Dancing on Safari

I just couldn't wait until January to open our new Dance N Beats DVD.  My nephew is in town and he loves it when we do school (even though he is a big kindergartner now, the activities in the Mother Goose Time curriculum really appeals to him) so we did one of the "dance party" lessons in the Dance N Beats manual.

I love that the music this month includes African tribal chants; there is something about the drum beat that really gets to me and could almost make me start dancing spontaneously (as long as no one else was in the room).  We started with a couple dance songs while I gathered our materials for the academic activities (this was kind of spontaneous and it as nice that all of the materials could be easily and quickly gathered).

I had just (literally half an hour before) put an empty wrapping paper tube in the recycling prior to starting our lesson so I quickly retrieved it, cut it into various lengths and we did a quick activity of comparing the different lengths (which played nicely off our class from Monday) of the tubes and then practiced counting.  I had the kids roll a die and then place that many dots or stamps on their "giraffe neck".  For my nephew, I had him use two dice to make it a little harder.  Littlest just scribbled and stamped to her heart's content.  They kept at this for a good 7-10 minutes before moving on to the next dance.

While they danced to the giraffe song, I prepped the art activity.  I used white paper plates and drew lines on them.  I marked every other space with a B (for black) and had them paint stripes for the zebra shaker project in the manual.  It was a little difficult for Miss M to get the concept of skipping a space but I think she was starting to get it.  Littlest just made dots but she had fun doing it so we will just call hers a Dalmatian shaker.  We haven't actually finished these yet because they needed to dry before stapling them together with beans inside and we've been pretty busy but I'll try to update with a completed project photo when we get to it.

One more dance and it was time for Grass Letters.  By this time my girls had moved on to showing their grandparents their favorite Christmas gifts (Duplos, Magformers and a doll) but my nephew was still with me.  I cut up green paper into strips, then made up cards with upper case letters on them.  I started with all the "stick" letters and then added a few of the "curvy" letters for more difficulty.  He used the strips to form the letters on the cards and declared it to be "easy peasy" until he got to the letter C.  We puzzled it out, decided on the best configuration and then he decided it was time to get in on the toy testing so we were done.

I really love these little lessons in the Dance N Beats manual.  They are super simple and a great way to pass the time between nap and dinner that helps get the kids moving during this frigid winter weather and keeps them learning in a fun way.

An InLinkz Link-up

Finishing Up Winter

I titled this post "Finishing Up Winter" and then thought to myself with a wistful sigh, I wish.  Once Christmas is over, I'm over the snow and cold and ready for spring.  I live in Utah, though, so we will be in danger of snow storms until April, or sometimes even early May.

Oh well, at least we have some fun things to keep us occupied.  We did activities from the last two days of our December unit on Monday and the girls really had some fun with it.  We started off by reviewing our concepts for the month:  M, V, X, 7, 8, star and white.  I cut up the concept cards, hid them around the living room and then had the girls search for them and tuck them into bed for those long winter nights.  It was a big hit and of course they all wanted a turn to hide them.


Next, we practiced measuring using our night sky paper strips.  I handed out the strips and had the girls select the one they thought was their longest and then compare them to each other.  We kept going until we had them in order from longest to shortest.  This was a little bit of a hard activity for them because they took it personally if their strip was the shorter one but we talked through it and I think they have a better grasp on making comparisons now.

They enjoyed making the snow dough.  I did this activity a little differently than having them build snowy scenes; I gave them each a high sided plate (from IKEA) full of the snow dough and then let them practice writing our letters of the month using chopsticks.  Littlest did pretty well "scribbling" in it until she decided she wanted to see what would happen if she dumped it on the table and used her chopstick to fling it--twice.  I sent a bag of it home with our school friend, saved some for more writing practice later and added about a 1/2 cup of glue to the rest and made cornstarch dough. Littlest and I rolled it out (it was a little crumbly, I probably should have used a little less of the snow dough) and cut out heart shapes which dried nicely on the counter overnight and will make fun tags to add to Valentine treat bags in February.

They were all very excited to decorate their postcards.  Miss M drew a sun as her favorite thing about winter days, she's an optimistic child.  :)  I'm saving this one because she did a really nice job with the sun and writing the letters M and H on the back but in the future we will be sending these to family members, especially as she is able to write more on her own or at least dictate a little more.

