Preschoolers and Pets

About 2 months ago, we adopted a Golden Retriever named Bailey.

Our last golden, Peyton, passed away on August 22, 2017.  He was 12.5 years old. 

It was so hard.  Especially having to explain to our girl what happened.  She still remember him and talks about him.  However, we remind her that Peyton is with Jesus and Jesus has healed him.

Now we have Bailey, who absolutely loves my kids.  

 She just turned a year old, and Bailey is Avaleigh's best friend.  They play outside together, explore things together, and Avaleigh has been learning how to take care of Bailey.

Our Alphabet House unit from Mother Goose Time had a week long study on chores including Caring for Pets.

I asked Avaleigh what she does to take care of Bailey.

"I keep an eye on her.  I give her some treats (lots of treats, really) and food.  I give her sweet pets and play with her."

Here they are playing in the sprinkler a few weeks after we got Bailey.  This sweet dog, who loves to be outside, has helped my girl play more outside and learn to entertain herself instead of wanting me all the time.

MGT had us start our lesson with a color matching game that went to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.  I just substituted her name and bird.  Avaleigh has known her colors for a few years now, but she always loves a matching game.  Here's a little video of us playing.

After doing our color matching game, we did our Make and Play craft which was a little book called 

I Love My Pets.  She was to draw the pets on each page or glue pictures of them that MGT provided.  I was surprised they didn't include a dog as one of the pets to draw.  I walked her through how to draw each animal which was something new for her, and she wrote her name!  She hardly ever needs help with writing her name anymore.  I must say, my girl loves to color and draw and I was so impressed with her drawings!

I was seriously impressed.  I would tell her things like "Draw a circle for it's head." or "A rabbit has whiskers.  Draw 3 lines on each side of its' face for whiskers." 

 I love how she added bubbles for the fish.

Our final activity was Build a Bird which I left her to do on her own while I dealt with her 6 month old brother.  Basically she flipped over a little card, found the corresponding body part and built a bird on the provided bird cage.

We closed out our Caring for Pets day by reading How Do Dinosaurs Choose Their Pets from our local library.  I wish they had How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? or How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? but they didn't.  She loves these Dinosaur books, which I would have never known about had I not looked at MGT book list a few months back when we studied dinos.  

I am definitely ordering the dog one... I linked some below.

          

We had a lot of fun learning how to care for pets from MGT.
More importantly, I have actually seen her have fun caring for her pet, Bailey.


Happy Learning!

Animal Homes: Lodges and Dens

Did you know a beaver's home is called a lodge?

I think I learned that long ago, but it felt new to me today as we as we studied lodges and dens with our Mother Goose Time: Alphabet House unit.

We started our day by finding the beaver's home on the thematic poster.

Avaleigh even told me that it was built in the river!  I was surprised she just didn't say water.

Our Invitation to Create came with blue paper and a bag of wood chips!

I have a bucket of extra cups, plates and stuff, and asked my girl if she wanted to add anything to help her make her lodge.  She chose the cup below.  She worked on gluing and and placing the wood chips down to make her lodge. 

Our STEAM station for the day is pictured below.

My husband took down some dead trees in our yard 2 months ago, and cut some of the branches to be building blocks for the kids.  We usually use them outside, but I brought them indoors so she could build.  She was still mainly stuck on beavers, but we also discussed how bears live in dens.

Can you spot her little toy she hid in the lodge in the picture below?

We must have built and rebuilt its home 4-5 times.

In the end, she added a garden with some vegetables (letter s puzzle piece) <3 

I wanted Avaleigh to understand what happened when beavers build lodges on a river.  

So I drew a river and some trees on her chalkboard table.

Using the left over wood chips from our Invitation to Create, we pretended to send sticks and logs down the river and build a beaver lodge.   

Explaining that the lodge would block the river, I erased the river and drew a large oval and asked her what would happen to the trees.  She told me they would die, which was correct as they would be flooded out, but a pond or lake would be created, and new animals would live there.

She came up with all sorts of animals to add to the pond including otters! 

I would never have thought of that.  We did visit the zoo a few weeks ago...

I swear her memory is amazing... I think she took all of mine when I gave birth to her as I can absolutely remember nothing. 

We then read one of her favorite Usborne books, Peek Inside Animal Homes.

It has tons of little flaps and goes through all sorts of homes animals build or just where they live.

