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.  

Mad, Surprised, and Scared

We had fun finishing up our week about feelings with Mother Goose Time.

For math practice Elli worked on patterning and also counting to 10.

We played a game where Elli would roll a feelings cube and a body part cube and act out what it landed on.  

The girls LOVED playing find the spider.  I hid the included spider under a cup and the girls had to climb into a yarn web and guess where it was.  If they were wrong I would call out a color and they would have to run around the house and find something that matched before they could go again.

For literacy work Elli used the story telling set to retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Lonely Wolf.  She also used the included letter cookie cutters to make M, A, and T.  If I called out the letter M for mad she would crush the letters up in her hand.  The girls also worked on completing more of their my little journals.

Elli made her own birthday crown, which she wore around for most of the day.  When Addie got home from school and saw it she had to make her own.

We read My Many Colored Days.  Elli made her own many colored person and asked me to help her replicate the inspiration picture.  I told her how to mix the colors to make the ones she saw on the color wheel.  She loved being able to make her own piece of art and also being able to duplicate another piece.  

We talked about different things people are scared of,  like the dark.  The girls made puppets and then we took them into a dark room and used a flashlight to make shadows and tell stories.  They had a lot of fun with this.

They also had fun making their own "scary" monsters out of play dough.  Next week we will learn all about pets.  Since both the girls love animals I know it will be a fun week for them.

Learning About Emotions

We just finished up our friends and feelings unit with Mother Goose Time.  In week two the girls  learned all about identifying emotions and feelings.  This was a great way for them to recognize how others feel by looking at facial expressions and listening to tone of voice.  We spent the week learning about happy, sad, mad, surprised and scared.  There are so many great children's books on emotions and feelings, and we used those to help reinforce the lessons.  We also watched Inside Out, which focused on joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust and how you can feel multiple emotions at once.

By learning about emotions the girls are better able to understand how they are feeling, and also how to use different coping mechanisms when they get upset.  Sometimes kids, especially toddlers, have a hard time identifying how they are feeling.  Elli gets upset multiple times a day, seemingly for no reason.  She is getting better at calming herself down and saying what is wrong, then we work on ways to make her feel better. 

And that leaves more time to play and have fun.

Mad Made Fun

 This week with Mother Goose Time the girl are learning about identifying feelings.  Today's feeling was mad.  

making a surprised face

We used the monthly theme poster and talked about what emotions the different faces were showing.  The girls used the look and find glasses to find the faces and then copy them.

We played sight word lap, which the girls loved.  I called out a word for Addie or color for Elli and they had to find it and slap it with the fly swatter.  We pretended the cards were mosquitoes, which make us mad when they bite.

The girls each got a copy of this months I Can Read book.  Addie read it to Elli; she was able to figure out all the words except friends.  

Addie used the sight word arrows to find and point to the matching words from her book.  I like that these little books have words simple enough for Addie to figure out.  They're great for building confidence in beginning readers.

 The girls completed the mad page in their my feelings booklet.  Elli said her picture was of a shovel.  She gets mad when our puppy takes her sand shovel.

The girls each got a dish of cornstarch and conditioner.  They felt both and guessed what would happen if they were mixed together.  Then for the fun part, they added food coloring and mixed them.  It turned into a dough, good for squeezing when you're mad.  The girls loved this and played with it for over an hour and a half.  I was able to get a lot done, but didn't finish the entire lesson.  The following morning they had the dough out again and were using it with the cookie cutters. 

Using Little Goose

 Elli loves Mother Goose Time, a little too much in fact.  There have been a few nights where she has gone to bed sobbing and saying "school stuff" after I've left the room.  I always tell her we'll do it again in the morning.  As soon as she wakes up she is saying "school stuff."  I have to explain we'll do it after we get dressed and eat, which usually results in tears.  Mother Goose Time has created a monster, but in a good way.  I love that she is so excited about learning and that to her school stuff is the highlight of the day (not counting when she gets to eat a dessert and watch Dora).  I never would have thought to do preschool activities with a toddler, but since I was using it with Addie it only made sense to include Elli.  When we started Mother Goose Time months ago I wrongly assumed Elli would only briefly be interested and that the activities wouldn't really hold her attention (she wasn't even 2 at the time).  Boy was I wrong, she loves it just as much as her big sister.  Addie wasn't home today and instead of waiting for her to get back, I decided to do most of the lesson with just Elli.  Usually most of the activities we do are catered more to Addie's ability and Elli just copies her.  Since Addie wasn't here I used the Little Goose lesson plan book instead.

I started by putting the gems for the craft in a dish of water.  Elli loved fishing them out, while counting.  A great fine motor activity.  Once she had them all out I gave her the rest of the craft pieces.

She made a handheld mirror and decorated it with the gems that she scooped out earlier.  

Then she practiced making different faces in the mirror.  

She also played an easier version of the feeling shapes game.  She picked the different cards from a bag, I told her what shape it was, and then she made the corresponding face.

After, she used the tanogram manipulatives to match the shapes.

 

Elli worked on the blue page of her my little journal.  She spent most of the time trying to peel a crayon, since for some reason she won't use any that have paper on them.  A recent development, which will hopefully pass quickly. 

She also completed the sad page for the my feelings booklet.  I gave her markers for this so crayon peeling was avoided.  After she finished that she danced to the friends and feelings DVD. There was a red light green light type game to play, but I think she'll have more fun with that once Addie is home.