Family Picnic Variations

I have always loved the extra celebration packs MGT adds to many of their monthly curriculum boxes.  This month was a family picnic, full of ideas for games and treats.  I find them very inspiring and usually end up coming up with some of my own ideas using the materials provided.  I thought I'd share some of those ideas today.

The spinner that came in the packet can be used for lots of different things.  I came up with a spin-off of the pasta salad game using it.  I didn't have plastic ants and didn't want to go buy any since we have little things coming out of our ears right now.  Instead, I used some of the foam shapes I've collected from previous month's boxes and added it to a bowlful of expired penne I found hiding on the top shelf of my pantry.  Using tweezers from another month of curriculum, the girls would take turns spinning and then pick out the corresponding number of shapes from the noodles.  You could also use little sticky notes, draw shapes on them and place them over the number for another variation.

After they finished that game, we continued to use the spinner and the pasta.  I cut long pieces of  yarn, made a tape "needle" on one end and tied a piece of pasta to the other.  They then took turns spinning and threading the corresponding number of pasta pieces onto their yarn to make a necklace. Miss M made a nice ABC pattern.

We then took our magnifying glass (from last July's nature box) outside and started looking for things in nature.  Originally I was going to have them observe some of the ants that live at the end of our patio but those little suckers were super fast so we settled for closely examining our roses and lavender flowers as well as the honeybees visiting them.  The girls then drew chalk pictures of what they saw (I see this as a precursor to nature journals, which I'd like to start with them next summer).  We talked about the different parts of the plants, the colors, smells and how they felt.


Daddy joined us outside and came up with a fun but definitely adult-supervision only activity.  Being a boy and former Scout, he decided to show the girls how to use the magnifying glass to concentrate the sun's rays and melt crayons onto a piece of paper.  We talked about safety as well as why the crayon was changing from solid to a liquid.  They had fun swirling the melted wax and drawing with the stubs.

Those were my variations to some really fun activities as we end the month of August.

Structures

We've been doing from the Structures lesson and inspired by it for a few days.  We started at my parents house with my nephew.  I'll be honest, I couldn't figure out how to fold the Strong Shapes, except for the cylinder.  I tried but after nearly a week of very little sleep (thanks to Littlest's sudden need to be rocked to sleep and hold my hand all night) my brain just wasn't functioning at it's highest capacity.

I gave my nephew a few of the letter cards and he did his best to twist the pipe cleaners into the same shapes.  Obviously sinuous letters like S were easy but he had a harder time with some of the others.  Miss M wasn't interested in participating at this time and I didn't push it.

We did use the pictures to create the shapes with straws and pipe cleaners.  Miss M enjoyed figuring this out, although it was a bit over Littlest's head.  We turned the triangle into a necklace, which caught her attention, though.

I talked with my nephew about which shape was the strongest (he guessed a square).  I think it would have been a good idea for me to elaborate on this by showing pictures of buildings with triangular elements, as well as bridges.  We spent some time building the strongest structures we could with his blocks (unfortunately, no pictures).

When we finally got home from our long car ride, the girls wanted something to do so I had them build with their blocks.  Of course, they chose to build castles for their princesses.  I think they did an amazing job.  I did help them with spacing their pillars and we talked about how if they wanted it to stand up, the base of each block had to be completely on top of the one below it, not hanging off.

Another activity was more shape-related than structures but it worked on their fine motor skills.  Thanks to Mother Goose Time, I have a plethora of foam shape pieces and at least two nice sets of tweezers.  I dumped the shapes on the floor, gave them each a set of tweezers and containers (because sharing is not a strong skill right now) and let them have it.  It actually kept them occupied for about five minutes.  Miss M chose to only pick up pink shapes while Littlest seemed drawn to the tiniest ones.

Light

We were on vacation this last week for my high school reunion (we won't worry about how long ago I graduated) so I took some of our lessons to do with the girls and my nephews.

