Hey friends! Had a GOD sighting last week. Let me tell you about it. So every Wednesday we go to our local library for Preschool Story-time. It just so happened that we were studying and reading books on snakes which was the same thing I had planned for us to study that afternoon with our Mother Goose Time! I adjusted the order of our days using the Planning Journal with our Mother Goose Time and you can read about that here.
Don't you just love it when you see Him working out little details like that?! I love it!
Our craft at the library was a paper plate snake and you can see Sweet Pea's below.
She's begun to focus more and more on drawing circles, and I must say she does a great job when she really concentrates. After she colored the front and the back of the plate, I cut out a spiral from the outside of the plate toward the center making the snake shape. Glue down some googly eyes and you have a snake! He's dangling in our kitchen now.
Once we returned home, and after a nice nap and slipping on her Elsa dress,
Sweet Pea and I started our Snake study from MGT.
If you read my Planning Journal post, you know that we aren't doing all our days, but I did choose the snake day because of the magnifying glasses pictured below. Each month MGT sends these paper magnifying glasses for kids to search and find the same picture in the thematic monthly poster. Sweet Pea is obsessed with matching things, and she loves looking at our monthly picture and pointing and finding things. So naturally we had to do Snake day.
I made an observation about my darling observant daughter today.
If you look closely at the poster, you will see that there are several of the same type of animal living at the pond. There are a few turtles, fish, and frogs. When we started to play with the poster, I wanted her to do more than just match; therefore, I differentiated what we were doing.
"What animal is on a tree?" I asked.
You can see she had several options to choose from, and I thought it funny that she chose the smaller less noticeable turtle rather than the large crane.
When it came to matching the magnifying glass to the poster, Sweet Pea really studied the magnifying glass picture. For example, there is one of a frog on a lily pad with a forest green background. Sweet Pea really had to study it to make sure she picked the right frog in the picture. I knew she was observant, but the fact that she caught this without me probing at all, just spoke volumes to me about what she knows and her personality.
While Sweet Pea finished looking at the poster, I set up our Invitation to Create a Snake. I really love that this was a different snake than the one we did at the library. This invitation is great for fine motor skills by lacing beads and straws on to a pipe cleaner, but you could totally differentiate this for older kids. Maybe they notice the pattern on the snake's skin and create a pattern with the beads. For Sweet Pea, who is 2.5 years old, she just worked on placing a bead or straw onto the pipe cleaner.
It wasn't long before she was more focused on pouring the beads from one tray to the other and rolling the beads around in her hands.
I love how our activities can be easily modified to help her grow where she need to grow. I love that I could do these activities in one shape or form at the age of 2 or the age of 5.
Challenge your kids where they need to be challenged and simplify where it needs to be simplified.
You make it work for you and your kiddos!
Happy Differentiating!
