1 Day at Home: The Sun and the Moon

I was finally able to finish our Mother Goose circle time display board. We start with this every day. The kids get to put up the calendar piece and pick out the weather of the day while we listed to the provided circle time cd. The calendar is a great way to reinforce basic math skills like counting and patterning. Addie can already count past 100, but Elli only says a few numbers so far. Counting up to the current date every day is great practice for her. The pieces also have different pictures on them, so once the first week is done we'll be able to talk about the emerging pattern.

Day 2's topic was the sun. We started by singing "Planets Spin" to the tune of "London Bridge": The planets spin around the sun, around the sun, around the sun. The planets spin around the sun in our solar system. We took turns with one of us being the sun in the middle while the other 2 of us were planets spinning around it. Addie really liked this, Elli mostly just ran around in circles. We talked about how the sun spins just like the earth. While Addie worked on her math and reading workbooks Elli practiced scooping cotton balls onto the provided sun picture, pretending they were clouds. This idea was from the little goose book. I counted the clouds as she placed them on the sun to further reinforce numbers. She loved doing this and I'm sure we'll bring this out again.

Another activity from the little goose book was using clothespins with matching pictures or colors on a plate and having your child match them. She liked the clothespins, but would pull them all off the plate and put them in a pile. She would not clip them to the plate. Maybe we'll try again in a few days. I love the ideas in the little goose book. Elli gets to feel included in the lessons with the modified ideas that are tailored to the abilities of younger children. They really do a good job holding her interest.

Each girl also got a my little journal. We worked on the s page today. We started by talking about what color the sun is and how it has orange sunspots. After this we painted pictures of the sun using plastic forks to make the rays.

After the book work and craft we talked about sizes, yet another math aspect incorporated into the daily lessons. The girls each had to collect 3 items. I asked Addie to help Elli find 3 items in addition to her 3 and asked what the total would be. She answered 6 and then we checked it once the items were collected. After that we sorted by sizes, blue dwarf, yellow, or red giant. Then we talked about how the sun is a yellow star. I love how everything ties together so nicely. It's a great way to review what we've already learned. We talked about sun safety and then played flashlight tag. The flashlight was the sun and if you were tagged by the light you had to freeze and pretend to put on sunscreen before resuming. The girls both loved this, although Elli didn't really get the concept. We continued playing with the flashlight. Addie helped Elli jump over the light and then follow the beam around on the floor. Later in the evening Addie asked if we could play the flashlight game again. It was a huge hit.

Day 3 we learned about the moon. We talked about what is on the moon and then made moon rocks. This was very messy but the kids loved them when they were done. After the rocks were done baking I hid them around the living room and the girls pretended to be scientists finding them. Addie added hers to her science set, which is a box in her room filled with acorns, rocks, pressed flowers and even bones she found dissecting an owl pellet. Elli loves putting things in bags and containers so she spent a lot of the evening putting different things in the bag and moving the rocks around.

decorating the moon bags

We made a moon snack from a rice cake. We were supposed to add cream cheese and bananas as craters, but both girls wound up wanting them plain. We also made some of the moon phases from oreos and briefly talked about fractions. There are so many ways to incorporate math into daily learning, and with Mother Goose Time the girls have fun while learning.

A really nice wooden moon with stacking pieces came with the curriculum this month. Addie and I played the balancing moon game, taking turns stacking the pieces without tipping the moon. Elli practiced stacking the little pieces.

We also used the round pieces to roll down different sized ramps that we made out of books and wood. The goal was to get them to land on the counting card. This was too hard for Elli, but the little goose book suggested that she practice stacking the pieces on the counting card while we counted them. Both girls love this manipulative and seeing as we're keeping it in our living room cupboard, I'm sure they'll both be playing with it a lot in the coming month.