The first lesson we did was Light.  We started by matching marker caps that my art teacher/recycler extraordinaire mother saved from dried up markers for sorting activities.  The kids were all pretty fast with this activity and enjoyed finding different shades.  My 6-year old nephew decided that the pink caps belonged with red since all you do is add white to it to make pink.  I love his reasoning skills.

We tried the rainbow in a glass of water experiment but had a hard time with it.  We had the most luck when used a cut crystal bowl that acted like a prism.

They enjoyed making the color paddles.  I found the easiest way to do it was to put the cellophane between the two sides and cut around it, then add glue to around the insides and then just shut it.  I had them use the rectangle cut out pieces from the paddle to draw their different colored pictures.  They all had a great time running around, pretending to be color changing detectives (I guess they reminded them of magnifying glasses).

I think the most favorite activity was finding the letters with the lantern in the fort.  My dad actually constructed a PVC framework that rests on the couch and coffee table in order to build a sturdier blanket fort.  We blocked all the holes with blankets and pillows, then I hid letters and shapes inside for them to find.  I had Littlest looking for shapes and the older kids looking for the letters.  They had an absolutely great time until one of the decided not to come out and give the other kids their turns.  It quickly devolved from there but was an activity we could come back to again and again.

My nephew has a great series from Weekly Reader called "Just Ask" and there is one about rainbows that would be great for supplementing with kindergarten and first graders.  They appear to be only available second hand so I've got my fingers crossed he decides he doesn't want them anymore in a couple of years. ;)

As a sort of related activity, we tie dyed tee shirts.  They had a ton of fun and the shirts turned out great.  I do caution you to wear gloves even if you intend to have the kids do most of the dyeing because it took several days to get the dye off my fingers and all I did was take the lid off the bottle for Miss M.

We didn't do the rainbow color by number because my nephew isn't much into coloring and my girls only wanted to do what he was interested in doing.  I know Miss M could have done it perfectly but Littlest doesn't like being constrained by rules or lines right now.  I would probably just have her draw her own rainbow, maybe handing her the colors in order.

We're Back!!

We took July off but I am so excited about our new August curriculum.  It has been unbearably hot here for the last several weeks, forcing us to spend large amounts of time in the air conditioning.  Thankfully, we have a super fun box of science experiments to keep us entertained and educated.

My girls love to pour and mix things so the Mixtures lesson was perfect for them.  We started with the sugar and oil experiment.  We don't drink bottled water so I didn't have any clear capped bottles and just made do with a couple of the glass spaghetti jars I have been saving.  It worked fine since I just had the two girls with me but I might not recommend using glass if you've got more than that just because of the possibility of breaking.  As it was, I ended up washing my floors three times during school because Littlest kept knocking over water.

We started with dissolving sugar into water.  Miss M noted the water was cloudy and then became clear as we swirled  and mixed it.  Then we added the oil to the other jar and watched it bead up and separate as we swirled and mixed it.  At this point, the sugar water got spilled all over the floor and we took a short break while I cleaned.

Our next experiment was making Jello.  My girls have been noticed steam in the past when I've used my Instant Pot (my favorite household gadget) so after I boiled the water we talked about how water changes state from liquid to gas when it gets hot (also used it as another opportunity to talk about kitchen safety) and from a liquid to a solid when it gets cold.  Would you believe that my girls have never actually had Jello before so this was all completely new to them? Their reaction to the jiggliness was totally adorable, although Littlest didn't actually like eating it.

Hands down their favorite activity was the color experimenting.  We read from the monthly storybook about Alfred Nobel first, then I filled the largest beaker with clear water and the other four with different colors (this is when the next two water accidents occurred.  My floor was very clean this day).  They each took turns add a little bit of their selected color and either predicting what would happen or naming the resulting color.  This will be one that we repeat (although maybe we will do it outside...).

Lastly we mixed paint colors on the included color mixing sheet.  I was a little worried about them mixing colors in the paint pots so we used two brushes for each primary color (so they each had their own because heaven forbid they have to share or wait for a color) and I had them put all the paint down for that particular color at one time.  They decided that their favorite mixed color was purple so I gave them each construction paper and let them paint away in purple until they decided they were done.

