Preschoolers and Pets

About 2 months ago, we adopted a Golden Retriever named Bailey.

Our last golden, Peyton, passed away on August 22, 2017.  He was 12.5 years old. 

It was so hard.  Especially having to explain to our girl what happened.  She still remember him and talks about him.  However, we remind her that Peyton is with Jesus and Jesus has healed him.

Now we have Bailey, who absolutely loves my kids.  

 She just turned a year old, and Bailey is Avaleigh's best friend.  They play outside together, explore things together, and Avaleigh has been learning how to take care of Bailey.

Our Alphabet House unit from Mother Goose Time had a week long study on chores including Caring for Pets.

I asked Avaleigh what she does to take care of Bailey.

"I keep an eye on her.  I give her some treats (lots of treats, really) and food.  I give her sweet pets and play with her."

Here they are playing in the sprinkler a few weeks after we got Bailey.  This sweet dog, who loves to be outside, has helped my girl play more outside and learn to entertain herself instead of wanting me all the time.

MGT had us start our lesson with a color matching game that went to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.  I just substituted her name and bird.  Avaleigh has known her colors for a few years now, but she always loves a matching game.  Here's a little video of us playing.

After doing our color matching game, we did our Make and Play craft which was a little book called 

I Love My Pets.  She was to draw the pets on each page or glue pictures of them that MGT provided.  I was surprised they didn't include a dog as one of the pets to draw.  I walked her through how to draw each animal which was something new for her, and she wrote her name!  She hardly ever needs help with writing her name anymore.  I must say, my girl loves to color and draw and I was so impressed with her drawings!

I was seriously impressed.  I would tell her things like "Draw a circle for it's head." or "A rabbit has whiskers.  Draw 3 lines on each side of its' face for whiskers." 

 I love how she added bubbles for the fish.

Our final activity was Build a Bird which I left her to do on her own while I dealt with her 6 month old brother.  Basically she flipped over a little card, found the corresponding body part and built a bird on the provided bird cage.

We closed out our Caring for Pets day by reading How Do Dinosaurs Choose Their Pets from our local library.  I wish they had How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? or How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? but they didn't.  She loves these Dinosaur books, which I would have never known about had I not looked at MGT book list a few months back when we studied dinos.  

I am definitely ordering the dog one... I linked some below.

          

We had a lot of fun learning how to care for pets from MGT.
More importantly, I have actually seen her have fun caring for her pet, Bailey.


Happy Learning!

Animal Homes: Lodges and Dens

Did you know a beaver's home is called a lodge?

I think I learned that long ago, but it felt new to me today as we as we studied lodges and dens with our Mother Goose Time: Alphabet House unit.

We started our day by finding the beaver's home on the thematic poster.

Avaleigh even told me that it was built in the river!  I was surprised she just didn't say water.

Our Invitation to Create came with blue paper and a bag of wood chips!

I have a bucket of extra cups, plates and stuff, and asked my girl if she wanted to add anything to help her make her lodge.  She chose the cup below.  She worked on gluing and and placing the wood chips down to make her lodge. 

Our STEAM station for the day is pictured below.

My husband took down some dead trees in our yard 2 months ago, and cut some of the branches to be building blocks for the kids.  We usually use them outside, but I brought them indoors so she could build.  She was still mainly stuck on beavers, but we also discussed how bears live in dens.

Can you spot her little toy she hid in the lodge in the picture below?

We must have built and rebuilt its home 4-5 times.

In the end, she added a garden with some vegetables (letter s puzzle piece) <3 

I wanted Avaleigh to understand what happened when beavers build lodges on a river.  

So I drew a river and some trees on her chalkboard table.

Using the left over wood chips from our Invitation to Create, we pretended to send sticks and logs down the river and build a beaver lodge.   

Explaining that the lodge would block the river, I erased the river and drew a large oval and asked her what would happen to the trees.  She told me they would die, which was correct as they would be flooded out, but a pond or lake would be created, and new animals would live there.

She came up with all sorts of animals to add to the pond including otters! 

I would never have thought of that.  We did visit the zoo a few weeks ago...

I swear her memory is amazing... I think she took all of mine when I gave birth to her as I can absolutely remember nothing. 

We then read one of her favorite Usborne books, Peek Inside Animal Homes.

It has tons of little flaps and goes through all sorts of homes animals build or just where they live.

Below is the beaver page.  It has a flap showing the lodge and a flap showing the tree falling across the river. 

After reading, we crept outside while her brother napped in his swing.  I am still trying to get him to nap in his crib, but the hour long screaming that ensues when he has to nap in his crib drives me bonkers, especially if it's while we are doing preschool. #momlife.  You do what you gotta do.

After spending an hour outdoors, she asked for a cave to be built.  Everett was awake in his swing, so we built a cave.  We've done this all sorts of ways in the house, but the way pictured below is her fave. I clipped a large sheet to our fireplace and clamped the sheet to some stools.  She loves hiding and this is the perfect spot.  I love how I can still see what is going on under there.

We ended our study of lodges and dens by watching Wild Kratts on Amazon Prime. 

In season one, they have an episode on beavers. <-- link!
Perfect for today. 

Happy Lodge Making!