A Trip to the Pond

When I moved to this town 17 years ago, I hated it! 

It is a small college town halfway between 2 major cities.

"There's nothing here!  There's nothing to do!"

   I was from "the city" when I first arrived in this town, and I didn't know all the gems this new area  had to offer.  Frankly when I first moved here, I didn't care much for even learning what this town had to offer. 

But this small sleepy suburb hidden in the woods, with "nothing to do," worked its magic on me, and now it is home.  It took me becoming a mother to really understand what all this place I now call home had to provide.

Where else can we go on a nature walk, visit a pond, go out for frozen yogurt, stop at Walmart for a few quick items, all in an a couple of hours in the afternoon?  

Not in the city, that's for sure! 

That's what our Tuesday afternoon looked like this week.

The perfect ending to our March Pond Unit with Mother Goose Time.

The University in town has a duck pond on campus.  We've been several times this month, usually with friends, but on this day, we explored and looked for the things we learned about over the month with our pond unit.

Sweet Pea knows which animals are geese and which are ducks!  I couldn't believe my ears when I heard her call the goose a goose and not a duck!

New baby ducklings! 

Fish gobbling our bread!  Sweet Pea made her fish face when she saw the bread being dragged beneath the surface of the water. 

Of course we saw ducks!  Mostly sleeping on what is commonly known as "duck island," but a few acted interested in the bread we brought to share with them.  One even flew across the pond which inspired Sweet Pea to fly like a duck.

I caught this picture of a dragonfly (I think) taking a break and Sweet Pea was scared of it. 

 "Bee!" She's scared of flying insects just like her momma.  

We also saw a smashed turtle, but I didn't take a picture of that.  Sweet Pea did crouch down, inspect the turtle, and said it's name; but, we didn't linger long.  I had called Daddy on our way to the pond, and he took a quick break to meet us and watch Sweet Pea have fun!  

This is one of those perks of living in a small town... Daddy can come by for a little visit or come home for lunch.  The size of this town truly is a blessing.

 

Sweet Pea even found some feathers on the ground.  She spent a lot of time throwing them, watching them float on the wind, and gracefully land in the water.  I wish I had better pictures of her doing this.

Can you see the feather underneath the stadium sign?  It is right above the water line.

 Sweet Pea would have stayed all night, but I knew we had to go to the store.  A quick trip to the frozen yogurt stand sounded so good.

Bye ducks! Time for some frozen yogurt and a quick trip to Walmart.

Being a mom has really opened my eyes to so many things I have taken for granted.  

Things I may have thought were curses, truly are blessings.

Much of my perspective has changed through the eyes of motherhood.

The Lord teaches me so many new things through Sweet Pea.

I hope I never stop learning.

Creating Alligator Skin

We are still hanging out at the pond and having so much fun.  I am definitely behind in my blogging, but I have been having so much fun with my girl.  Today during our Mother Goose Time (MGT), I gave her a choice between studying fish, ducks, or alligators.  She chose the ALLIGATOR and today Sweet Pea created a picture of ALLIGATOR SKIN!

I can not recommend Mother Goose Time highly enough, but if you don't have it, you can still enjoy this awesome Invitation to Create.

Gather your supplies:

-Painters Tape or Masking Tape

-Glue

-Paint (tempra or finger if you want it to come out of clothes)

-Containers to hold glue and paint

-Glue

-Bubble Wrap

-Cardstock or Watercolor paper to paint on

-Fine black glitter or sand

-Pictures of Alligator Skin or an Alligator book

-Tray or Baking Sheet that you can tape the cardstock to

Directions:

Tape the paper to the tray.  By taping all 4 sides, you create a nice little border once you pull off the tape after the artwork has dried. Show the pictures of the alligator skin.  We talked about the colors she saw and whether the skin was smooth or rough.  We also read the book provided this month in our MGT kit and here's a link to that book.  It's a great way to introduce the alligator.

I had to show Sweet Pea how to use the bubble wrap once.  After I did, she went to town using the bubble wrap to create the perfect alligator skin texture.   

