Monday, July 13, 2015

Climbing Trees with my Monkeys

We all know that my girls love animals so when we started talking about nature, we were all PSYCHED!

We started our classroom time off with our traditional circle time but added a fun movement that was suggested by Mother Goose Time. I asked both girls to pretend to climb and we counted to 10. We continued doing this and raised the number until we got to 50. After we were all climbed out, we pretended to swing like monkeys to our table to begin our art.

We started with the Koala Bear Puppet. I asked the girls what part of the tree animals eat and DANIELLA answered "leaves". I cannot say it enough. This program lights up my life. I have watched Daniella transform from the girl who hardly ever sat with us to do school to the young lady who, not only wants to participate, but answers questions in just a few months.

I gave both girls scissors (yes, I know Sonia's are not child proof ) and let them cut on their own. Sonia did hers very well and kept on the lines and made all the turns. Daniella needed some hand over hand but she is getting the hang of open and closing the scissors and that's improvement!






After the bears were cut out, I taped them together to make them into the puppet shape and they started to glue on the pieces.










Both were very happy with their art and I was impressed. I didn't tell either one where to put any pieces, I just sat back and watched. Sonia led the way and Daniella copied her. It is a blessing to watch my girls work together.




We went on to the next activity and decided we should make our Dough Critter. While I was getting all of the ingredients ready, we talked about which animals can climb. It was quite funny. We laughed a lot during this activity.



Then it was time to begin pouring. Sonia helped with the math and told me that if we needed 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and water that means that her and Daniella both get to do two things. Man, she's good!





Mixing the play dough to make sure we got the right consistency was super fun. They had their hands in the bowl and we talked about how it felt warm and squishy, then sticky, then like play dough!





They continued to create their masterpieces for about an hour. Daniella had a great idea to draw on it with markers and Sonia agreed. They even used some rocks we collected at the beach the day before and started to build with that. Sonia said hers was a burrow!





** Mother Goose Time allows me to follow two of my biggest passions. Educating my children and writing! I am honored to work with Mother Goose Time. I do receive the curriculum in exchange for my blog posts but every word in here is honest and a true example of this curriculum in a multi age home practice.

1 comment:

  1. I love all the pictures. You can see the activities unfold. Great post!

    ReplyDelete