What's in the Box-May

Next months Mother Goose Time theme is Bugs and Crawly Things.  

The teachers tool bag comes with a detailed teacher guide, planning journal, manipulatives, shape stamp, CD, theme web, and continuum of learning.

The circle time bag contains the monthly theme poster, letter cards, cookie cutters, calendar, color wand, circle time songs, shape clouds, character gosling, and number fish.  

Week one is all about backyard bugs:  ladybugs, spiders, grasshoppers, ants, and bees.  We will be looking at our own backyard and talking about bugs we can find there. 

Week two is about bug homes:  plants, dirt, hills, webs, and hives.  The discussion question for the week is where do bugs build their homes?

Week three is about camouflage bugs:  butterflies, moths, leaf insects, praying mantises, and walking sticks.  All week we will be discussing how camouflage protects bugs.

Week four is about crawly things:  caterpillars, slugs, beetles, inchworms, and centipedes.  We will be talking about the different crawly things that live around our house.  

The book of the month is There are Bugs.

Also included in the monthly box is  mother's day celebration kit.  It contains a lesson plan, craft items, circle time ideas, game, and snack ideas.

Easter

 Every monthly box from Mother Goose Time includes a celebration pack.  This months pack was for Easter.

For circle time Elli reenacted 5 little bunnies with the finger puppets and we sang an Easter song.

Elli had to see how fast she could run around our table while balancing an egg on a spoon.  

We also played charades.  Here Elli is pretending to be an egg.

Elli made a music shaker out of an egg, rice, and some spoons.  She still has the one she made last year, so now she has two.

And we finished up playing pin the tail on the rabbit, this was Elli's favorite part of the day and she played this quite a few times.

In the Nest

April's theme for Mother Goose Time is birds and eggs.  Week one was in the nest and we learned about nests, eggs, hatchlings, bird food and learning to fly.  

Elli had a fun week learning about birds.  She made an egg name tag, worked in her my little journal, made letters out of feathers, read the book of the month, and also read some related books on this months theme.

Elli worked on adding and subtracting sticks from a nest, identifying letter and number eggs, and feeding birds corresponding number of shape link worms.

Elli learned about the life cycle of a chicken and worked on recreating it.

She also did some color sorting using the shape links from this months box.

Elli's favorite part of everyday is the craft.  This week she made a nest with birds, used a pom pom to paint an egg, made her own chick and also made a cat puppet (it was supposed to be a dove but she insisted on making a cat).

The girls also made paper mache eggs to go with this months themes.  They've been working on adding color to them. 

Pond Animals

We finished up March's at the pond theme with Mother Goose Time by learning about snails, crayfish, lizards, alligators, and fish.  

Elli's favorite thing we did all week, and quite possibly all month, was to make a touch pond.  She filled a plastic bag with hair gel, glitter, sequins, rocks and shells.  She loves to draw in the gel and squish the gel around.  

Other crafts that were made this week included snail tracks made with sand, crayfish clappers, a lizard picture using a stencil, and painted alligator skin using bubble wrap.  

We played a game that worked on making og words.  Elli can't read but was able to mach the letters and colors in order to move her frog piece.

The girls used the duck counters from this months box to help solve easy and also more complex math problems.

Every monthly box comes with a new shape stamp.  The girls used these while designing their post cards.

Elli used the story telling set to make up a story about pond animals having a birthday party and needing cake.

We also talked about what danger means and who to ask for help when you're in danger.  We played a card game to enforce the idea a bit more;  if you picked the alligator you had to yell for help and run away.  Next week we start a new theme, birds and eggs.