Learning About Exotic Birds with Mother Goose Time

We did it.  We were a week late, but we finished our Birds & Eggs curriculum.  Yes, the art projects were skipped, but a lot of learning and a lot of fun were had.  For the next unit, we will just make sure we do a bunch of the art projects to make up for it!

Our last week was all about Exotic Birds.  I think this was Little Guy's favorite week, just because he knows the names of most of them.  We didn't do the Birdwatcher day at the end, although I might let him make the binoculars another day, because he made a pair last winter during "Going on Safari" and promptly broke them.  Which he still talks about.  That and his rhino horn that he took to my mother-in-law's house and left there.

Ostrich:

Bird Egg, Big Egg was fun.  We talked about how big an ostrich is, as well as how big their eggs can get.  Mother Goose Time provided us with a photo of an ostrich egg, and we compared other items in the room (a really weird assortment of items including our pocket cube and diaper cream) to the egg.

After determining which items were bigger than the egg and which were smaller, we lined them all up in size order.  I confused him a little by adding in the word larger instead of bigger.  Apparently I need to improve the array of adjectives I use.

Bird Run:

A board game that works on letter recognition is always fun.  First we looked at the World Map, which we really, really need to do more often, and Little Guy told me which continents he thought ostriches live on.  Then we looked at the game board to compare.  He used to know all the continents, but I haven't shown him a map in ages, and he seems to have forgotten them all.  Oh well, he has learned a million other things, and I am sure if I bring it out once a week he will have them memorized again in no time!  

Anyways, I put the letters in the pocket cube and we took turns rolling the cube.  On our turn we moved our bird to the next matching letter.  Very simple, and a little to easy for Little Guy, BUT it does help him learn to move to the NEXT matching space, rather than whichever one he wants to, so it is still building a helpful skill.

Penguin:

Our first penguin activity was Penguin Moves.  It was pretty straightforward, roll the cube and follow the movement prompt.  I didn't take any pictures, but Little Guy liked waddling around!

Then we had a science experiment, called Diving Birds.  I don't actually do as many of these as I should, because I think they are Little Guy's favorite thing to do.  Quite often I don't have all the supplies, but this time I did!  But my raisins were really old, so I think the experiment was a little anti-climatic.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so surely a video is worth 10,000, right?

Blue Crane:

Run from Mamba ended up being a gross and fine motor skill activity for us.  I decided we should make a REALLY long "snake" from our links.  Then we took turns being the mamba snake and the baby blue crane and chasing each other to a safe base.  Something Mother Goose Time has done very well at this year is giving variations on group activities that make it applicable to people with only one or two students.

Every month we some variation of Would You Rather?  I really appreciate this, because articulating and sticking with a decision is something that Little Guy is still working on.  Would You Rather? is a consequence free way to work on this skill.  I try to give him choices between things rather than just telling him what to do, but if what he REALLY wants to do is not one of his options he usually won't give me an answer and then pouts about whatever answer I decide for him.  So I have taken the easy way out and usually just tell him what to do, because he is much better at obeying a direct command than making a difficult choice.  

This time the explore activity was an interesting problem solving one.  I put out three cups, and he had to sort out six colors of links.  He decided that the red went in the red cup, blue in the blue cup, and green in the green cup.  Then he decided that orange was kind of reddish so it should also go in the red cup, and I asked him what colors made purple, so he put that one in the red one as well.  He tried to get me to answer for him, but I made him decide, although I did give him the reminders about color mixing.

 

Peacock:

We only did one Peacock day activity (also, only male "peacocks" are actually peacocks, when you are talking about the animal in general, it is a peafowl).  It was feather designs, and Little Guy took the links and copied a pattern from the peacock design cards.  He has dot maps to do in his other curriculum, and it isn't his strongest point.  Since it is a similar task, I was glad he had this more fun opportunity to skill build.  Dot maps are boring, but making colorful peacock tails is entertaining.  Something I found very interesting while observing him is that although he had a hard time determining where a piece should go, all but once he put them with the opening facing in the correct direction.  

I am a little disappointed in how we executed Birds & Eggs, but I am glad that we caught up for the most part.  Now we are about a week behind on Bugs & Crawly Things, but there are three extra days in May, so we should catch up no problem!

Little Guy and I are blessed and receive all of this fun curriculum free of charge in exchange for sharing our pictures and experiences.  All opinions are my own, or Little Guy's :)