Pond Insects

This week we continued with Mother Goose Time's at the pond theme by learning about pond insects.  

The girls made dragonflies.  They both love the crafts included every month the most.  Addie is in second grade now, but asks me to save the crafts for when she gets home from school.  Even though the curriculum is geared for preschoolers older kids can also get something from it.  

The girls also made mayfly puppets this week.

They had a lot of fun with the backswimmer invitation to create.  They were given a tray, paper, paint, twist ties and buttons.  

Elli also used provided materials and a water strider photo for inspiration to make her own creature.  

This week for literacy work Elli made her own story using story sequencing cards, helped tell the participation story, searched for words in the I Can Read book, worked on snapping insects while reading the rhyme time poster, and did some work in her my little journal.  A few months ago Elli couldn't find the words in the I Can Read books with the sight word pointers so instead we'd look for letters.  Now she's pointing out letters that she knows to me, and loves using the sight word pointers to find complete words.  Her story telling has also improved a lot.  Before I would make up stories for her, and this month she came up with an elaborate story about pond creatures baking cakes. I love that there are simple ways to customize the curriculum to make it fit your child better.  When Elli was younger we used the little goose add on to make it simpler, and now that she's getting older we'll start using the more math and literacy books soon to challenge her a bit more.

This week we also did the would you rather cards, played strider slider by moving a space every time a food for the water strider was picked, and worked on giving mosquito bites to the letter P.  Next week we finish up by learning about life in the pond:  snail, crayfish, lizard alligator and fish.