I'm really looking forward to taking some of these up to Washington next week and doing them with my six year old nephew.  This is a great box for keeping kids occupied the last few weeks before school starts up.

Catching Up

We've missed a few of our units lately and I didn't want to totally bypass them so we had a sampler day today.  

We started off the morning with some Dance N Beats to help work out the whiny and the wiggly that seemed to infect the girls this morning.

After circle time, we went into the kitchen and I let the girls investigate the horse counters that came with this month's theme.  Miss M immediately wanted to lay claim to all the purple ones so instead we passed them out randomly until everyone had the same amount and that actually seemed to appease them.  I thought it would be fun to the do the Quicksand activity.  I used the sand packet from the Great Pyramid activity last week and let them take turns stirring the glue into it.  It was hard for Littlest to give up her turn and she cried a lot but it was a good learning experience.  We added the liquid starch and then I divided the quicksand into three bowls to let them experiment with having the horses sink or just making patterns with their feet.  They did not love the texture when it got on their fingers but still spent a lot of time playing with it and Miss M asked to use it again after lunch.

Littlest decided she needed a break so she went off to the living room while the older girls and I played the Tortoise Pattern game.  I adapted the rules a little, allowing them to stack a block of the same color if they didn't have any more spaces for one, which headed off some of the whining that has been prevalent in our house lately (I blame the weather).  This game actually took a pretty long time to finish with each of us having our own tortoises.  Miss M stuck it out but our friend got a little bored so I might just do one tortoise for the group next time.  The game ended with the first person to complete their shell pattern (thankfully it was Miss M, no so whining).  After it was done, we grouped our stacks of two blocks, stacked our singles and counted all of the blocks by 2 for some math practice.

I am determined to complete our journals this month so I bribed the girls with popcorn to do their H page.  They actually both really liked putting the toothpicks into the shape and gluing them on the page (although Littlest got a hold of the glue bottle and it will probably take 12 hours for her page to dry enough to close).  Miss M tends to want to color and make sure she's covering all the dots so we did a lot of hand over hand and then she wrote a pretty nice H all on her own later.

That was it for the morning.  I've got the Desert Matching game cut out and waiting on the table for them to do after nap, while I'm trying to put together dinner.  I am brainstorming ideas for keeping the games available for use during the month without losing track of where they go in the units.  I did make an amazing discovery last week--the cute Mother Goose Time box that the materials come in will nicely fit all of the units in file folders.  No more bankers boxes and hanging folders for me; from now on I'll be storing the materials in the box they came in.  Woo hoo!

Variations on a Game

We love the games that come in our Mother Goose Time

materials.  I especially love that there are so many ways to play them other than just the rules outlined in the Teachers Guide.  This is handy for when Miss M decides she doesn't want to play "that way" but is still interested in using the materials. Here are some different ways we've used a couple of this week's games.

I came up with four (or six) different ways to play The Parking Game.  The first way was fairly straightforward, using a numbered die and having her choose a car and place it on the matching parking space, then tell me the color and shape on the car.  You could do a variation using a traditional die with dots to help with counting and pattern recognition.  Since my girls love the math manipulatives and I wanted to work on teaching Littlest colors, we added in a color matching component with the planes.

We also did another variation highlighting the shapes on the cars.  I made little tags with corresponding shapes and taped them to the board.  You then take turns drawing a car card and placing it on the corresponding shape space, identifying the number of the parking space.  You can also reverse this by parking the cars in the spaces, then using your homemade shape cards to unpark a car and reveal the number underneath.  If you want to work on colors instead of shapes, either of these variations works for that as well.  

Miss M loved the Race Car Matching game and was able to do it in the traditional manner (she actually beat me and I wasn't even trying to let her) but for a younger child who needed a simpler game, I would have kept the cards divided into upper and lower case, turned over the lower case letters and divided the upper case letters between the two of us.  Each player turns over one card and that is the one they are trying to match first.  Take turns looking for your match and turning over new cards in your personal deck when you find them until all matches have been made.