 Then she decided to drop glue dots from as high as she could.  For some reason this is how she likes to use a glue bottle.  I really like it too!  The glue doesn't get everywhere and she doesn't make giant blobs.  Just one dot at a time.  As I use to tell my classroom kids,
"One dot does a lot!"

Sweet Pea is just over 2 and a half.  Therefore, I modified our Invitation to Create by not bringing out the black glittery sand until she was done painting and gluing.  I grabbed a 1/4 tsp to help her pour the glittery sand.  She did a great job both shaking out the sand, and then precisely pouring it on her glue dots.  Great fine motor practice.  

When Sweet Pea was done, I took the tray with her artwork still taped to it outside to dry while we ate lunch. Unfortunately I turned the tray to the side and the black glittery sand spread everywhere. #momfail.
 I guess it would have spread everywhere anyway since we are having such a windy day here.

I still love it.  She's napping now and I went outside to check on her alligator skin artwork.

It was perfectly dry, so I peeled the tape from around the edges,
and placed her masterpiece on her table.

When she wakes up, I want her to figure out where to place it. 

Have fun creating with your kiddos!

Creating Cattails

We've had so much fun learning all about the Pond in our newest unit study!

Unfortunately Sweet Pea had the flu, so we haven't had many outdoor adventures to the local pond; however she did make her own picture of cattails at a pond the other day and had fun even with the flu.

Mother Goose Time supplied us with sticks, green paper, and the blue sheet along with the inspiration photo of cattails.  I modified this Invitation to Create for her.  Although she tried to use scissors, her hand skills just aren't there yet; so I cut the green paper into strips.  I had some brown chenille stems (pipe cleaners) on hand and decided to add them to her supplies to help provide that cattail fuzzy texture.  I pointed to the picture and told her these were called cattails and we can find them at the pond.  Sweet Pea's response was "Meow.  Kitty cat.  Meow." I think most kids would respond like this but I still got tickled from it. 

My girl loves to place dots of glue all over the place.  No streams for her... just individual dots. It's funny to watch her.

After placing some green strips, I asked her if she could tear them into smaller pieces.  Tearing proved to be quite challenging for my 2 and a half year old.  It might have been the size of the paper, but honestly we haven't worked a lot on tearing things, but now we will. :)  

  Her finished masterpiece. 

Her pond of cattails is the perfect home for her 4-eyed mayfly that we did on our Mayfly Day from Mother Goose Time, and the caterpillar and butterfly she made when we studied 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

So if your kiddo is sick, wants to be outdoors, and desires to do something, bring the outdoors to him or her by creating cattails and the creatures that can be found nearby. 

Happy creating! 

Using the Planning Journal

In case you don't already know, I have a deep love for our monthly thematic study from 

Mother Goose Time.  Each month I try to do all 20 days.

I have failed every month... for 7 months in a row thinking each month will be different.

Obviously I can't do it all.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I am not insane, nor do I want to set myself up for failure every month.  It's time to analyze what I am doing, change how I am doing it it, and see where it takes us.

As I was thinking about starting Sweet Pea's newest unit on Ponds, (so excited...this weather is perfect), I remembered back to a blog post from another Mother Goose Time blogger, Keely.  She too realized she couldn't get it all done, so she decided to let her kids pick out six bags of their choosing and she also includes the Celebration Kit.  If they had more time at the end of the month, great!  Grab another bag and let's go!  But if not, that's okay too. 

This.  This is what I needed!  Now the question was:

How do I even choose?  Sweet Pea is only 2.5 years old, and not the best talker.  She just started saying "I like this" last week! Having a conversation with her about what was in each bag and letting her choose, wasn't in the cards for us (yet). 

Here's how I answered that question and planned for March.

I get these two awesome guides every month.  I always use the teacher guide, but I had not figured out how to make the Planning Journal work for me, until today.

This post is all about the Planning Journal.

The Planning Journal has this bad boy in it- The Daily Art Projects, an array of crafts and invitations to create.  I love looking at this page.  This is the only reason why I would open the Planning Journal... to see this beauty.  But not today. 