"Owl, Who Do You See?" was a fun game.  We chanted it like in "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" before they rolled the cube to reveal either an animal picture or a letter.  For the animals, I emphasized the beginning sound and they identified which letter needed to be put on Owl.  For the letters, we practiced blending all the sounds to identify which animal the Owl was seeing.  We have since played this with my 6-year old nephew, who also enjoyed it.

And that was it for December.  There were a lot of really fun activities that spurred other experiences and a lot of good learning opportunities.  I am excited about the January theme, Going On Safari.  Maybe pretending to be in Africa will trick my body into thinking it's warm outside.

An InLinkz Link-up

Stars and Candles

Merry Christmas Eve!  We are in the depths of preparing for the celebrations that start tonight for us and continue into tomorrow but I thought I'd put up a little review of what we did Monday for school.

I cut out strips of colored paper to act as "candles" and numbered them 1-8, then divided them up between the girls and let them ut them in order.  They needed a little reminding to go left to right but other than that, they did great.  I put this activity in the folder with the rest of the daily materials so we can do it again next time we go through this theme.

I cut out eight more strips of colored "candles" and they used them to make letters.  M was a little difficult to figure out at first but they eventually got it.  Along with doing X, V and M (our letters this month), we also did W, T and L.  L caused some confusion as to which direction it should face and Miss M could not be convinced that I was right so we moved on and will tackle that later.  Littlest had a great idea and used the letter flags as a model, laying the strips on top to create her copy.

We made the star wands, which were an instant hit with their yellow cellophane centers.  I had them decorate with markers and  then we traced around it and added glittery green sand that was left over from a previous project (I have quite the craft collection now, primarily utilizing materials left over from our Mother Goose Time crafts).  Miss M called it her starifying glass and used it to search for items around the house.

Since we had a leftover star from the middle of the wands, I quickly created a more Christmas-y craft utilizing the wonderful materials available freely on the internet.  I found a poem called "A Christmas Star" by Tom Krause on Allpoetry.com and a free coloring picture of a manger scene and used Photoshop to put them in one document. The girls colored the picture and added their star to the page to act as the star that led the shepherds and wise men to the baby Jesus.  I thought it turned out pretty cute.  I'd post a copy but I'm not sure about copyright laws.

The girls enjoyed playing "Jack Be Nimble" and building a block candle higher and higher to try jumping over.  It gave them good counting practice and they had the poem memorized by the last time they "jumped" (mostly they just lifted their legs and walked over it).  It would be a good game for making predictions ("I think I can jump over 6 blocks without knocking it over, how many do you think you can jump over?").

Our last activity was using the glow in the dark star counters.  They liked matching them up to the card by size to copy the pattern printed there.  We sorted them by size (large, medium and small), counted how many were in each group, then counted them all together.  The only place dark enough for them to see them glow was my under the stairs closet and they weren't too keen on staying in there very long.

I plan on doing some more school this week and will let you know what fun we have after the presents have been opened and the kitchen is finally cleaned up.  Have a wonderful Christmas!

An InLinkz Link-up

M is for Mouse

For our last day of school this week, we did the Mouse unit.  I taped off an M on the floor and put all our phonics cards along the path, while Miss M told me all the things she could think of that start with the letter M.  She came up with her name, Minnie, Mommy, muffin and mice.  They took turns creeping along the letter like a little mouse until they came to a card that started with M and then put it on our circle time board.  They liked the game so we did it again, using the other phonics cards.  When they came to a card on the path, they stopped and named all the letters in the word before saying the whole word and putting it back in our bag.  They are doing great with their letter identification so I am going to need to come up with a few more ideas to challenge them.

We pulled out the "I Can Read" book of the month and practiced reading words in the -at family.  They both enjoyed pointing to the words and telling the story to me (with cues and help) and we read through it a few times before moving to another activity.  I didn't use the sight word pointers because we were concentrating on the word family instead this time.  It was a little easier for them read words that had a pattern.

The mouse math game was fun for them.  I sat them on either side of the table with the equation in the middle, then had them count the number of mice that was closest to them, then we counted them all together.  I think it helped them understand the concept of adding two separate groups together.

