Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Yesterday we used the Bonus Day provided by Mother Goose Time. It was all about Thanksgiving. I wrote numbers 1 - 10 on the feathers they provided and dropped them randomly on the floor before the girls arrived. 5 was very interested in what they were doing on the floor and immediately sat down (after she greeted Bird of course) to put them in order. She's a good counter and recognizes numbers up to 30 so this was an easy exercise for her. What she isn't familiar with is counting backwards. So, once the feathers were in the correct order I pointed to the ten and counted down. Then I couched down, counted backwards again and after I got to one I shouted, "Blast off" and stood up raising my hands in the air. Well, this was met with surprise, giggles, and,"Do it again!" So I did. Then she joined me and we did it over and over again. 

Here she is in her countdown position. Funny child. 

Next we got some of the food out of the play kitchen and talked about our favorites. We talked about how thankful we are that God allows us to eat good food and how it makes us healthy and strong. She was able to sort them by color and name them all. You would never know by her size but 5 is a BIG eater and she loves fruit and vegetables. She also loves candy, chips, and donuts. 

After that 5 made her turkey hat. MGT gave us sticker eyes for this project but we have bags of googly eyes and they are always the favorite choice. I expect this hat to make an appearance at Thanksgiving Dinner 2014 tomorrow. 

But first, Papa tried it on.

We ended our Mother Goose Time day by making our Thankful page. I have kept a bag of random magazine pictures in our kid supplies since my children were young. Give that bag to a child along with a piece of paper and a glue stick and watch the creativity flow. I always find it interesting to see what catches their attention on any given day. 5 wasn't feelin flowers, mittens, or stranger babies. Yesterday was all about food, insects, and rain. We are thankful  for it all. 

Creatures of the Rainforest

I continue to be impressed by the quality and creativity of the materials Mother Goose Time  sends me every month. This week we learned about some of the creatures who make their home in the rainforest. We are a little behind and there is so much fun stuff to learn and play with that it would be a shame to miss any of it. So we did our best to catch up from last week's material and learn as well as the fun stuff MGT planned for this week. 

We colored (and glitter glued) the pages I printed up but everything else was provided for us. 

One of the most fun things we made was the parrot. If you have seen any of my other posts you know the deep love my granddaughter has for the repeating parrot toy so this was right up her alley. She allowed me to hang this up in our tree for the day but then of course it needed to go home with her. 

I enjoyed the Jaguar J art project because she is just learning that letters have sounds and this was a great way to reinforce this to her. Plus she didn't know what a Jaguar was until now. 

5 has a pretty good memory and did surprisingly well playing the Matching Rainforest Animals game. We have played it several times this week and it's been fun to see her be able to name all the creatures on the cards. As always it has been an inside the hexagon game. 

And how about these monkey masks? 

After we made the masks we used the counting monkeys from Day 3 and played 5 Little Monkeys. Two year olds don't really subtract but they all know and love this rhyme. I held on to three monkeys and she held two as we had them jump up and down together on the floor. Like many children, 5 loves the "bumped his head" part of that story so these monkeys did elaborate flips and spins in the air as they fell toward the ground. I had recently looked for monkeys like this in a store so I was delighted to find them in the Mother Goose Time box when it arrived the middle of last month. We have hung them from the table, from our tree in our rainforest and they are currently hanging on a couple different cupboard door knobs in our family room. Monkeys are probably 5's second favorite rainforest creature. 

Today was especially fun around here. We had another 2 year old girl over for the day. The favorite toy of every 2 year old is another 2 year old and this one just happens to be 5's best friend (can toddlers have best friends?). This friend is a little more cautious than my granddaughter but she played along with our silliness. I hung tablecloths over the dining room table to make them a tent and we played the Build-a-Snake Game inside. Each snake is built by matching the patterns on the cards, much like a game of dominoes. 

We also made the Spiral Snake with the materials provided. I've made snakes from paper plates before but never thought of using bubble wrap to make snakeskin patterns with paint. After they dried we played with these the rest of the day. 

Like I said earlier, our friend is a quieter, more cautious 2 year old and I don't know if it was the googly eyes, the ribbon tongue or the fact that it was a snake, but by the time her mom picked her up she had had enough of the snake and didn't want to take it home. But her mom loved it so off it went. 

Another successful week of learning.

Playing in the Rainforest with Mother Goose Time

What a fun week with Mother Goose Time! We built our own rainforest, played with monkeys, chased butterflies, made a jungle vine and decorated it with bug stickers, learned about sloths and pink dolphins, and talked A LOT to our chattering parrot toy.

It's not easy to explain a sloth to a two year old, especially an active two year old. But I relied on my go-to, YouTube for help.

