without having to pack an entire library.  Add some coloring pages and pray for naps and we should be good.

Dancing with Littlest

Have I mentioned lately how much Littlest LOVES our Dance N Beats DVDs?  She isn't talking much but she requests it almost daily by pointing at the TV and starting the warm up routine.  Last Friday we had no errands to run during her sister's playgroup time and I wanted to keep her out of the way while the electricians hung our new ceiling fan (quite an adventure in our two-story foyer) so instead of just playing the DVD for her, I modified one of the classes outlined in the companion book.  Most of these activities are written for children 3-5 years old but I was able to easily switch them up to apply to my 20-month old.

We followed the lesson plan for the first class in the book.  Instead of having her pick out fruit shapes during the song, I made a simple matching game using construction paper.  She loved having a game that was all hers and did a good job finding the banana, apple, pear and orange matches.  This activity helped her work on colors (yellow, orange, red and green) and the concept of same/different.

The second activity was supposed to be a letter identification one but since she's still so little I decided to change it into a shape identification game.  I cut out green circles, drew shapes on them and then spread out the shapes of the month cards around the room.  I gave her a green circle, named the shape and told her to find the same one.  She did it perfectly and enjoyed playing a couple rounds of this game.

In between each game, we danced to a song that coordinated with our activity.  She is getting better and better at being able to follow along with the dance moves on the first time through.  It helps that they are fairly simple and the songs are catchy.

After she exhausted her attention span (which was about 20 minutes), we practiced some of the spreading skills we learned the first week and frosted cookies for the guys risking their necks to help put our ceiling fan.  Maybe not the healthiest choice given our monthly topic of Food and Fitness but it was Valentine's weekend so we made an exception.

I love that I can use these fun games as a way of observing my girls' development so I know what they can do and what we can continue to work on.  We aren't in a formal learning setting so we don't have "assessments" but I can still keep track of how they are doing just by being conscious enough to watch.  I love how these materials help remind me to do that (they literally have notes of what to observe in the teacher's guide); it puts my mind at ease that they are growing and learning just fine.

Sick Days with MGT

Miss M developed a bad cough last week and Littlest has since fallen into the ranks of the ill with her.  This week consisted of a lot of cuddling and jammie-wearing and not a lot of traditional "school" as we normally do it.  However, we still needed things to do because apparently you can't keep two toddlers in bed while they are sick (at least mine refuse to stay there).  Thankfully we had our Mother Goose Time curriculum so I didn't have to rely entirely on Daniel Tiger, Diego and Little Baby Bum. I picked a few of the activities and we added them in sporadically throughout the week.

The frog craft was fun for both of them.  I had them sponge the paint on with cotton balls.  When it was dry, they put the eyes on while I curled the tongues.  Miss M refused to use is as a headband and instead had me punch holes in the side and add ribbon for a mask even though I explained that it didn't have eye holes so she wouldn't be able to see.  She worked around the issue by wearing it like a visor as she hopped around looking for bugs to eat.

The stretching spinner game has been a hit all week long.  Their favorite stretch is the one where they rock on their tummies.  They have a hard time balancing on one foot but can do it if I hold their hands.  We go through all of them two times, holding the stretches for 6-10 seconds while we count out loud.  Littlest is trying to mimic us as we count, which is super cute. 

"Reading" the book by
naming the letters in the title.

We read our book of the month, "How Are You Peeling?" by Saxton Freeman and Joost Elffers.  It's actually a Caldecott winning book boy Scholastic.  Littlest wasn't as interested in it but Miss M loved looking at the pictures and deciding how the vegetables were feeling and coming up with scenarios to explain their emotions.  I was really impressed with how well she was able to determine which emotion most of them were illustrating and she could give me examples of times when she has felt that way.  I think it is vital to give children the vocabulary they need to express how they are feeling and why; it greatly helps to reduce frustration and gives them a better outlet than throwing a fit (although we still have plenty of those here).

