W is for Wolf: Retelling of The Three Little Pigs

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to an almost 5 year old girl and 18 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

We have been having so much fun with our A to Zoo theme this month from Mother Goose Time!

The last 2 weeks have been non stop busy as our church has prepared for VBS, but being able to pull a bag of our little bus box out, and make some memories with my kids while they learn, is so wonderful!

On this specific day, we went over Wolves and X-Ray Fish.

My girl started her day by making the letters X and W from loose letter parts.

You could use sticks, buttons, blocks, paper strips, or whatever you have to practice making letters without even picking up a writing instrument. 

I have had this amazing book called Wild Animals ABC: An Alphabet Book  

by Gary Fleming for years waiting for my children to reach this age.

The book has rhyme and illustrations that are beautiful.  The W and X days happened to match our animals of the day! Perfect!

My preschooler is recently obsessed with the story of The Three Little Pigs.

We have read multiple versions of it.   Her personal favorite is James Marshall's retelling.

However, everytime we turn on Netflix, she asks to watch the old Walt Disney version.  

When she saw the puppets for our Make and Play craft from MGT, she quickly cut them out, and created her own 3 Little Pig scene.  She then told me her version, incorporating elements from both the Walt Disney version (the wolf dressing like a sheep), and the classic tale.   I didn't even have a chance to read the version MGT sent us! Ha!

I am so glad MGT sent us these materials!

I might have never caught her retelling this and I love all the details she shared in her story.

Our month of A to Zoo Animals is coming to a close, but next month is the box I have been waiting for for THREE YEARS....

the Art Studio!

Can't wait to share with yall all the awesomeness that is in that box! 

A to Zoo Field Trip

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to an almost 5 year old girl and 18 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

A few months ago my husband and I came to the realization that we hardly did any adventures as a family.  Yes we had fun at home, but asking us to get in the car and go somewhere made us both break out in a sweat.  You see, my son is not a great car rider.  However, we came to the conclusion that once a month, we would go on a family adventure.  It didn't have to be far and we didn't need to spend any money, but we were to be intentional about doing something together as a family and create lasting memories with our kids.

Our Mother Goose Time theme this month is A to Zoo which inspired us to head to our local zoo (about 30 mins away) and see what the animals were up to.  MGT sent us beautiful Animal Alphabet Cards ,and although we didn't have most of these animals at our local zoo, we did have some!

F is for Flamingo

P is for Porcupine 

G is for Galapagos Tortoise

C is for Clouded Leopard

It has taken my girl YEARS to climb the 6 metal see through stair steps and get into this train.

My cautious child is getting braver!

M is for Macaw

P is for Peacock

The peacocks roam freely all over our zoo.  It's quite a show when the males try to impress a lady friend.  I love how this female just walked on by! It was pretty funny.  God sure did make an amazingly beautiful creature with the peacock.  Finding peacock feathers is always a special souvenir although we didn't find one today.

L is for Lion.

This guy was fast asleep at the front fence!  We could get a super close peek at him.

J is for Jaguar

T is for Tiger

Every single time, she's got to climb on this lion statue and take a picture...

as do all the kids who come to our local zoo.  It's kinda a kid ritual.  

Oh you went to the zoo? Can I see your lion statue picture? Ha!

Everett just made lion roars at it.... so cute!

R is for Rhinoceros 

G is for Giraffe

Their long tongues stretched out of their mouths catching leaves!  It was quite a sight!

T is for Tortoise

Our zoo has lots of these guys.

E is for Eagle

S is for Sloth

This guy was moving all over the place!  I thought they were supposed to be slow, but he was really moving.  It was amazing to watch how methodical he was as he moved from limb to limb. 

O is for Otter

Avaleigh loved watching him dance and play in the water! Simple sticks make the best toys.... for both kids and otters!

S is for Snake

This was her favorite.  Not mine.  Get me outta the reptile exhibit pronto!

Our final stop was boarding the train that zips around the zoo.  So much fun! 

I know I am not really discussing one of our MGT activities, but this trip to our zoo was inspired because of our studies, and I know as we continue our learning adventure this month, much of what we witnessed at the zoo will be brought back up as we study the animals MGT has for us.

Go have fun! Make intentional memories and have adventures with your kids...

 even if it gives you the heebie jeebies a little!  

Preschool Bird Food Math

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to an almost 5 year old girl and 18 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

It's a new month which means a new month of Mother Goose Time learning!

This month our theme is A to Zoo and we are studying a new animal each day. 

B is for Bird and BOTH my kiddos were able to participate in our MATH activity for the day! 

Our day started with all of us creating a bird puppet (pictured above).  My son made the blue one with scribbles (he loves to color), I made the red/orange/yellow bird, and my preschooler made both the purple bird and rainbow bird.  MGT sent us all the materials! All we had to do was add some markers and glue.

We started our bird math game by first discussing birds.

"What do birds eat, Avaleigh?"

Puffins eat fish, hummingbirds eat nectar from flowers, chickens eat worms, and ducks eat bread.  Lots of birds eat seeds, too.

That unexpected response comes from her love of Puffin Rock, books, and our recent adventure to the duck pond. :)  Using playdough, we all made balls of bird seed and worms.  Even my boy made some fat worms!  I was amazed when I looked down and there was a playdough worm under his hand!

We made a bunch of bird food and added it to a bowl.  Earlier in the year, we found this abandoned bird's nest and added it to our nature collection. We decided it would be a great addition to our math game, so we placed our bird puppets that we made earlier in the nest.

MGT sent us some number cards and a picture of a bird's nest, but we chose to use our actual nest for this game.  We placed the number cards face down.  Avaleigh was challenged to flip over 2 cards, count out the number of bird food for each card, and then add them together.  She then practiced writing her numbers and wrote her first addition math sentence! 

You could even make subtraction number sentences after your bird puppets "eat" some of their food! 

We did 4 different rounds of this before she asked to play something else.

Although our game didn't last a long time, I was so happy both kids could participate and I really wanted to document both her first math sentence and his first time to play with playdough.

Find more A to Zoo adventures on our Facebook page!

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And have fun learning with your littles, friends!