Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to almost 5 year old girl (seriously can't believe I just typed that) and 17 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.
This week we started our newest unit from Mother Goose Time: Bubbles, Boats, and Floats.
As we journeyed "Down the River" this week, we studied rivers, beavers, boats, and....Alligators!
My girl knew a lot about alligators (we go to the local zoo pretty regularly), but she mainly talked about their sharp teeth. Perfect day to talk about the letter V since it looks like a sharp tooth upside down. Using our loose letter parts, she built her uppercase and lowercase letter V. We then used our letter pointer to locate the letter V, and lo and behold it's right there on a book of the month supplied by MGT! By the way, I really enjoyed this book!
She then worked on her letter V book and turned those V's into alligators with snapping jaws!
We practiced making /v/ sound and really enunciated it in both her and her little brother's name.
Math Time = Game Time
Our game was called "Losing Teeth." Did you know alligators have 80 teeth at a time but will have over 2,000 in their lifetime! Yeah, me either. #teacherguide
So how do you play this game?
All you need is playdough and golf tees.
MGT sent us 18 golf tees (love that I don't have to go to Walmart and search for this) and Avaleigh practiced one-to-one correspondence and counting as she placed 17 tees into her alligator's jaw.
She then picked them out one by one and placed them on her Counting Card to make sure she was right. I love how she pointed each one up to look like teeth!
She then used a pair of tongs to put each one back into the basket (I couldn't get a good pic of that.)
Fine motor skills at work!
She was way into her playdough at this point, but wanted to go outside.
MGT's Steam Station suggested we make "Alligator Skin" by doing crayon rubbings of different textures. However, instead of crayons, we used playdough and had so much fun exploring and making impressions of textures outside! We talked about what an alligator's skin might feel like (rough and bumpy), and Avaleigh would observe our yard and test what certain textures did to her playdough. She explored our brick wall, trees, logs, shutters, wheels... so many more things!
"What can I test next, momma?" "I don't know. What do you think might be rough and bumpy?"
This was by far the favorite lesson of our alligator day.
Our playdough is still outside in its container. She has gotten it out several times since doing this experiment to test more things! I love to see her love learning.
So go try it out friends!
Happy Learning!
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