S and T

So, I love Mother Goose Time buuuuut I had to do something different for S because while Sheep (the animal they chose) technically is spelled with an S at the beginning it does not actually start with an /s/ sound.  I found a cute, free Snake coloring page on the internet and printed off three copies.  I started by showing the girls pictures of snakes and pointing out the different patterns. I had the girls chose 2-3 markers and come up with their own repeating patterns.  For Littlest, I did a simple pattern for her, coloring every other stripe red, and then let her decorate the rest of the picture on her own.  Miss M chose a pattern of four blue, one brown and got a little tired of coloring the four blue after a while so to help her maintain the pattern, I colored the blue stripes and she did the brown one.

The concept review game was fun for the girls.  Since I wanted to reinforce the /s/ sound and we were also doing activities from T is for Tiger, I chose to use letter magnets instead of a small toy to hide under my paper cups.  I randomly placed cut up cards on top of ten overturned cups and hid both letters while the girls closed their eyes.  They then took turns choosing a cup and looking for the magnet letter after telling me about the card on top.  If they chose a number card, I made them count to it.  If they chose a letter card, I made them tell me something that started with that letter.  They had a lot of fun with this game.  Littlest is making good strides with her speech but still can't quite name letters so she just made the sounds and I directed her to identify numbers and shapes instead of choosing them on her own.

These cards could be used in lots of ways.  You could put them in a little Tupperware (to keep them corralled) facedown and use them when playing board games like Candyland and have every player draw one and name it before taking their turn.  You could have your child pick a card, then find something in the room that starts with that sound or is the same shape or color (you could make it into a scavenger hunt for older kids).  For numbers, they could collect that many of a certain object (or different kinds of objects that add up to the total).  You could also use the number cards with coloring games, having them take a number and then color that many items on a page red, for example.  You could do a version of the alphabet car game but have them use names of objects or family members for each letter of the alphabet.

They loved the tiger masks and they turned out so cute!!  I didn't help them at all except to tie the yarn on (I cut it in half first so it was easily adjustable).  After they finished drawing on their stripes and had donned their feline alter egos, all three started growling and prowling around the living room, climbing on the back of sofas.

We finished off the day with masks firmly in place and dancing away to the ABC Zoo Dance N Beats DVD.  We started with the T is for Tiger song and then they chose their favorite letters from there.  I think my favorite was watching them run around like quick quail, especially Littlest who still has that adorable whole-torso toddler run.  It was a fun morning for us.

P, Q, R

It's been a while and a crazy, difficult couple of weeks.  Our temperatures have soared into the high 90's and we've been cooped up inside to keep from roasting my littles in the afternoons.  Thank goodness for some ready at hand fun from Mother Goose Time.

On Friday we had a long overdue class with our friend and learned about Polar Bears, Quail and Rattlesnakes as we did projects and played games.

The included Zoogo card game was a huge hit and I plan to play it with the girls tonight with Daddy.  It's basically played the same as Uno, except instead of numbers they use animals we have been learning about this month.  You could easily make your own version of it by printing a sheet of pictures of your own choice (farm animals, transportation, items of clothing, letters, numbers, shapes) on four different colors of paper.  This game is great for helping children work on problem solving skills as they decide whether to match by color or picture, as well as reinforcing vocabulary and/or early academic skills.  I had them put their cards face up on the table and at each turn, asked them if they had a card with the same color or animal as the card in play.  After a few times around, the older girls no longer needed reminders and Littlest would place the correct by herself with a verbal cue.

We talked about rattlesnakes and they practiced their best slithering and snake sounds before making the rattlesnake rattle project, which of course evolved into bracelets because all three of these little girls love jewelry.  String beads onto pipe cleaners is a great fine motor project, even better than using yarn or string for young kids, because the pipe cleaner is nice and firm so they only have to concentrate on getting the bead on and not holding it still.  You could work on patterning with the beads but I chose to let them do it their way.

I think the favorite activity of the day was painting their feet for the Polar Bear project.  We talked about what they would need to protect their feet out in the snow and ice and discussed how polar bear feet are special in that way.  These girls love getting painted and each very patiently waited for me to get to her, then giggled as the paintbrush tickled their toes.  I had to watch Littlest carefully after she was done because liked it so much, she wanted to do it herself.  Make sure you get that paint out of their reach or you may end up with an adorable little toddler toe path painted on your floor.  I loved their responses when I asked them what would happen if they met a polar bear; our friend said it would eat her, Miss M insisted it would protect her from the snowstorm with its warm fur and Littlest shouted "Boo!" indicating that it would either scare her or she would play games with it.  :)  These will be fun to look out in a few years when their feet have gotten so much bigger and I yearn for the little days.

For the Quail egg game, each girl made her own cozy nest and took turns carrying an egg from basket back to it, where she opened it and identified the letter tile inside.  Littlest told me the sounds they make, which I thought was super impressive.  The older girls also listed animals and people they could think of with names that started with that letter.  Miss M then tried to incubate her eggs by sitting on them.

That was all we had time for, although I plan to go back and do the rattlesnake skin shedding activity today or tomorrow, just for fun.

G is for Gorilla

Another fun preschool day today as we dove into the second week of our A to Zoo Animals theme.  I had planned to do F is for Fox but we only got through the craft before the girls decided they just wanted to play for half an hour.  I was able to rein them back in with the promise of another craft and then we did some of the activities.  I'm really trying to let them lead more and not worry so much about what we do and don't get done.

