Desert Night

We finished up learning about deserts with Mother Goose Time.  Our final say was spent learning about desert nights.   

We played desert bingo.  The kids love this game so we played it a few times so the kids could switch cards.

The kids made desert night pictures by drawing a desert scene with crayons and then painting over the whole picture with black paint. 

The kids loved searching in the (somewhat) dark for pictures and then matching them to the corresponding beginning letter.  

They finished up with some journal work, today we focused on the color black.

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.

Mojave Desert

This week we moved on to learning about the Mojave desert with Mother Goose Time.  

The kids painted rocks gold, and then used them in the water table to practice panning for gold.  

The kids used corn starch noodles to make cacti and added toothpicks to make them prickly.  

The kids looked at a picture of olive trees for inspiration, and used paper, paint and wooden spools to make their own creations.  

The kids made their own tortoise racing game.  They were able to take turns playing it with friends.

The character trait for this month is honesty.  After we read the monthly forest friend book the kids made their own stories with the owl.

We spent time learning about the differences between turtles and tortoises.  After we learned the differences the kids worked together to separate out the characteristics and decide which animal they were describing.  

The kids went on a hunt for puzzle pieces and the worked together to build the desert puzzle.  Each kids got to put in 2 pieces until the whole puzzle was built.  This is a good way to teach them about cooperating and working together.

Every monthly box comes with would you rather scenarios, such as would you rather sit on a camel or a cactus.  The kids take turns voting on what they would prefer and then we tally them up.

The kids worked on their patience and taking turns when we played a desert matching game.  This also helps test their memory.

We used this months manipulatives to do a little patterning.

 Z is one of the letters of the month, so the kids colored their letter Z books.  Each month focuses on 3 new letters.

In The Desert

We spent last week learning about the rodeo, and this week we learned about the desert.  Mother Goose Time provides lots of fun games and activities that incorporate language, literacy, math, science, art, motor skills, etc. through thematic units.

All month long we use the my little journals to work on the letter, number, shape and color of the month.  

Each monthly box from Mother Goose Time comes with loose letter parts and letter card templates.  This months letters are N, W and Z.  The kids use the pieces to build the letters, it's a hands on approach to letter recognition.

Anybody who is traveling in the desert will need a canteen.  The kids made canteens out of paper plates, souffle cups and string.  

They played race to the oasis to practice counting, taking turns and following rules.  

We learned about a tribe in Yemen that has contests to leap over camels.  We used pillows as camels and the kids took turns seeing how many they could jump over.  We kept adding to the pile until no one could make it over.  

Camels have 1 or 2 humps, but the kids make playdough humps and added them to the camel cutouts and then we counted how many there were,  

I read Sally the Camel to the kids while they took turns picking numbers to add to the lines.  

We played desert animal memory which is another game good for taking turns.  

The kids created their own silly desert animals by adding a back to a camel and a head to a lizard.  

We played don't spin the scorpion.  The kids took turns spinning and adding colored cubes to a pile.  If you spun the scorpion all the cube colors had to be tallied up to see which one had the most, and then the game started back over.  

We spent a day learning about Egypt and the pyramids.  The kids practiced drawing hieroglyphics in their journals.  

They sponge painted bricks onto pyramid shapes and added sand.  

They also used this months manipulates to build pyramids using the shape design mats. 

Their favorite activity of the day, and probably the week, was when they worked together to create a long tunnel into the pyramids and took turns crawling all the way through it.  

The kids used scissors to cut up brown paper and glue on as tree trunks.  They used spools dipped in paint to make olives.  They got to look at pictures of desert plants and an olive tree for inspiration, and were free to create whatever they wanted with the provided materials.  This type of open ended art helps promote creativity and decision making.