Winter Fun

If you're looking for a complete preschool curriculum with loads of engaging activities then Mother Goose Time is for you.  Each monthly box is based on a central theme and then contains 20 related topics.  This month we've been focusing on sights and sounds.  This has been a great theme for the month with Christmas coming up.  

The kids made bells, which will make great ornaments.  

They decorated and sewed stockings.  Lacing activities are a great way to develop fine motor skills.  

We spent a day learning about owls.  They kids worked together to each put their number piece into the puzzle to see what our topic for the day would be.  

We used this months shape manipulatives to work on shape recognition and matching to the owls of the same shape.  

They also made cute owls by decorating an owl shape and then adding googly eyes to muffin cups.  

Every monthly box from Mother Goose Time comes with a book, puzzle and magnet set.  The class worked together to build the puzzle, and were able to do it individually if they choose to.

We've also done holiday patterning this week.

The letter B was introduced and the kids made their letter B books to take home and add to their collections.

This months color is green.  The kids went on a hunt around the room and when a bell rang they had to grab something green and run back to  their spots.  Since we have been getting ready for Christmas there are plenty of green items throughout the room for them to choose from.  When we come back from Christmas break we will finish up sights and sounds before jumping into January's theme.  

Owls

We finished up week one of winter in the woods with Mother Goose Time by learning about owls.

We talked about food chains and what sort of things owls eat.  The girls played a game of Who Eats Who.  They would each turn over a card, and whoever had the animal that was higher on the food chain won the cards.  We also talked about the difference between carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores.  

For today's invitation to create the girls were given paper, feathers, cupcake liners, markers and glue.  They had a picture of an owl for inspiration.  Elli glued her cupcake liners onto her paper and added some feathers and said it was an owl with a baby.  Addie made a baby owl by gluing the cupcake liners together and adding feathers.  She attached it to a paper with the mother owl she drew.  The girls both love the invitations to create, which are a new feature this year.  Addie always asks if we can save them for when she gets home from school, and has even asked if I can give her random objects with a picture so she can make her own invitations to create.  She has started saving all kinds of little bits and pieces from around the house and glues them into different animal shapes, or objects like airplanes and boats.  

One of the letters of the month is O.  The girls took turns rolling the pocket cube, and if it landed on O they had to run around the oval made of blocks and pretend to be an owl.

The girls completed the o page in their my little journals by tracing their hand and turning into a tree.  Then they drew O eyes in the tree and made them into owls.  Next week we learn about the woodland.

Owls and Winter Birds

Day 8 with Mother Goose Time was owls.  Elli worked on patterning with the provided cards.

She also worked on sorting this months manipulatives by shape on to the corresponding owl shaped cards.  

Elli loved making the owl puppet craft that went with today's lesson.  When Addie got home from school and saw it she asked to make one of her own. 

This week we also spent a day learning about winter birds.  During circle time I introduced the loving bees. Elli then worked on making a nest out of her blankets and pillows.  We put balloon eggs in the nest for her to check on throughout the day.  She loved playing in the nest.

Pretending to play the drum.

We played winter charades.  Elli and I took turns acting out the pictures on the provided cards.  

We talked about how birds use their feathers to stay warm, fly and even as camouflage.  Elli experimented with blowing feathers into the air and also throwing and catching them.  She used the feathers to make her own cardinal picture.

I hid a set of bird cards around Elli's room.  She ran around collecting them all and then worked on matching them with the second set.  She loved hunting for the birds.  

Pretending to be a sad bird.

We talked about what birds need to survive, and how some migrate in the winter.  Elli picked different basic needs cards and then we worked to solve the problem that was presented.  

I found a great book at the library to go with today's lesson.

We finished up the day with dance n' beats.  

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