The Delivery Truck game was really fun.  We started by constructing our delivery trucks.  The girls decided to use stickers instead of coloring.  I've found stickers to be a fun fine motor skill for kids and stock up whenever I can find them cheaply.  I just got a whole book of 208 gingerbread stickers at JoAnn's for $1.49.

After your truck is done, put together the house cards.  I laminated everything so they didn't fold very well and I ended up just getting off the bottom and making a pocket.  I taped out a little road on the floor, put the package cards in a cottage cheese tub and dubbed it "the factory" and Miss M loaded up her truck with five packages at a time, delivering them to the appropriate house and returning for more packages when she'd finished.  After they'd all been delivered, we unpacked them from their houses and identified the pictures on the back.

I also wanted to share our science project, the car ramp.  Miss M was very excited for this one and actually requested it after we had already been doing school for close to two hours and when she is normally ready to just play.  We figured out the right height for our ramp and a slick surface to help them maintain momentum but then she wanted to add a tunnel.  It took a little experimenting to figure out how to make it tall enough and keep the the supports far enough from the ramp to prevent our cars from running it to them but the end result was a lot of fun.

An InLinkz Link-up

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.

Learning with Literature

Our Fables and Folktales theme continues and I'm loving it!  We've done a lot of lessons this week but rather than review everything, I'll just give you the highlights.

On Tuesday we read "The Grasshopper and the Ants" with our friend during school and did some more of the activities.  They were both very good at hopping.  We modified the counting/comparing activity a little, using popped popcorn instead of the unpopped kernels since Littlest was wandering about and still sticks things in her mouth from time to time.  I gave the Ant card to Miss M and the grasshopper to her friend, then they took turns take a number card and putting that the many pieces of popcorn on their card.  It was a little hard getting them to wait long enough to see who had more before they ate the popcorn but I think we got a good introduction of the concept into their heads.

On Wednesday it was "The Tortoise and the Hare".  The girls ran around fast and then walked slowly as I read the story a couple of times.  We played the folder game that came in our day bag and filled out our journals for the day.  They both wanted to go ahead and do more in the journals but I managed to persuade them to wait.  Since we had a little extra time, I also read "The Dog and His Reflection" and we made the dog masks, which they used later as they each pretended to be puppies.

Friday morning we only had a few minutes so we read "The Crow and the Pitcher" and talked about the /p/ sound.  We found the /p/ card in one of our alphabet sets and I held it up every time I said a word that started with that letter.  When I was a speech therapist, we would do a hand motion that corresponded to a particular sound that we were working on to help the child develop more awareness.  For the /p/ sound, put your hand close to your face, close it and then open it quickly like it is popping open (corresponds to the way your lips "pop" open to make the sound).  We had really good success with the method in children with articulation disorders.  For phonemic awareness, I'd display the letter and use the hand signals while reading the story.  It's a variation of the Lindamood-Bell LiPS system, if you're interested in doing more research.

After breakfast today we re-read "The Crow and the Pitcher".  I found a recording of crows online and Miss M flew around the kitchen cawing like one for several minutes before we settled down for the science experiment.  We used the "pebbles" included in our theme materials to show how the water level rises when you add things to the container.  Since it was just me and I wanted to take pictures as well be there to catch Littlest (she's in a climbing/standing on the chair phase), I modified the lesson by using a 2-cup measure with the lines printed on it rather than a glass and a ruler.  Both girls enjoyed putting the pebbles in the cup and we will be able to refer back to it when they take their bath tonight.  After the experiment they made these super cute crow musical shakers that I am sure will get a lot of use (although the wings may not last very long).