Littlest really liked the F is for Fox Art activity.  It was similar to one we did a few months ago and turned out just as cute.  I cut out the tail and ears but she had fun shredding the napkin and gluing it on the tail.  She also started doing some actual vertical scribbling for the first time, instead of just drawing circles.  I was impressed.

All of the girls liked the gorilla mask activity and combing the paint on, although eventually they asked for paint brushes.  I need to find a better type of paint for them to use once we finally finish off this horrible stuff I can't make myself just throw out.  It's too thick and gloppy.  With the masks, I noticed that they'd curled a bit after they dried so I ran them through the laminator and then had the brilliant idea that they could use a dry erase marker to add facial features since they had just painted the fur and that was it.  It worked really nicely with the emotion spinner.  Miss M cycled through happy, sad, angry and surprised pretty quickly before deciding her gorilla was happy and wanted to go eat more bugs and berries.

I modified the Gorilla food activity because honestly I was just too tired at that point to pick myself up off the floor and hide the letter tiles.  The girls were just as happy passing the bag around, taking one, naming it and finding the match.  Miss M and I named animals that started with our letters and Littlest made their sounds.  They really liked this game.  I think I may stick it in our file folder box for the month.

We ended our school time by dancing through the entire Dance N Beats DVD for the month.  Littlest is especially enjoying it because there seem to be fewer types of movements and she can pick them up faster in these short songs.  It is super cute to watch.

We are headed to the zoo for Littlest's birthday on Friday so I may make up an animal scavenger hunt based on the ones we have already done (and will do) for fun.  It should be a good time if it's not too blasted hot.  I'm kind of missing the rain from a couple weeks ago...

B is for Bird

Normally we do school on a couple times a week since the girls are so little but this month's theme is so fun and I don't really want to skip any of the days.  We did some of the B is for Bird activities to fill in the time before lunch and the girls loved them.

Miss M ended up modifying the color bird activity.  She saw me cutting them out, grabbed them and the world map from our wall, then started matching the birds to the continents and other objects on the map.  I loved it and let her run with it.  When she had matched them all, she started making up stories about how they were swimming or walking to visit friends on other parts of the map.  She must have played with them for 15 minutes before moving on to something else.  Littlest used them to sort some of the counting manipulatives we have collected over the months.  I laminated mine so they will last longer and thought about taping them to paper plates and having the girls cut out pictures that match the color and gluing them on.  The birds could be removed later without harm because of the lamination.  You could also use sticky tack, post one color a day on the wall above a basket and collect items throughout the day that match the color.

Littlest was smitten with the cute little bird craft.  We got out our alphabet stamps to decorate them with letters.  They both wanted to googly eyes but Miss M didn't want hers on a stick, she wanted to separate birds she could "fly with my hands".  I used a few pieces of double sided tape to stick Littlest's birds together, with the stick between.  She flew around the living room "tweeting" and looking for worms like the robins we've been watching in our backyard.

Just those two little activities kept my girls entertained for nearly an hour.  This is a great theme for keeping kids busy during those hot summer hours.

A is for Alligator

I love the theme for June!  A to Zoo Animals has been so fun and we are only a few days in.  It's also nice because Littlest's birthday is next week and we are doing a zoo theme so I've got some built in, already prepared activities to do with her friends. :)

We started with our Dance N Beats DVDs.  The songs and routines for this month are pretty short so we did six of them in just a few minutes.  The girls really enjoyed pretending to be animals and did a good job of following the simple choreography.  This is a great program for getting them moving and excited for the theme, as a transition between activities and as a way to keep them usefully occupied while I prep things for school or simply get some household chores down.  I personally find them a nice way to stretch and wake up my body without requiring too much sweat or coordination.

After we were all warmed up, we started on our zoo books.  I chose to get them all done in one day so they could spend the month reviewing them (plus, our friend doesn't come every day and I didn't want her to miss any of the pages).  I loved watching the girls draw their self-portraits on the ID page.  Miss M is starting to add more details like fingers and belly buttons.  Littlest has started adding facial features and hair.  I need to go through all our art work that I've saved in the curriculum boxes and put together a timeline showing the progression from simple scribbles to recognizable forms.  I think it would be pretty interesting.

With the books, I noticed that they were hole punched on the right side and only once.  I thought this make it a little difficult for the girls to use so I double punch ours on the top and added two rings.  You could use yarn or even a twist tie.  This makes it a little more like a flip book and they seem to like it.

The alligator puppets were a little tricky but a big hit.  I showed the girls how to fold their plates in a triangle and they cut out the faces (I helped Littlest do the curves but cutting is vastly improved from a few months ago).  Then we glued the faces over the plate, covering it completely before we folded the rest of the face down to make the eyes stand up.  I cut out the zig zag paper scraps for teeth and they put the glue along the inside rim of the plates and placed them.  It worked pretty well.  There's no pocket for their hands but they just hold them by the fold and snap them open and shut.  As soon as their puppets were done, they started chasing each other around and looking for food to chomp.  I love listening to the stories they make up on the spot.

I introduced the ABC book that came with this month's materials.  We are only reading the page the coordinates with the letter(s) we are doing that day.  I scattered the letter tiles on the ground and they hunted for the ones in their names.  I might need to make extra tiles so they can make their full names and possibly have their own sets (Littlest is getting quite territorial and Miss M always has been) to play with.

Our final activity for the first day was the alligator nests.  I hid paper eggs with different numbers of dots around the room and Miss M drew a numbered egg from her nest and matched it.  She then decided she needed a bunch of boy alligator babies, wrapped all the paper eggs in her blanket to keep them warm and took the bundle with us to Costco.