One of the units this week was kicking but I couldn't get them to actually do any of the written activities.  So, I used the general theme as inspiration to get out our pop-up soccer goal and balls they got for Christmas have a kicking contest, which they loved.  This activity kept them entertained for about 10 minutes without irritating their coughs too badly.  You could use a large box (if you order from Amazon with any regularity, I'll bet you have one around) instead of the goal or just put down a tape line for them to get the ball over.  Littlest is in more of a rolling phase than a kicking phase but she liked to watch her sister.  I am trying to teach her to kick with the side of her foot rather than her toes, especially since we don't wear shoes in the house so they aren't protected, but for now I've been overruled by the threenager.  I guess this is one of those times you let them learn by experience, right?

Her look of glee belies the nasty cough
and fever she's been battling all week.

One evening before Daddy came home, we had some fun jumping over a ribbon.  Littlest tries her best, crouching down and giving the cutest grunt as she heaves herself upwards but she still hasn't quite managed to get both feet off the floor at the same time.  Her sister does her best to model proper form.  They jumped forwards and backwards and used the ribbon for a balance beam and eventually a road for their cars as they naturally transitioned into other interests.


We finally got out our geoboards, which I had been nervous to do since Littlest still likes to put things in her mouth.  Both girls were fascinated with making shapes on it although each needed some help in stretching the tighter bands.  I can see this being a great way to develop fine motor skills.  With Miss M, we concentrated on making a variety of shapes and with Littlest we worked on color recognition as I named the color of the bands she chose to use.

I personally loved the throw and catch craft/game.  I set out a variety of markers, crayons and stickers and let the girls decorate their cups while I tied the pompom to the string.  To insert the craft stick, I used scissors to punch a narrow hole that allowed the stick to poke through but kept it pretty tight so it doesn't fall out easily.  I taped the other end of the yarn to the stick inside the cup and it worked quite well.  I have fun seeing how many times I can catch the pompom.  Both girls were excited to try but quickly grew frustrated since they aren't quite coordinated enough yet to make the game work.  Littlest wandered off to play in her kitchen and Miss M invented a new game using additional pompoms from our craft stash.  She rolled them to me following a color pattern she made up (red, blue, green, red, blue green) and then dictated how I was to roll them back to her (blue, blue, green, green, red, red).  She liked it until Littlest showed interest and then we were done.   I tried to interest them in playing golf with them using paper cups tipped on their sides and large mixing spoons but the moment had passed.

I tried to sneak in a little more school with the ball patterning strip but Miss M refused to do it as written because the strip with the pattern wasn't long enough to fit the second repeat and she could not be persuaded that it was ok to put the cards on the table next to it.  A new game was required so we flipped the cards over so she could pick one and sort them into piles on top of the correct ball on the strip.  At the end we counted them and determined which we had the most and least of.

Fingers are crossed that better health is on the way since we are headed out on family vacation at the end of next week.  I am also hoping to have a chance to do more the fun activities in our final week of Food and Fitness.

Valentine Fun

I love the holiday party packs that MGT includes.  They make it easy for me to do something fun with the girls and they always love it.  Since we only do school with our friend on Mondays and Wednesdays, we had our party a few days early.

The girls really enjoyed the adapted Indian fairy tale as I was telling it but had even more fun using the story pieces on our world map to tell their own story.  I was about to move them on to the next activity since we have a finite amount of time together but caught myself and let them play themselves out.  They assigned parts (prince and princess) and areas of the globe (by color) then took turns finding the gifts and sharing them with each other.

Next we made the love bug headbands.  I am trying really hard to let them decorate and do their crafts their way, rather than "helping" extensively so they look "cute".  As much as I love Pinterest, I think it has been detrimental in many ways, one of which is making moms think their children have to crank out the most photogenic, adorable crafts that can be proudly shared on social media.  These are scribbled on using various writing tools, stickers are haphazardly placed with no rhyme or reason and the girls couldn't care less.  They were so proud of themselves and wore them for the remainder of the class.  It's a good lesson for me to learn.