We played the Cat and Mouse game.  They are getting really good at identifying the number of dots on the dice just from the pattern they make instead of having to count all of them but still need to work on directionality when playing a board game.

Our last activity was one I made up.  They love to do crafts to I cut out a little mouse head shape, ears and a triangle for the mouth.  I let them put their mice together and taped the triangle on the back of the head so the mouth could be opened, then we cut up some yellow card stock to act as cheese cubes.  They could roll the die and feed their mouse that number of cheese cubes.  It could easily be used for addition and subtraction as well.

Christmas is next week but I am still planning on doing some of our fun activities with visiting family members so check back if you're interested in more of our exploits.

An InLinkz Link-up

Cookies!

The theme for the day was cookies and it provided lots of fun learning experiences as well as a yummy snack.  The focus topic this month is math and there were lots of different ways of incorporating it in this lesson.

We had circle time and practiced counting the days of the month and predicting what that next picture in our calendar pattern would be the next day.  After that, I pulled out Miss M's wooden Melissa and Doug cookie set (it's actually a mixture of two sets that she got for her birthday) and we used it to sing and count along to the song of the day, a reboot of "One Potato, Two Potato".  Miss M actually made up her own version of this song using the cookies a week or so ago.

I brought out the shape manipulatives and they really had a good time with these.  We used the pattern cards in the last to see if they could duplicate the designs.  This was actually a little more difficult than I expected, so I think I will make up a few more examples and have them practice some more.  We tried a little tracing and I realized that I needed to teach them how to hold the shape with one hand use the pencil with the other.  This took a little more coordination than they have at the moment but they tried and that counts.  Mostly they wanted to stack the shapes into tall towers so we counted them and did a little sorting by color and shape.  Next time I think we will talk about how many sides they have and how they are the same and different.

We tried the cookie craft but they were not interesting in making matching pairs or even putting very many of them on the plate.  They liked adding the sticky dots and making designs with them but this activity was over pretty quickly.

I happened to have  a few unfrosted sugar cookies left over from a neighbor activity so I mixed up some quick powder sugar glaze while they decorated their paper cookies.  I gave them each a little container with the white frosting and turned it into a little lesson on color mixing.  Miss M wanted orange and Littlest's favorite color seems to be purple so we added food coloring and they got to mix to discover the new color before frosting their cookie and having snack.  This was a popular activity.  :)

At the end I brought out the play dough I made last week and we had fun adding nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to it so it really smelled like Christmas.  All three had a great time strengthening their hands by patting out the dough and improving their fine motor with the beads.  They played for fifteen minutes, cutting out their own play dough cookies and decorating them, plus my kitchen smelled nice when they were done.

I was disappointed that my printer wasn't communicating well with my computer so we couldn't do the cookie jar activity with the online printable but I am hoping to do it another time.  It is meant for a handwriting activity but since my kids are still a little young for writing, I've got an idea to make it a shape matching game.  Print two copies, one on card stock if you can, and color them (you could have the kids color them if you wanted).  Laminate and tape a ziplock bag onto the back of the card stock jar.  Cut out the shapes from the other one and put them in the bag.  The children take turns pulling a "cookie" out of the jar and matching it to the front.  Another variation would be to print 3-5 copies of the jar.  Color the master jar and one other jar exactly the same and then color the other shapes differently from these (so the master circle is blue, there is another blue circle, a yellow one and a red one in the bag).  This way you can work on same/different (these are both circles but this one is green and the other is blue) and sorting (let's put all the green shapes together).  I hope that makes sense.

An InLinkz Link-up

Little Adaptations

This is her version of
"shoulders up and down".

Littlest and I had school alone on Friday while Miss M was at her playgroup.  She thrives on one on one time and I am trying to find ways to give each girl more of that.

We warmed up with some Dance N Beats.  She loves the Warm Up song and can follow along quite well.  It's super cute and she is so proud of herself.

