Chickens

We just started a new month with Mother Goose Time, which means a new theme.  This month is down on the farm, and we started day one with chickens.

Every month starts with a new name tag.  Ronan can't write his name, or even trace it at this point.  I write his name on the name tag and hopefully that will help him with recognizing it later.  He's working on holding crayons and pencils the right way which is what we practice on the name tags.  Elli likes to help Ronan "do school" so she used her white board to write her name and draw a barn with animals.

The kids played a game where they took turns rolling the pocket cube and moving a baby chick around the game board to the coop.  If they rolled the fox before the chick made it home then they had to start over.  The girls really liked playing this game with their little brother and helping him move the piece and roll.

Ronan was given an egg that he could use to paint a picture, but instead wound up finger painting the egg and his paper.  He LOVED the paint and was quite happy getting his hands dirty with it.  

We finished up by reading Blue Chicken.

Farm Animals

October started a new theme with Mother Goose Time, down on the farm.  For the first week we learned about farm animals:  chickens, pigs, sheep, horses and cows (although we didn't get to the last one yet).  We picked up lots of related books from our library to go with this fun theme.

Every day during circle time we introduced the animal of the day with a coloring sheet from the online members resources.  I've been cutting them all out after Elli colors them, and at the end of the month she will use them to make a farm mural.

 Elli has also been using the monthly theme poster every morning during circle time to talk about the animals we'll be learning about.  Every monthly box comes with a new theme poster and look and find glasses.  Both my girls always love finding the different things in the picture.

Elli worked on her writing this week.  She completed her name tag and the cover page of her my little journal.

I love that Mother Goose Time makes learning math fun.  Elli counted out pom pom chicken eggs onto chicken counting cards.  She had so much fun rolling the included cube and walking like a different animal to the corresponding shape.  The girls took turns rolling a dice and putting the same amount of cotton balls into bags.  Once there were no more cotton balls left they had to guess which bag had t he most, and then count to see if they were right.  They also worked on identifying numbers with the monthly number cards.

Every daily lesson has a new tinker and scrap idea in the teacher guide.  This week Elli filled an egg carton with "chicken eggs" and built a house to reenact the story of the 3 little pigs.  She and Addie loved lacing cardboard sheep and they also made different tracks in play dough.

Every day comes with the materials needed to create a new craft.  Some days are invitations to create, where the girls get a picture for inspiration and materials to use however they want.  These days focus on the process of art, and not the final product.  The other days are make and play activities, where the girls follow directions to make a craft they can use a a prop or play with. 

And of course there are always lots of games to play.  This week the girls took turns pretending to be sheep jumping over different obstacles, they ran around using the brown color wand to find matching colors, and also went barn yard bowling.  So far we are loving this monthly theme.