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!

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.

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