The Planning Journal also has a calendar that you can follow to help you plan your days throughout the month.  We have a lot of set outings that don't allow us to follow this plan daily, so I needed to choose which days were top priorities.  This calendar helps with that! 

I needed to choose the things that Sweet Pea most loved about MGT.

Monthly book (day 7)

Puzzle (day 7)

I Spy (day 2)

Science card or Cooking card (day 9)

I Can Read book (day 14)

My Little Journal (day 3)

Those are the days I highlighted below.  Only 5 days.  I knew we could fit 8 daily bags.

I want us to fit 8. 

How do I choose 3 out of so many?

I turned to another blog to help me figure it out-- Stacy and her monthly "What's in the Box" post.

By looking through her post,  I could see better what each day had to offer and decide which 3 days Sweet Pea might like the most. I also turned back to the Daily Art Project page looking at what Sweet Pea might like to create.  She absolutely loves painting, so I decided to add:

Duck (day 5)

Alligator (day 19)

Fish (day 20) 

3 craft days and 5 Invitations to Create.  In the words of my girl, "I like this."

I flipped back to the Calendar page and highlighted all the days so I could really focus on them.

Reason 1,347, 987 on why I love MGT: I don't have to use the bags in order.

Now I needed to plan which days I wanted to do when and in what order. 

The Blank Calendar page.

The beauty of MGT is you can make this stuff work for you and your life.  

I decided it might be wise to give myself 2 days per bag.  It allows me to go further, or do an activity more than once, or if the afternoon is beautiful and we want to go to the park and not do MGT, we can do that too.  

I filled in a few days where we will do school with the local co-op in town.  I teach 2-4 year olds arts and crafts and that is when we will use our Celebration Kit!  I just love MGT.

That's our month.
All planned out. 

Now the question is:  Will things go according to plan?

Guess you'll have to keep up with us in March to see how things pan out. :)

Until then,

Happy Planning!


Be sure to follow our adventures on Facebook and grab ideas on Pinterest!

   

Tot School: 5 Little Speckled Frogs

I have scavenged, pinned, researched, downloaded, printed, and created our first Tot School Unit on PONDS. For the next several weeks, Sweet Pea and I will do all things pond related and specifically talk about frogs and turtles more than other animals.

Today I wanted to share a little game I made for my girl based on the song, 5 Little Speckled Frogs.

Let me apologize in advance for the song being stuck in your head all day and then when you try to go to sleep.  Sorry.  We will sing and dance to this song and get it stuck in our heads and then head to the activity I made and will walk you through on how to make your own.

It was so easy and CHEAP to make!  I can't wait to see her play with it tomorrow. So here's the low down...

I bought all the materials at Hobby Lobby.  Foam blocks (you can use for anything), thick popsicle sticks I had on hand, 3 large sheets of foam (green, brown, and blue), and 5 wooden speckled frogs each for $0.67!

Hot glue those sticks to the back of those frogs.

Wrap your foam with the brown foam sheet using hot glue.  Trim off the extra and use it to make the square end caps of the foam block.

I used a Copic marker I had on hand to make the wood grain, but you could use any marker.  Sharpies would work just fine.

Use an exacto knife to cut 5 slits for the frogs to go into.  I wiggled the popsicle stick in the whole to make it become an easier fit for my 21 month old girl to do.  

Look at those 5 speckled frogs sitting on their speckled log!

I just placed the log on the blue foam piece (no glue so I can use the blue foam for other backgrounds), cut some lily pads from the green foam and glued on some white tissue paper for the flowers.  The lily pads are not glued onto the blue foam either.

The corner of her playroom is set up with her pond activity.  I matted a few of Monet's Waterlilies to go in her corner and found a cute poem about the Frog Lives in the Pond and put it on the wall as well.  Here is a whole bunch of ideas to use for a Pond Unit.

So our Pond Adventure awaits us this month and I can't wait.  We will most likely work on this stuff for 2 weeks and then on to something else, but I am so excited to go on this learning adventure with my girl!  Be sure to come back next week to see what we did! 

This post has been linked to 1+1+1=1

Happy Tot Schooling!