We had circle time.  I focused on lots of counting and pointing out the numbers on the calendar and then we did a little bit with identifying two of our letters for the month: M and V.  I put the letter flag up on the board, said the name and sound several times and traced it with my finger (which of course led to her tracing it with her finger).  I pulled out our card stock letters and helped her find the one that was the same, then repeated the activity with the upper case phonics card (I'll wait to lower case for a little bit).  We only spent about three minutes on this because that was the limit of her attention.

We did activities from a couple different units today.  The jingle bell craft was a really hit (also with Miss M when she came home from school.  I found that putting the little cup on one of their hands while they colored it helped them decorate more than just the top/bottom (which is covered in wax to be water-resistant and thus leads to smeared marker).  They could both help me poke the pipe cleaner through the hole but I had to the bell and twist the two ends into a handle.  It's a fun little musical prop that we will leave accessible for the rest of the month.

The shape manipulatives this month are so much fun!  Littlest gave a little shriek of excitement when I poured them on the table.  She wanted to stack in them in the middle more than connect them from the sides but I named the shapes as she grabbed them and we did a little sorting by color.

I adapted the Owl Shapes game a little to make it more portable.  First I laminated and cut out the shapes, then traced around them onto a piece of card stock that I also laminated after labeling the shapes (I like having the printed names on things even if it's way too early to think about reading because it gives them familiarity with the words).  A little bit of double sided tape on the game board and she was happy to play this about five times while I labeled the shape she was currently matching.

All of that took us about 40 minutes and then it was time to pick up Miss M and do a little feeding at the little farm where she has her playgroup.  They have a kangaroo, calf and tons of turkeys and chickens that both girls get really excited to see every week.  I want them to comfortable (and safe) around animals so I love it, too.

Santa's Workshop

Miss M's birthday was on Wednesday and we always spend birthdays together as a family so we celebrated with her school friends on Monday.  Mother Goose Time often sends special "extra" unit in months that have a particular holiday, like the Pumpkin Party we did with our cousins in October.  December's bonus kit was "Santa's Workshop" and it made for the perfect toddler party.

I started by laminating everything to make it extra durable and because I really love my laminator.  I assembled all my craft materials ahead of time so I wouldn't be running back and forth for them since it was just me with four kids under four.

We started with our normal circle time, then sang the new Santa song provided in the party materials.  After that, I read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" while they added the story pieces provided to our flannel board.  It was a little long for them but I like the idea that they are being introduced to classic literature.

This is Miss M "freezing".

Next, we played "Reindeer Training" after first reviewing the different types of movements on the spinner.  I laid out a kind of crazy path on the rug using tape but I probably would have been better just to leave them to their own paths because they were deliberately trying to run into each other by going opposite directions.  I think they would have done a little more avoiding (and therefore a little less crying on Littlest's part, who kept getting knocked over) if they had been free to roam.  The game ended a little prematurely when they couldn't heed the warning to leave Littlest alone.

Next, we made Santa spoon puppets.  I cut out hat shapes for them but they did all the rest.  Miss M immediately began using a deep voicing and saying "Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! I'm Santa!" as soon as she finished hers.  It was adorable.  I was particularly impressed with Littlest's puppet; she put all the parts on by herself.  She turns 18 months today and has really, really good fine motor skills for her age.  I'm pretty sure that's why the majority of her expressive language consists of "eh", "dad", "mama", "cacaca" (that's kitty), "mmmm" (that's her sister), pointing and signing; she's too busy developing other skills to bother with talking.

We forgot the arms at first and added
them a little later.

I modified the snowman painting craft because I knew Miss M wouldn't like the shaving cream texture (and I'm pretty sure my husband is almost out...) so instead I let them choose what color of paper they wanted to use and drew three circles on it, emphasizing large, medium and small.  I poured white paint onto paper plates and gave them cotton balls to use to sponge the paint onto their circles.  They cut their own hats out of construction paper, and we used a variety of leftover craft materials from other projects such as split peas, jewels and confetti for the details.  I also cut a brown chenille stem into eight pieces to use for arms.  I think they came out beautifully.

While the snowman dried, we played Santa's Beard and practiced number recognition while we were at it.  It was a fun game and I think next time I bring it out, I will add in the use of tweezers or tongs to pick up the cotton balls so they can work on building a little more hand strength.

I didn't do the snack listed in the party instructions simply because Miss M had requested donuts and it was her birthday party but I think the snack idea was really cute and can see us doing it another time.