And when 5 learned that Sloths like to sleep the same way bats do (fun fact from last month's unit on hibernation) she was all in. What can I say, the girl loves to hang upside down. 

As always Mother Goose Time  provided an I Can Read book for 5. This month's book is, "Jump through the Rainforest" and she loves reading it and acting it out. 

She reads it to the parrot toy which begins to repeat it back while she is still reading. She tells the bird to stop it and it tells her to stop it and on and on it goes. I think this toy is preparing her for conversations with her younger sister about 10 years from now. I should send it home with her to train her parents to ignore things they can't change. 

We have also started the ABB pattern which is an important pre-reading skill. This is used in this month's calendar and reinforced again with a Sloth in Hiding game that we received. 

Next week we are focusing on small creatures in the rainforest. I have printed up some coloring pages for us to work on so we can add them to our walls. It should be another fun week!

Hexagon Happiness

"Grandma! There's a hexagon on your floor!!" I'm not sure how she knows what a hexagon is but those were the first words out of her mouth when she walked into the room. I don't think I would have thought to make this masking tape masterpiece on my own but thanks to Mother Goose Time I will continue to have shapes on the family room floor. 

 We started our morning with a Rainforest Walk game. Using the animal cards from day 1, we took turns choosing a card and then walked, crawled, jumped, slithered, and flew like we thought they would. 

 Tootsie Pop is still enjoying the leaves from last month's Weather All Around Us unit from MGT. Occasionally I put clear contact paper on the window and let 5 stick stuff to it. I saw a suggestion on Pinterest to draw a face shape on the non sticky side and give your child googly eyes, yarn, and other things to create a person. I cut up several colors of yarn and had them laid out by group. 5 immediately picked up the orange yarn, stuck it on top of the face and said,"Look, I'm making Mommy." (#4 in the back of the shirt picture) I, of course immediately took a picture and sent it to my daughter along with the quote. 5 isn't willing to add anything to Mommy's picture that isn't true to Mommy so I added the new sheet for other sticky fun. It's a fun, cheap, sensory play option. Photo bomb by Bird.

Another cheap sensory break option 5 enjoys are balloon squeeze things. I think that's the official name. We have a couple with play dough (from the Dollar Store), coffee beans, rice, and flour. She often carries them around and will sometimes stop playing for a moment and squish and squeeze one or two of them. They are good to have around. Stress balls, that's they're called. 

I have a shoe box filled with pattern blocks for the older grandchildren but the pattern cards I have much to complicated for 5 so she's never played with them. These design mats from Mother Goose Time along with the bag of pattern blocks were the perfect size for her. She knew the name of every piece except for the trapezoid. What can I say? Her parents are slackers :)

 After some decorations for Bird we got our Theme Poster and Looking Glasses from Day 1 and looked for matches. 5 usually insists on using the magnifying glasses I already have but she really enjoyed these and matching the pictures to the poster. And yes, she is sitting inside the footstool. She loves it. Again, I have no idea why. 

The new best friends had a lively conversation while sharing fish crackers and then went to the toy cupboard to see what they could do next. The hexagon is becoming a favorite place to play. Thanks for another great idea Mother Goose Time!

Rainforest Adventure

Last week we checked out some Rainforest books from our local library and we began to look at pictures and talk about the funny and beautiful creatures that live there. Over the weekend I laminated the nametags provided by Mother Goose Time and after calendar time I gave 5 some dry erase markers. In her two year old mind she writes her name and 7's name as clearly as I write my own.

But best (or worst) of all is the parrot toy I found at a resale store in town. When I saw it I knew it would be perfect for this month. Plus it was $3. Perfect. Have you seen them? They record what you say and then automatically repeat your words in a faster and higher pitch. I'm sure you will see this toy in every post I make this entire month. When 3 and 6 were visiting recently they all had a lot of fun talking to the bird and laughing at it. The laughing is the best part. The worst happens when 5 is trying to tell the bird something and playback begins before she is finished talking. She starts talking louder which makes the bird record at a louder volume which eventually results in a shouting match until I announce that Bird needs a nap. It happens daily. 

Next up was I Spy Rainforest but in a different way than the one suggested in the Teacher Guide. I borrowed the animal cards from the rainforest collage project and hid them around the room. 5 used the magnifying glasses from the dollar store to help her them all. 

We then found similar pictures on the Theme Poster. 5 made sure Bird saw all the things she found. 

I continue to be impressed by the quality of the materials from the people at Mother Goose Time. They provided the green cardstock, Rainforest pictures, construction paper, green tissue paper, and colored confetti for this Rainforest Collage. We got out a glue stick and then began one of our favorite things to do, tear paper! 

This project was fun and creative.