Deer and Hedgehogs

This months Mother Goose Time theme is winter in the woods.  Week 1 focuses on forest animals.  

We started of with deer.

The girls made deer headbands and then took turns seeing how far they could leap.

Elli made deer tracks and also practiced writing her name in flour.

She also wrote her name on her new monthly name tag.  

When deer are scared they wave their tail.  The color of the month is white, so the girls took turns pretending to be deer and waving the white color wand to signal danger. 

We went outside and looked at deer tracks in the snow, and also saw 2 deer while we were in the woods.  

Day 2 we learned about hedgehogs.  The girls worked on counting the animals on the monthly theme poster.  They put counting bears on all the hedgehogs they could find.

 They used the look and find glasses to search for objects on the poster.  Then they completed the prompts on the back, such as roll like a hedgehog.  

The girls were given a hedgehog photo as inspiration for their invitations to create.  Elli pained a plate with her pokey ball.  Addie turned her pokey ball into a mini hedgehog and also decorated her plate and paper to look like a hedgehog.

Th girls used play-dough and toothpicks to create their own hedgehogs.

The girls made hand prints on their my little journals and turned them into hedgehogs.  They also made fingerprint "bugs" for them to eat.  After they were done we watched a youtube video of the reading of Hedgehugs.  We also watched a few clips of pet hedgehogs, which the girls loved. 

Learning About Life Stages with Nancy Larson Science

Disclosure: I received this product for free in exchange for my complete and honest review.  All opinions are my own.

 Back in June I received the complete Nancy Larson Science 1 curriculum to use with my 6 year old.  You can read my initial post here.   Now that the school year is well underway, we've been able to finish the first of the six topics that will be covered this year.  We spent a month learning all about the stages of human life.  The unit was made up of 12 lessons, each of which was fully scripted.  Each lesson has a list of what you might need to prep before the lesson and what items you will need to gather from the curriculum.  I love that I can just pick up the teacher's manual and read right from the book with very limited prep work.  This makes teaching science easy and stress free. 

Addie learned about life stages of humans, infant through elderly adult.  The lessons involved using personal photos to discuss the different stages, which really helped reinforce what she was learning. 

After each lesson there was a review worksheet in the student materials to check on student comprehension.  

There was also a booklet that had a page designated for each life stage that Addie completed. This gives her a nice reference tool that she wrote and illustrated herself.  Each of the six topics in Nancy Larson Science 1 has its own separate booklet.

 

After Addie learned about all the life stages, she spent two days working on a booklet.  She spent a day looking through magazines and gathering photos of people, and another day making her book using the pictures.  She really enjoyed this because it was a hands on project that she was able to do on her own.    

We also spent three days learning about our habitat.  We drove around town and Addie took pictures of different businesses and plants.  She created a mural, which she hung in her bedroom, showing houses of friends, businesses, animals and plants that are in our community.  Up next we'll be learning about plants, specifically trees.