Preschool: Safari Food Fun

This week has been one of those weeks where I am sooooo thankful for homeschooling.

We had a busy beginning to the week, but the last few days- at the end of the week-

 my girl has been battling the flu. Flu B actually.  So please forgive all the pajama pictures.  

She lived in them for the last few days.  *Homeschool blessing*

I am so thankful we have our Mother Goose Time box, can work it in on our own time, and not worry about missing out on a lesson. 

Last week we peeked into how the African Culture dresses looking at the beautiful beadwork they create.  This week we still delved into the African Culture as we looked into their diet.  The teacher guide suggested quite a few activities that had us searching for food, putting it in baskets, and practicing balancing those baskets on our heads.  

We practiced balancing different baskets, then we took turns hiding and searching for play food around the living room.  We easily played this game for 30 minutes or more.  

We also looked at the diet of African animals.

From our play kitchen stash, I grabbed a hamburger patty (meat) and a pear (plant).

I had Avaleigh sort our animal cards provided by MGT between carnivores and herbivores. Although my girl was not very familiar with those terms, she knew enough about the animals to know what they ate.  The only one she struggled with was the vulture.  

I told her a vulture was similar to a buzzard here in Texas.  

MGT supplied us with this cute poster!  You put a picture of an animal (the last is always the lion), and read it as if you were reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? 

The only difference is once you say "I see a LION looking at me," the next sentence is "RUN!"  

She loved switching out all the animal cards and reading the story.

Avaleigh has always loved that book- it was one of the first ones she read to Everett when we brought him home from the NICU, which is pictured below from December 2017.  Heart melt....

On the back of the "What Do You See?" poster, was the Food Web poster pictured below.

The numbers on the web matched the number on the cards, so placing them was pretty easy. 

But when Avaleigh first looked at the picture, she didn't pay attention to the numbers instead... 

She really focused on the diagram.

I asked her to find all the animals that would eat grass and put them at the bottom. 

Then I asked her what animals would eat the grass eating animals?

That's how the lion ended up above the elephant pictured below.

But it led to a great conversation!

"Avaleigh, do you think the lion would eat a hyena?"

"Yes."

"Do you think a lion would eat a cheetah?"

"Yes."

Then she noticed the numbers on the card and on the web and moved her lion card to the top.

We only had 8 cards, but there is space for another.  I am not sure why, but we could totally cut out pictures of other animals and work on this food web again!

And just FYI, I taught food webs and chains extensively in 3rd and 4th grades, and again for a little bit in 6th grade!  My preschooler is already getting engaged in that science concept.  Love it!

She asked to color afterwards, so I pulled out our Letter C coloring sheet from today.

Perfect timing.

This past month I have noticed how much she has been coloring things the way they actually appear instead of just whatever she felt like.

She really made her corn look like corn and her carrot look like a carrot, but her cat was the one I was most impressed with.

She named her cat "Reddy" because "He's red."

Makes sense.

 I love how she colored in a pattern format.  She made the inside of his face orange, along with his spots and the end of his tail.  Yall... she has never really done this.  I am so glad we homeschool so I can catch these details and see how much she's learning and thinking.

After making our C book, we played with our zebra striped letter parts from Zebra day and she practiced making letters.

The very first letter she put together was this Q. 

I know I say it just about every week, but I am so thankful for our little school bus box of MGT materials.  I love that it's fun, and can be worked in whenever we have time, and is something we both look forward to even on days we might not feel well.

I love the smiles, the learning, the growing, and the fun we get to have as a family.

It truly is a blessing.