Desert Hares and Snakes

Mother Goose Time is a theme based, complete preschool curriculum.  This month we've been learning about the desert.  The lesson plans cover literacy, math, science, social and emotional skills, music and art.  

The kids played a game to work on number recognition.  They took turns picking a coyote card and then had to find the same numbered rabbit.  They took the rabbit and had him hop away into the desert (sand table).  

They worked on building _un words by adding a bunny tail with either and s, b, f, or r.  The older ones were able to sound out the words themselves and after a few turns the younger kids were starting to get it as well.  This is a great introduction to beginning phonics sounds.

The kids finished up the day by making their own rabbit puppets out of paper bags.

The kids slithered around the room while listening to the monthly CD.  When they would pass a friend they would high five them and count how many high fives they got before the music stopped.  We played this quite a few times since they had so much fun with it.

They did some patterning work with rattlesnake and scorpion pictures.

The kids made rattlesnake shakers.  Some of them hid around the room, and when the other kids would walk by they would shake their rattler to let them know they were nearby.  They also played this a bunch of times since any game with hiding is always lots of fun.

Every month comes with a new easy reader that focuses on certain sight words.  The kids get to take these simple books home to continue working on their literacy skills.

The math cards that come every month are a great way to introduce the younger kids to counting and the older kids to more complex math skills like addition, subtraction, and even the idea of multiplication.

The kids designed post card pictures to take home.

Cowboy Boots and Hats

This months Mother Goose Time theme is discover the desert.  We started off our first week at the rodeo.  Day 1 was spent learning about cowboy boots, and day 2 was cowboy hats.

 The girls wrote their names on the monthly name-tags and then practiced stomping out the syllables on different mediums, such as bubble wrap, the floor, paper, etc.  They also looked at the shape of the month, a square, and practiced working together to make squares with their feet.

The girls, and one of our dogs, had fun square dancing on crunchy paper.  

The girls had fun painting their own cowboy boots with a pokey ball.  

The girls thought it was great fun to try on different pairs of boots.  Then they each picked a boot and practiced tossing cubes, one of this months manipulatives, into the boots.  They each got 10 cubes and worked on counting how many they made in the boot.  Addie worked on her subtraction skills by calculating how many shots she missed.

The color of the month is brown.  The girls went around the house using the circle time paintbrush to paint objects that were brown.  They also gathered brown objects to fill up a cowboy hat.

They always love using the look and find glasses with the monthly theme posters.  On the back of each magnifying glass are different tasks, such as stand like a cactus.

The girls played a matching game, where they paired up cowboy hats with the person wearing the same colored boots.  

The girls worked on measuring by taking the connecting cubes and finding things longer and shorter than what they built.  They also measured their heads with the cubes, and worked on making them the exact same length.

We continued with measuring, but switched to using a piece of twine.  

After they were all done measuring objects, they used the twine to paint their own cowboy hat headbands.  Elli is really excited to learn about lassos later this week, and Addie is looking forward to learning about her favorite animal, horses.  So far they are loving this new monthly theme.