Mojave Desert

This week we moved on to learning about the Mojave desert with Mother Goose Time.  

The kids painted rocks gold, and then used them in the water table to practice panning for gold.  

The kids used corn starch noodles to make cacti and added toothpicks to make them prickly.  

The kids looked at a picture of olive trees for inspiration, and used paper, paint and wooden spools to make their own creations.  

The kids made their own tortoise racing game.  They were able to take turns playing it with friends.

The character trait for this month is honesty.  After we read the monthly forest friend book the kids made their own stories with the owl.

We spent time learning about the differences between turtles and tortoises.  After we learned the differences the kids worked together to separate out the characteristics and decide which animal they were describing.  

The kids went on a hunt for puzzle pieces and the worked together to build the desert puzzle.  Each kids got to put in 2 pieces until the whole puzzle was built.  This is a good way to teach them about cooperating and working together.

Every monthly box comes with would you rather scenarios, such as would you rather sit on a camel or a cactus.  The kids take turns voting on what they would prefer and then we tally them up.

The kids worked on their patience and taking turns when we played a desert matching game.  This also helps test their memory.

We used this months manipulatives to do a little patterning.

 Z is one of the letters of the month, so the kids colored their letter Z books.  Each month focuses on 3 new letters.

In The Desert

We spent last week learning about the rodeo, and this week we learned about the desert.  Mother Goose Time provides lots of fun games and activities that incorporate language, literacy, math, science, art, motor skills, etc. through thematic units.

All month long we use the my little journals to work on the letter, number, shape and color of the month.  

Each monthly box from Mother Goose Time comes with loose letter parts and letter card templates.  This months letters are N, W and Z.  The kids use the pieces to build the letters, it's a hands on approach to letter recognition.

Anybody who is traveling in the desert will need a canteen.  The kids made canteens out of paper plates, souffle cups and string.  

They played race to the oasis to practice counting, taking turns and following rules.  

We learned about a tribe in Yemen that has contests to leap over camels.  We used pillows as camels and the kids took turns seeing how many they could jump over.  We kept adding to the pile until no one could make it over.  

Camels have 1 or 2 humps, but the kids make playdough humps and added them to the camel cutouts and then we counted how many there were,  

I read Sally the Camel to the kids while they took turns picking numbers to add to the lines.  

We played desert animal memory which is another game good for taking turns.  

The kids created their own silly desert animals by adding a back to a camel and a head to a lizard.  

We played don't spin the scorpion.  The kids took turns spinning and adding colored cubes to a pile.  If you spun the scorpion all the cube colors had to be tallied up to see which one had the most, and then the game started back over.  

We spent a day learning about Egypt and the pyramids.  The kids practiced drawing hieroglyphics in their journals.  

They sponge painted bricks onto pyramid shapes and added sand.  

They also used this months manipulates to build pyramids using the shape design mats. 

Their favorite activity of the day, and probably the week, was when they worked together to create a long tunnel into the pyramids and took turns crawling all the way through it.  

The kids used scissors to cut up brown paper and glue on as tree trunks.  They used spools dipped in paint to make olives.  They got to look at pictures of desert plants and an olive tree for inspiration, and were free to create whatever they wanted with the provided materials.  This type of open ended art helps promote creativity and decision making.  

At the Rodeo

We started a new theme with Mother Goose Time, desert discovery.  Week one was spent learning about things at the rodeo, like boots, hats, lassos, etc.

Every monthly box comes with a new themed cd.  We use this as background music, or to get up and dance to.

The kids used look and find glasses to find items on the monthly theme poster.  This shows them the kind of topics we will be covering for the month.

We played horse shoes.  The kids picked either a big N or little n and threw their horse shoe to the same lettered star.

The kids made different shaped lassos out of twine.

Then they made their own lassos out of paper plates and practiced catching toys.  They had lots of fun using their lassos.

The kids used pokey balls to paint cowboy boots.

They took turns throwing counting cubes (this months manipulative) into a boot.  Then they guessed how many cubes were in it and we counted to see who was closest.

The kids matched cowboy hats to the person with the same colored boots.

Then they used twine to paint their own cowboy hats that we made into headbands.

This months shape is the star.  We sang a song while moving in a circle and whosoever names were called had to race to grab the star shapes.

Every monthly box comes with new name tags that the kids practice either writing or tracing their names on.  

And we always get letter work by coloring letter books focusing on the letters of the month.  Next week we start learning about the desert.