Also this morning we read "The Boys and The Frogs".  Miss M and Littlest had fun pretending to be frogs, finding green objects around our living room.  We also used our "Five Little Speckled Frog" book that I got on clearance at a local bookstore several years ago to sing and practice counting and number recognition.  The game board that came in our day bag looked like lots of fun but Miss M wasn't able to make the frogs hop like they were supposed to so instead of getting frustrated, she got creative.  She turned it into a color matching game where she got to be the teacher and tell me what to do  ("Take a card, Mama.  Oh, you got blue!  Put it here!").  I loved letting her take the lead.

An InLinkz Link-up

Professionalism at Home

This month, we as Mother Goose Time bloggers, have been asked to think about professionalism in regards to how it applies to us personally.  Being a homeschool mom, I have a slightly different take on it than a childcare provider or preschool teacher using this curriculum.  For me, I bring professionalism into our home preschool in two ways:  being prepared and understanding the learning process at different age levels.

Being prepared is huge and it can be difficult at times.  It is tempting to just fly by the seat of my pants during lessons, opening the lesson book up to a page and just picking something.  However, I find when I take the time to read through the activities and gather my materials ahead of time, everything goes so much more smoothly.  Miss M is 2.5 and Littlest just turned 1; neither has a very long attention span at this point so if I want to keep their attention, I have to be prepared.  If I look down to read about the activity or go digging through the closet for the materials, they are off on their own adventures and bringing them back to school can be a fight.  That is not what I want for them or myself; I want them to want to engage in the activities so I need to have my stuff together ahead of time.

I find that reading through the lesson book the night before generally works pretty well, although ideally I'd like to be about a week ahead so I can purchase any materials I don't already have at home (this isn't very common since most of the materials are either provided or quite common).  During breakfast I gather all the materials we will need for my chosen activities and prep our circle time area.  After the girls are done with breakfast, they play while I clean up the kitchen (I can't concentrate with dirty trays and dishes sitting on the counter) and I make sure I give them several warnings that we will be having school when I'm done.  If they are in the middle of an imaginary scene when I finish, I let them play through it and then find that they willingly come into the living room for school.

Understanding child development and the learning process helps me know how much to present, what to expect of them and when I should back off and just let them play.  A lot of this information I learned in my undergraduate and graduate studies in speech language pathology and while working in the schools.  My husband and I took a child development/parenting class when I was expecting Miss and I try to read up on current studies.  A lot of it comes from Baby Center and similar sites right now because that's all the time I have but keeping current and following best practices reduces frustration on everyone's part.  I am working my way through "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise and it has been quite helpful.  I'm not going to expect either girl to sit for ten minutes in a chair and practice copying the alphabet.  I can expect them to practice scribbling for a few minutes (maybe longer if I have lots of different supplies to choose from) and maybe work on circles and lines briefly, the precursors to writing.

Above all, I try to stay sensitive to their moods and their needs as really little children.  I know they will learn to read one day but they will never get to be little children again.  The main goal is to build a strong relationship with them, let them play and explore and present information that they may or may not absorb in that moment but will some day.

Here are some pictures from school this past Tuesday.  I let Miss M dictate the length of each activity based on her interest in it and it went really, really well.  Much better than when I decide we are ready to move to another activity.

This "washing" activity was very popular with both girls.  I took our dry erase crayons (if you want to get some, back to school sales are the best time to do that and they are starting now/soon) and wrote numbers on a page protector, then named a number and Miss M got to "wash" it off.  Littlest showed interest in it so I did the same for her but actually wrote her name on a piece of laminated paper.  She had a more difficult time cleaning it off (she wasn't push hard enough) and soon decided shredded the tissue was more fun so Miss M took over and named all the letters as she wiped them off.  I think this could be a fun and easy road trip activity.

Next we did a little sorting activity.  They were supposed to use the ladle to fish out a shape and then we'd talk about what it was.  That lasted two turns before they dumped everything on the carpet so instead of pushing the "rules" of the game, we adapted.  I picked a shape and then Miss M found all the shapes that were the same and the three of us put them in my slipper (it was handy and Littlest loves to put items into things).  Then we counted how many we had and started with a new shape.  They were both very engaged in the activity for over five minutes, until we finished sorting them all.