I adapted the heart number game a little.  I created a blank board of hearts and cut out numbered ones that we hid around the room.  They are pretty solid on identification so we worked on numerical order instead.  Miss M liked it a lot so I'll be keeping it out.  I may make another board with the numbers for Littlest to use as a matching game.

She's touching her toes.

The Heart Healthy Game was also fun and will be making repeated appearances this month.  I enjoyed watching them trying to jump (Littlest still doesn't really leave the floor but she sure tries hard) and teaching them out to do jumping jacks.  Miss M couldn't quite understand the reasoning behind running in place when you could go somewhere so she chose to run around the game board six times instead.


We played the heart puzzle game before making Valentine cards for our beloved daddies and indulging in a snack time of chocolate zucchini muffins, applesauce and M & Ms while listening to some pretty fun Valentine songs on YouTube (including the one we sang at circle time, a five little hearts finger play).  It was a really fun way to spend the morning.

Eating Fruits and Veggies

This month's theme is Food and Fitness so we learned about the importance of eating  healthy foods from the different food groups, especially fruits and vegetables.

The shape for this month was a heart so I used my handy-dandy Photoshop shape tool to create a quick paper for them to practice tracing.  I'm sure you could find something prettier online for free, this was just the fastest thing for me and I wanted Miss M to get some practice before we work on her Valentine's cards for her playgroup party on Friday.  Littlest had fun with it and even allowed me to help her trace (this is a big deal because she usually throws a fit when you suggest she can't do something by herself).

The vegetable math counters have been a HUGE hit at our house.  As soon as I took them out of the bag, I almost lost the kids entirely because all they wanted to do was play with them.  They divvied them up by kind pretty quickly and we practiced tracing around them and counting them.  They were also a good way to review/teach colors.

The vegetable washing game was a hit as well.  Rather than using water and real vegetables (which would end up all over the floor because Littlest loves splashing and dumping water), I gathered vegetables from our play kitchen and a clean sponge and let the girls take turns counting to 12 as they scrubbed the veggies.  That was pretty easy for them so I wrote out a number line on a piece of scratch paper, circled every other number and had them count by 2s.

Last month we slacked on our journal so I'm excited to get back into for February.  We decorated our covers with pictures of produce from the grocery ads and they named their favorites to eat.  Miss M kept saying how much she loved carrots, although she's never eaten them when I've cooked them so I gave her some matchstick carrots at snack and she gobbled them right up.

I made up a little vegetable soup game with vegetable counters since they all wanted a chance to put them in a bowl and stir them.  I made little cards out of construction paper and wrote each type of vegetable on a card, along with a number that indicated how many were to be added to the bowl.  I made sure not to have more than four of each type of vegetable called for so we wouldn't have to take vegetables out for someone to complete a turn.  So, for example, I had a card that said 1 pepper and another that said 3 peppers since we had four peppers total.  It gave them a chance to practice reading numbers and seeing if they could figure out which vegetable was written on there based on the initial letter.

Instead of having the girls go diving under a blanket to pick the pretend strawberries on Fruit Day (which I knew would lead to them playing other things and not paying attention to what we were trying to do), we used a blanket to make a row where we "planted" them.  It was a good chance to help Littlest with color identification while the others used the die to see how many red ones they would get to put in their baskets.

The girls loved making their own strawberries and pouncing the seeds on with the poky ball.  I drew leaves for them to cut out to give them some more guidance and practice with turning the paper.  Miss M got a little confused and ended up cutting her paper into little green pieces while I helped her sister but we figured out how to make it look good and she was very proud of herself.

We also traced the letter J with orange juice, as written in the Teachers Guide.  The girls loved the smell of the orange and asked for them at snack time.  Littlest was especially smitten with hers and kept running off with it.

I printed off the food groups coloring book from the Member Resources section of the website and they colored the fruit picture. I like to have coloring options for the girls when we go out to eat so this will end up in our "restaurant" bag to help keep them calm and quiet.

Those were a few of our activities from this week!  I hope something was helpful.