A Hopping Good Time - Mother Goose Time

Every month another theme with Mother Goose Time Preschool Curriculum!  As you know (if you read my blog on a semi-regular basis) this month we are learning all about things we find At the Pond.  I have to say, in the last 2-4 weeks, Little Guy has improved in his drawing immensely, FINALLY making representative drawings on a regular basis.  Before he had only done that a few times, but lately he is doing great! 

I have been doing a lot better at something too!  Doing the explore parts of the activities.  Often times I skip right to the create or play parts, ignoring the free play introduction most of them have.  Little Guy loves them most of the time, so I am happy to be more on top of that!

Today we learned all about tadpoles and frogs.  This was supposed to be two separate days, but we did both because we are that cool.  Or that behind, either way.

Apparently I was really slacking on the picture taking, because we did six activities and I only have three pictures, one of which I literally just took...

First we used our pattern cards that we get almost every month to learn the Frog Life Cycle.  Sometimes Little Guy is good at this, sometimes not so much.  He seemed to have an easier time with it this month than other, probably because it was an scientifically understandable pattern, rather than related items.  It is an ABCD: Egg, tadpole, polliwog, frog. 

Next up was a Make & Play project called Tadpole Dancer, which Little Guy colored VERY hastily, then used to dance along to our electric pop music CD of the month.

The last thing we did for the tadpole portion of our day was the cover for My Little Journal.  We are really, really bad at staying on top of the journaling, but we usually do decorate the cover.  Or in the past, Little Guy would scribble some lines on the cover and write his name.  I am not even being my usual insensitive self when I call his drawing scribbles.  He couldn't even tell me what they were right after he did them.  Literally just scribbled so he could say he was done.  Today he actually drew a (sort-of) recognizable picture, and took his time decorating it with tadpoles!  We talked about what color his skin, hair, and clothes are, then he drew a picture of himself.  We had to stop part way through because I forgot to have him pick colors for his eyes and mouth!  After that he got to fingerpaint tadpoles and then draw tails on them.  I was pretty happy with his results, and I think he was too.

One of these tadpoles has been in polluted water, it has two tails.  I didn't tell him that though.

Next we played Frog Jump, which I didn't take any pictures of... But basically we jumped flippy frogs around on a game board identifying numbers. 

Today he made both a Tadpole Dancer AND a Frog Headband!

F is for Frog was next.  Again, no pictures.  I am usually so camera happy, I am not quite sure what happened...  Anyways, we started by talking about what letters begin with the /f/ sound.  Little Guy knows all the phonetics for letters (even long and short vowels) but is pretty bad at finding words on his own that start with something.  So I switched things up for him, so he could still get the benefits, without having to get frustrated.  I would say a word and he would tell me if they started with an /f/ sound.  This was actually great because rather than just working on the /f/ sound, he worked on lots of sounds!  Then we rolled the cube and followed the directions.  If a frog was rolled, he hopped over the "pond" (flat diaper), if a fish was rolled he wriggled across the "pond", and if it was an "f" or "F" he wrote the letter on a piece of paper.  His favorite was when a frog was rolled, and he hopped more than once each time.

Lately I have been saving one fun project for after lunch.  Little Guy is a ridiculously slow eater.   If he doesn't eat in a timely manner, I don't read him a story at nap.  Now I also don't let him do the art project I was saving for him.  I am only a few days in, but it seems to be fairly motivating.  I also told him that if he beat the timer, not only would he get to make a Frog Headband, but I would also take him to the REAL pond!  He made the headband very quickly, just a quick mouth and a nose, then I taped it together.  We went to the pond (although we left pretty quick because he was to tempted by the puddle and splashed around NOT in his rainboots - it was sunny all day, I didn't think I needed to put him in rainboots!) and saw the ducks.  "Our" pond is a bit disappointing (or awesome depending on how you look at it because lots of pond creatures are kind of icky) and only has ducks and fish, and has a fence around it so you can't actually get to the water.  It is manmade and very well maintained, but doesn't have a lot of wildlife.  He doesn't seem to mind though and is always very excited to walk down there.

We have done quite a few more days this month, and it has been super fun, despite the "ick" factor of many of these topics.  Little Guy has loved all the books we checked out, and I know more about mayflies and crawdads then I ever thought I would.

Mother Goose Time is provided to us free of charge in exchange for sharing our honest experiences and pictures.  All opinions are our own.