I didn't have time to make play dough for the Christmas tree activity during the party but we did it just the three of us the next day.  It was actually the first time I had ever made "cooked" play dough and it was much easier than I thought; it was also a lot softer and better to use than other, no cook recipes I've tried.  I left the room for 10 seconds to grab a package at the door and I came back to find Littlest grimacing and trying to spit; apparently it wasn't super tasty.  They both loved pushing beads into the dough to decorate their trees.  Miss M wanted to cut out her own shapes.  She has really little hands and it was hard for her to flatten out the dough with them (we didn't have a good rolling pin, although I have since corrected the problem) and was so proud of herself for doing it on her own.  It was a great semi-supervised activity for them to do while I got things ready for dinner and will definitely be making another appearance soon.

So, if you're looking for a great party that's already been planned for you on top of super fun preschool learning opportunities, you might want to give Mother Goose Time a try.  :)

The Great Kazoo

Saturday after nap saw the girls and I home alone while Daddy got a massage and we developed yet another round of colds.  What better time to break out another unit of MGT to add some fun to a winter afternoon.

Circle time ended up being our main activity again today.  Both girls got really into the theme poster and using the magnifying glasses to search for the pictures and others that started with the same sound.  We spent a lot of time exploring it.

As I've said before, the girls love Little Einsteins on Netflix so Miss M has a pretty good vocabulary of musical instruments but it was fun to introduce a few more from the woodwind categories.  She opted not to play the instrument memory game but liked looking through the pictures to see which ones she already knew.

We made the kazoos, which has provided great fun.  I wasn't up to watching Littlest with an eagle eye to make sure she didn't use the wall as her canvas with markers so we opted to decorate our tubes with stickers from JoAnn's.  Before they could be decorated, however, they were first used as telescopes and binoculars.  I think it is hardwired into our DNA to try and look through any small round thing we come across.  I used a regular punch to make the hole and simply cut away a bit of the film to make sure it stayed clear.  It took me a minute to realize I needed to actually vocalize into the tube to make it hum (unlike a regular kazoo, where you just blow) but once I did, the girls got very excited and wanted to do it on their own for the next half hour.

Rum, Pum, Pum, Pum

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday with family in Washington state and got home on Wednesday.  I was excited to open up our MGT December curriculum box, which arrived almost as we were walking out the door the week before.  I was not disappointed.

The theme for this month is "Sights and Sounds of Winter".  I love the Christmas season, with all the music, decorations and of course the smell of baking goodies and these units are going to be a great accompaniment to all the fun I hope we have in the next few weeks.

The first unit of the month was Drums.  One of the girls' favorite shoes right now is "Little Einsteins" and at a few places in the show they are always asked to pat to the beat.  Littlest is especially adorable when she does this, so this unit was a big hit.  Miss M decided to play Teacher Mommy again and we actually had almost half an hour of circle time as we reviewed the calendar and weather and introduced the concept of the day, the color white.  We put the white color blob on the painters palette, reviewed the other colors that were already there and then they decided to take some time with the pretend paint brushes to go around the room and "paint" things.  Miss M knows all her colors but enjoyed naming them for Littlest.  We also spent fully five minutes singing the circle time song, subbing in different body parts and items in the room for the word "drum".  The girls took turns naming (or pointing, in the case of Littlest) things and I did most of the singing while they laughed at me.  It was a great vocabulary lesson.

We practiced patting out the syllables in our names as well as identifying their names.  I wrote them on the name tags and would hold one up for us to pat.  We also did all the names of our grandparents and pets before moving on to the craft.

I love the Native American drum craft.  The girls colored the paper plates and chose their beads and I hot glued everything together.  I ended up doing a second round of hot glue after the sticks broke loose on both of them, filling the space with as much glue as I could.  They seem a lot more stable and have been great fun to play.  We watched a Native American drum video on YouTube during craft.

She wouldn't hold it still long
enough for me to get a
clear picture.

I was hoping to lure Miss M into playing the rhythm game but after we finished the craft she was just ready for snack and free play.  Maybe another day.  I am excited to make some more instruments and have our only little family band.

An InLinkz Link-up