Birds

We spent the week learning about pets with Mother Goose Time's September theme of family and pets.  One of those days was spent learning about birds.  

Ronan played feed the bird which is a great game to help with his fine motor skills.  You play the game by rolling the pocket cube and then using tweezers to pick up the same number of seeds and feed them to the corresponding numbered bird.  We had to simplify this since Ronan is just starting to count (he can count from 1-4 right now) and doesn't recognize numbers yet.  He likes to roll the cube, but then just picked however many seeds he wanted and gave them to whatever bird he felt like while I counted for him.  

I read the I can read book to Ronan.  A new one comes in every monthly box and they are great for emerging readers since basic sight words are repeated throughout them.  Ronan is just starting to learn English so we didn't use the sight word pointers, but instead talked about the pictures in the book.  

Elli wanted to do the invitation to create with her littler brother.  They looked at a picture of birds for inspiration and were given bird cutouts, feathers, and markers to make their picture.  Ronan holds things backwards so a lot of the time was spent turning the marker around in his hand and showing him how to hold it.  This is something he is also working on in physical therapy so this is  great way to get extra practice.  

We finished up with a book.  

Happiness

This week with Mother Goose Time we're learning about feelings and emotions.  We started with happiness.  

Every monthly box comes with a forest friend book that features a trait, this months was kindness.  I read the book to Ronan and then he took it and looked at the pictures himself.  I don't think he understands a lot of the stories yet, but he loves to listen to people read and to look at books.  

We practiced making happy and sad faces and rolling the pocket cube to match the face it landed on to the same colored chart.  

The color of the month is red.  Ronan did not like the color wand and didn't want to use it, but Elli loved it and wants one in every color.  We did show him other red things in the house and showed they were the same as the wand.

Elli loves to help out with "school."  She played the happy heart game with Ronan and showed him how to roll the pocket cube and hand out heart cards.  

Elli really likes the I spy letter sheets.  She found everything on the paper that started with F and pointed them out to Ronan.  He even said a new word, lion, while we were pointing out the different pictures.  *The letter sheet for the day was actually supposed to be H for happy but I wound up switching them around accidentally.  

Family Trees

I'm excited to have the opportunity to use Mother Goose Time's preschool curriculum at home with our newly adopted son from China.  I'm hoping that this will help him learn more English and also increase his motor skills.  He has cerebral palsy so is a bit delayed in gross and fine motor skills, plus having been in a orphanage he just hasn't had a lot of exposure to things like crayons, blocks, etc.  Both his older sisters loved Mother Goose Time when they were younger.  Each monthly box comes with 20 daily topics centered around one monthly theme.  We are starting off by learning about our families and day one was family trees.  

Normally we would start with the calendar and weather, but I'm holding off on that part for a little bit until Ronan understands a bit more.  

We started off by reciting who shook the apple tree and worked on counting 5 red felt apples.  

I wrote Ronan's name in yellow highlighter for him to trace with a pencil.  He scribbled on the card, but I know in time he will eventually learn how to trace and then graduate to writing his name independently.  

I showed Ronan a photo of an apple tree, and gave him paper, markers, glue, scissors and stickers to design his own apple tree.  He really enjoyed doing this and worked on his tree for a very long time.  

Elli decided she also wanted to make a family tree.  She designed her own apple tree and wrote the names of our family members on the apple stickers.  

Ronan loves play dough so he really enjoyed counting people and putting them in play dough.  We listened to the monthly themed CD while working.  Tomorrow we're going to learn about siblings.