Below is the beaver page.  It has a flap showing the lodge and a flap showing the tree falling across the river. 

After reading, we crept outside while her brother napped in his swing.  I am still trying to get him to nap in his crib, but the hour long screaming that ensues when he has to nap in his crib drives me bonkers, especially if it's while we are doing preschool. #momlife.  You do what you gotta do.

After spending an hour outdoors, she asked for a cave to be built.  Everett was awake in his swing, so we built a cave.  We've done this all sorts of ways in the house, but the way pictured below is her fave. I clipped a large sheet to our fireplace and clamped the sheet to some stools.  She loves hiding and this is the perfect spot.  I love how I can still see what is going on under there.

We ended our study of lodges and dens by watching Wild Kratts on Amazon Prime. 

In season one, they have an episode on beavers. <-- link!
Perfect for today. 

Happy Lodge Making!

Animal Homes: Spider Webs

I love preschool!

So much wonder and excitement about all the things I take for granted.

Seeing life through the eyes of a child truly is a gift.

My almost 4 year old decided she wanted to learn about WEBS from our Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum yesterday and we had a blast!

I find that she stays engaged longer if I let her choose what she wants to learn about from a limited amount of choices I give her. 

To start things off, I asked her what she knew about spiders and she immediately found the spider web on our thematic poster.  I love keeping this up all month.  Each day you can use it to go along with finding what that day's discovery bag is all about.

She knew spiders had 8 legs and made webs to eat, and she mentioned Itsy Bitsy Spider.

MGT supplied us with the rhyme on a poster.

We blew the cut out spider down the spout each time she was washed out.

Avaleigh and I have never really discussed rhyming words, but my MGT teacher guide suggested it.

I showed her how "spout" and "out" rhyme because they have the same letters, in the same order, 

and are both at the end.

I asked her if she could find any other words at the end that had some of the same letters.

She found "rain" and "again" and colored them green.

We will definitely spend some more time with rhyming words in the future.

We then read Diary of a Spider which reminded my girl of last month's reading of Diary of a Worm.

After our literacy time, she wanted to make her Make and Play Spider and it's web.

MGT suggested paint, but since I was nursing my son at the time we used a large stamp pad to make her spider hand print, and she glued on the googly eyes MGT sent us in our discover bag.

Is that not the BEST spider face ever?!?!

I love how she added a nose, smile, chin and forehead.  (she told me what all those lines were)

After I punched holes in the plate, she used the pink thread MGT sent to make her web.

I absolutely love it!

While I made lunch, she used the left over pink thread to weave her own web between 2 dining chairs.  She also used her spider manipulatives from last year's Bugs and Insects MGT box to play with her indoor spider web. 

Our web day didn't end there!

After her Quiet Time it was time to connect with the great outdoors by doing our STEAM station.

We watched a spider spin her web on Youtube followed by a Spider Web Hunt in our yard.

We found a huge web in the front yard, found the spider, and discussed how hard it was for her to build this web.  Avaleigh told me that the web was sticky, but we didn't find any bugs in it.

Our STEAM station suggested making a web outside with masking tape and seeing what happens over time. I asked my girl if she would like to make a sticky web just like this spider.

Jumping up and down ensued.

I grabbed my packing tape and gave my girl some scissors, and between 2 garden hooks, we placed our sticky tape spider web.

I love this suggestion my MGT! 

I would have never thought of making and outdoor sticky web from tape!  We kept checking our web throughout the day, but nothing was stuck to it.  This morning as soon as Avaleigh woke up, she mentioned the sticky web outside, so we went to inspect. However there was only some "popcorn," aka crepe myrtle flowers, stuck to our web.

We will keep our sticky web up throughout the weekend in hopes that we will catch some more things on it.  I'll keep yall updated on our Facebook page.

I love it when we can connect with nature through our MGT study. It is such a great reminder that learning does not just take place indoors but anywhere and everywhere. 

That evening to close out our Spider Web day, I let my girl watch 

Magic School Bus Spins a Web.  It was alright, not my favorite, but still educational.

My girl was so engaged with our Spider Web day.  Everything about it was perfect for her.

Looking forward to many more days like this on our Homeschooling Adventure.

Castles, Crowns, and Coloring, Oh My!

This month is Vacation Bible School month.

That means, as the VBS Director, my life is super crazy right now.  