We also read the "I Wash" book that came with our materials.  I got through it one time before it was taken away so Miss M could read it "all herself", which was fine with me.

Lastly, we did a little mixing experiment with milk, food coloring and dish soap.  Unfortunately all of my food coloring was dried up except blue (a lesson in not being as prepared as I should have been) but Miss M didn't seem to mind.  She got too excited both times and would just stick the q-tip with dish soap right in the blue instead of in the middle the bowl like you were "supposed to" but we still had a fun time watching the dye scatter through the milk.  She loved mixing it thoroughly but I had to put a stop to it when it became a hand printing session on the table and floor.

So that's what being a "professional" homeschool mom looks like to me.

Exploring Air and Water

We are getting caught up on our school units.  There are so many fun activities, it's hard not to do them all but I had to do some picking and choosing this week since we also had to shopping,  cleaning and other necessary things around the house.

On Saturday Miss M and Littlest needed something to do so I slightly adapted another art project from our lesson book from the tree week.  I taped off a tree shape onto a piece of paper and let Miss M paint the whole paper, then peeled it off when it was dry.  It's somewhat noticeable.  Littlest was given crayons but really wanted to paint like her sister so she managed to dip the crayon in the paint and use it to stamp her paper.  She was actually pretty careful with it, not trying to decorate the wall, table or herself, so I stood nearby while she had fun.  Miss M thought that was pretty neat and started doing it, too.  I am working on controlling that part of me that wants to make sure everything happens the way it "should" and let things happens the way they will (within reason, of course).

On Monday we had a great time with our friends learning about air and the fun things it can do.  This month's theme poster is a big hit with all the kids, they love looking for new things during circle time.  We looked for things that float, fly and make colors in the air.  We talked about hot air balloons (one of friends got to go up in one in June during our town's annual festival) and made the adorable craft.  During snack I found a Mr. Wizard clip on YouTube that teaches about hot air balloons so we watched that.  The kids were mesmerized.

The feathers were fun, the kids waved them in the air to feel the way the air moved and then we had feather races, blowing them across the floor.  They were a little giddy and took off, pretending to be birds or I would have contrasted how the feathers moved with trying to blow on something heavier.  

Our last "structured" activity was coloring rainbows.  I showed them the daily poster with the rainbow picture and we talked about the recent rainbow that had appeared in our neighborhood during the last rainstorm.  The kids could name the colors and kind of tried to follow the pattern for their coloring pages but Miss M especially liked using whatever colors suited her fancy.

This morning found us friendless (due to other plans, not because they no longer like us) so we did some school with just the three of us.  I had planned a lot of different activities from the water week but the Puddle Jumping activity proved to be quite fun and then we modified it a bit so that was the only one we got to today.  Miss M liked seeing how far she could jump and then counting her steps to see if she could jump as far as Mommy.  When it got too hot to hop outside, we brought the puddle pieces inside and I made a trail of letters from the start to the finish.  Miss M hopped from one letter to another until she reached the end, naming them as she went.  Another modification could be to make more puddle pieces, number them on one side and put letters on the back.  Kiddos have to hop from puddle to puddle in order and then identify the letter on the back before hopping to the next one.  I think we might try this tomorrow, since we are starting potty training and will be housebound for several days with hours and hours of time to fill close to the powder room.  I really want to do the Eyedropper Art project (dripping watery paint down an umbrella cut out) and hope that Miss M will be amenable to it tomorrow (she just wanted to hop today).  I'll post the finished product if I can get her to do it.

Into The Woods

We are back from our first camping trip with the girls and I am thankful to say it was much more successful than anticipated.  We were terrified that no one was going to sleep the whole time, and while it was harder to get them to bed at a normal bedtime, both girls slept fairly well.  I definitely recommend a big tent that allows for room to walk around and stand up fully, especially in the middle of the night.  This may be an experience we repeat in the future.

Our Mother Goose Time music came in handy on the twelve hour drive, although I have had the words to the ABC Soup song stuck on repeat in my head for nearly a week now.

