Houses and Apartments

We've started a new month with Mother Goose Time, and that means a new theme.  This month's theme is the alphabet house.  The girls loved last months growing garden theme so much that a lot of our lessons wound up getting extended by a day or two, so we weren't quite ready to move on.  I'm hoping to finish some of the lessons we didn't get to when we have extra time this month. We started off with circle time.  This month there is a new feature, a house with a different letter on every piece.  Each day the girls will get to add 1-2 letters, building the entire house by the end of the month.  On the first day of every new theme the girls get a name tag.  This was the first time Addie was able to correctly write our last name without any help. She was so happy to show me that she remember how to spell it correctly.

We also always get a monthly theme poster with look and find glasses.  The girls both always love this.  They find the items on the front of the magnifying glasses and then on the back there are questions/activities.

pretending to be a sleeping owl

The girls also got to complete an art project.  They painted a house cutout.  After the houses were dry they were able to add our house number and also any other details they wanted.  Addie already knows our address, but this was a great way to reinforce and review it.  They both had a lot of fun making the houses;  I think they liked using different brushes than what we usually use.

We also read the 3 Little Pigs and We Were Tired Of Living In a House. 

Day 2's topic was apartments.  The girls each got an elevator with different floors separated by color.  They were given number cards in different colors and then found the corresponding letter "living" on the color and floor number they picked.  There was a provided alphabet sheet to write down the letters as they were found.  Addie doesn't like writing, but had so much fun with this she asked if we could save the elevator and do it again.  We'll have to use blank paper to write the letters on next time.  I love that she was practicing writing her letters, but didn't even mind since it was like a game. Elli just practiced matching the colors up on her apartment building.

 Every month Mother Goose Time provides a new book.  This months book was Goldilocks.  I loved that it was a different spin on a classic story.  Goldilocks's room is so messy she can't find her little bear.  She winds up having a dream where she cleans up everything in a bear families' house and when she wakes up she finds her bear.  She also learns that it is important to keep her room clean.

Next we talked about living in a city versus the country.  In the city people frequently live in apartments because they can hold more people.  There isn't enough room for everyone to have their own house.  To demonstrate this the girls put 2 houses on 1 piece of paper (country) and then 20 on another (city). 

The girls also added the rabbits, from last months manipulative pack, to the apartments.  They spent almost an hour reconfiguring the building with the rabbits and trying to figure out the best way to hold them all.

The tallest apartment is 89 stories tall.  The girls tried to stack blocks as high as possible.  This proved to be very difficult with a 2 year old who likes to knock things down.

Destroyed by a 2 year old

 Addie decided it would be more fun to live in an apartment than a house because there would be all kinds of people she could be friends with.  Addie worked on her math and reading workbooks while Elli put the rabbits into an egg carton apartment.

Tray play activity from Little Goose book.

 Every month there is a list of corresponding books to use each day.  Unfortunately our library rarely has any of the books mentioned, so we read Eddie's Kingdom instead.

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