I am hoping to share a few tips on how to help with that in a future post, so if you are involved with your VBS please stay tuned to the blog. :)

However, in all the chaos of creating things for the church, I am so thankful for our 

Mother Goose Time (preschool curriculum) box.  With all its pre-planned activities and 20 daily discovery bags with all the things we need, I can still carve out some time to make memories with my girl while she learns.  Even in life's most chaotic times.  

This month our box is themed Alphabet House, which is all about different homes,
and Castle Day was so much fun.

My girl made a crown so she could become a princess for the day.  She actually drew a dragon on her crown.  I've seen such great improvement from actually trying to draw shapes rather than scribbles. She practiced standing and waving like a princess. 

We talked about how if our family lived in the castle then her Daddy would be the _____ (King) she told me.  I asked her what I would be, and she said Queen.  But she was a little puzzled when I told her she would not be called Queen but something else.  I asked her to remember Sofia the First and what she was.  A princess!  Therefore, you too would be a princess.  Princess Avaleigh and your brother would be Prince Everett.

Kinda off topic, but have you watched The Crown on Netflix?  I just got into it and am really liking the series.  It really has helped me realize that I NEVER want to be queen of a kingdom.  

Nope. No thank you.

Anyway,  back to our lesson.
After creating her crown, she was still wanted to color with her markers, so I got out the My Little Journal and had her review her colors.  She couldn't read the words, but once I told her the name of the color, she grabbed the correct marker and colored each bird.

She has been paying so much more attention to the lines and trying to color within them.  Lots and lots of  practice with coloring, but she loves it.   I always have a container of crayons, markers or map pencils on the table ready for her whenever she gets the inclination to color. 

Afterwards I got pulled away having to do some VBS work, but we picked back up on our Castle Day today.  And you can't talk about castles with out mentioning dragons!
MGT sent us the materials to make a dragon puppet and during her quiet time play, she made the dragon attack her princess castle (Little People).  She stayed in her room playing for a whole hour! 

As Everett napped  screamed in his room, Avaleigh and I took a quick break to read one of our favorite Usborne books, BOY.  It's about a King and Dragon who fight all the time until a young deaf boy forces them to stop and listen to one another. It is such a wonderful story.
I read it aloud here:

I know we won't get to each bag this month, but I have sure enjoyed the ones we are doing. 
I'm just so thankful I don't have to plan one more thing... 
This mom's brain is on the fritz.
And I get to just sit back, watch, and play.
 

Homeschool Preschool: Constructing Homes

Learning all about homes is the theme for this month's Mother Goose Time, and although we are late starting our study this month, we have already had a blast constructing different homes.

On our first day, we received these home templates. as we studied Houses.

  Using stickers, markers, and shape stamps (provided in last years's boxes of MGT), 

we made houses while reviewing letters, their sounds, and the shapes on our shape stamps.

This is our first time for me to create the same thing alongside my girl.  I don't want her to copy me; I want her to make her own art.  However, while she observes me manipulating the different mediums she learns different techniques to try.  While I was working, she asked if she could work on my piece, and of course I let her.  She's been improving in actually drawing lines and not scribbling.

After designing our homes on the paper cut outs, we constructed a home for her toy lizard using our light box and building blocks.  We discussed where to place windows and a door so her lizard could get out.  He also needed food, hence the toy raspberries and blackberries in the home.

On our apartment day, we built tall towers.  MGT suggested calling out a number and building a tower that many blocks high.  The pic below shows a tower my girl built after I told her to use 10 blocks.  She was pretty proud of herself as was I.

On the day that we discussed RV's and Hotels, we reviewed our shapes as we constructed an RV puzzle provided by MGT.  The only one she missed was the octagon (which we haven't really discussed) as she called it a hexagon.  Still close. :) 

We then worked on tracing different shapes from blocks.  She would do really well tracing one side, but then would move the piece she was tracing.  I also noticed that she switched hands to draw!  She's normally right handed but switched to her left to make tracing the object easier, which I captured in the second pic below!  We had a lot of fun and I love seeing her create.  

We will be practicing tracing more things in the future.

Meanwhile, my 6th month old son and our pup Bailey enjoy some tummy time in front of the mirror.  Bailey loves to keep close to Everett while I am working with my girl in the same room.

It's pretty adorable.

   

Happy learning!