We camped with my family, including my five year old nephew, who asked if we could have preschool.  I had brought up a few activities from the first week of July's "Nature Detectives" theme for that exact purpose and it turned out to be a great idea.  We read the book that came with the theme this month, "Get Close to Nature!".  Miss M was passively interested and wandered around collecting rocks while I read but my nature-loving nephew was enthralled and loved learning lots of new facts as well as connecting information he already knew about the creature or plant on each page.

Miss M enjoyed wandering around with the magnifying glass, looking at leaves, sticks and rocks.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I hope it made it back into my bag...

We  collected sticks to make huts for the numerous chipmunks in the campground and then made pinecone feeders for them with peanut butter and seeds.  They were originally supposed to be for birds but the closest branches were still 30 feet off the ground so we tied them to some shrubs.  They provided hours of entertainment for the kids and adults alike.  There were at least two regulars who were dubbed Fatty and Dasha.  We talked about how they lived in trees, what others foods they liked to eat, how they were different from squirrels and why they would run away if you got too close (although they would let you get pretty darn close if you were quiet and slow).  It was a great way to include a little science in our vacation.

An InLinkz Link-up

Under the Ground

We had a lot of fun with school on Wednesday, even though I was sick.  Daddy was working from home and joined Miss M for class.  We learned about roots and worms and played several fun learning games.

Madeleine has decided that using binoculars makes everything more scientific so I gave her a pair of free ones we got from listening to some sales pitch a few years ago.  They're light and fun for her to use, which she does any time we have to look at or for something in school.  She calls them her "noclars" and if we try to start class without them she gasps, holds up her hand and says "Wait, wait, need my noclars!" and goes running with that cute little 2-year old wiggle to fetch them.


We actually did the Soak It Up activity on Tuesday and that was really neat!  We looked at the roots of a weed I pulled up, sang the song of the day about how roots bring food to plants (she enjoyed doing the actions to that) and did this little experiment with two cups of colored water.  I didn't have the red food coloring called for so we used blue instead (which Miss M insisted on liberally applying to the water by herself) and ended up with this lovely green by the end of the day.



I used the worm cards to make a game to teach color words.  I wrote the word on a piece of index card (using the appropriate color marker so right now she's mostly matching color to color but at least she's seeing the way the word is spelled) and spread the worms on the rug.  Daddy wanted to participate so he held up a word and told her the sound it started with and she searched for the matching worm.  She seemed to have a lot of fun with this game so we will be doing it again.


I modified the Digging for Y game a little.  We started by playing "What's Missing?".  I showed her 3-6 objects, she covered her eyes and I removed one of the objects.  She was able to tell me which one was missing every time.  To make it a little more difficult, I starting hiding the object in a blanket and she had to guess what it was by feeling it.  This was a great way to practice descriptive words like hard, soft, squishy and bumpy.  She loved the game.  We took turns being the hider and the guesser. It went on for a much longer time than I had allotted to it but since we are at home and not on a strict schedule, I have the room to be flexible.  I really love that I can let her spend as much time on a learning experience as she wants without feeling pressured to get to the next task.

The worm painting was lots of fun.  Since she was the only kiddo today, she used two of the worms provided in the kit.  She insisted that her worm needed eyes, a mouth and a nose (that's the blue dot between it's eyes).  It's been raining so much lately, now that I'm feeling a bit better, I think we will go on a worm hunt later so she can see them in person.





For the matching game, we went through the pictures and talked about the animals and plants that live under the ground, then I hid one set around the room and she used her trusty binoculars to find them and match them to the second set.  I'm not sure how she would do playing a true memory game with them at her age but for now, this was fun and she learned the names of some new critters.  Later in the evening we read one of her favorite books about a rabbit who takes a nap in his burrow and she could really see how his house was under the ground.  I love being able to link new concepts with familiar experiences!

I cannot say enough how much I love these materials.  They are so great for teaching a variety of concepts as well as giving us fun activities to do throughout our day.