Bird Bodies with Mother Goose Time

April has not been a particularly productive month for us.  I was going to say homeschooling-wise, but then I realized that it was pretty unproductive overall judging by how my house looked most days this month.

Yesterday, on the homeschooling front anyways, we did some serious catching up on our Mother Goose Time.  Instead of doing one day's activities, we did a whole weeks worth!  There are only a couple of days left in April, so we are doing marathons!

Little Guy was a little perturbed by the fact that we skipped all of the art projects, because, while art projects are his favorite part most days, they are also the most time consuming and therefore not conducive to productivity numbers.  However, I have warned him that if he can't participate nicely in Mother Goose Time, I will have to have them stop sending it to us.  This isn't because I am mean, but because I need to be able to blog regularly.  I think he had this in mind because he participated perfectly, with no arguments, through TEN activities yesterday.  

We learned about Bird Parts yesterday.  

Head & Beak:

We took it from the top (hahaha) and played Bird Vision (discussing bird's sharp vision compared to ours), although I turned it into a matching game, because I didn't feel like taping the cards on the wall.  Letters, numbers, and various bird eyes were matched.  The best part of this activity was that I won the game, and Little Guy didn't fuss about it at all.  

Then we played Bird Mix-Up, which was a set of mini puzzles.  Little Guy did these in record time, and then we mixed them up to make some silly birds.

Silly Birds!

Body:

Find a Body was our theme poster activity this month.  Little Guy loves these, probably because he is really good at using the "magnifying glasses" to find the pictures.  After he found a picture, he did the action from the back of the magnifying glass.  I also noticed that this month they had a question on each glass "Where is the ..."  I really like this, because it was another way to encourage him to use directional words (although he tried to get away with just pointing).

Standing on one foot like a flamingo.  He actually can stand on one foot pretty well, but I took a LOOOOONG time to remember to get the camera...

We also did a participation story called Egg Mystery.  He took a bunch of eggs, and as the story instructed him, he put them on a "pillow" and then turned them over as he found them "around the house".  At the end he answered some comprehension questions, one of which he struggled with, but I knew he knew the answer, he just didn't understand how the question was phrased, so I asked it a little differently and he got it.  

Wing:

Bird Migration was supposed to be much more active than I made it.  But I really don't like taping things to the wall when I am trying to use my time efficiently.  Plus we don't do snacks.  The real (and probably more fun) version of the game involved taping vocabulary photo cards to the wall, with a bowl of fruit under each picture, putting the vocabulary word cards in the pocket cube, and then rolling the cube, "migrating" to the matching picture after I told him what it said, and then eating a snack out of the bowl.  I just laid the words down on one side, the pictures on the other, and had him match them.  

Fly Away was our I Can Read book activity, and we went over a few new sight words (play, love, and away), as well as pointing out where the periods were and what periods mean. We read the story and he followed the bird's path on each page, working on pre-writing/eye hand coordination.

Feet & Claws:

Gross motor skills are important, so Bird Feet Moves was a nice break for Little Guy to get up and use his muscles.  We talked about ways that birds feet were the same and different than our feet, then he tossed the pocket cube (with bird feet cube cards) to me, like a flying bird, then used his feet like bird feet in the way that he rolled.  Okay actually I cheated and just said a different one each time.  Swimming, running, perching, grasping, and a couple more.  

In case he didn't get enough grasping with Bird Feet Moves, Claws Grab had him picking up "worms" (links) and putting them on a counting card.  He tried really hard, but apparently his feet are not particularly dexterous, and he kept losing count while he was trying to pick up the links.  I let him use his hands and it went better.  Then we did the higher counting cards, which was good practice, because between 13-19 he just says random "-teen" numbers.  Once he gets to twenty he does pretty good, it is just those pesky teens.

Tail:

Feather Measure was probably one of the first measuring activities I have had Little Guy do.  I don't know why, Mother Goose Time suggests them fairly often, I just tend to skip over them.  To start with Little Guy was supposed to estimate how many feathers long an item was.  He was really, really, really bad at this.  Mostly he just picked four, because he turned four last weekend.  Then he laid the feathers down and counted how many feathers long an item was.  Every thing was "and a half" so it was a little more difficult than it might have been if we had even feather measurements.

Our last activity on this packed day was Draw a Tail.  We traced his hand onto a postcard, then he decorated the tail feathers.  We had read a book a week or two ago talking about patterns, and it had pointed out the eye spots on a peacocks tail.  I reminded him of the eye spots, and he did a great job recreating them on his peacock tail.  Then he dictated a message to my mom, which he is getting much better at.  He even paused between each and every word waiting for me to writing it down.  

It was a BUSY, but really fun day.  I love doing Mother Goose Time activities with my son.  They give us something production, but entertaining to do.  They encourage him to learn about things I would never think to teach him, and the time we spend together is truly quality time.  

Hopefully next month we can do a more traditional schedule, but if not, at least I know we can play catch-up and still have a lot of fun!  Little Guy is four now, and in my opinion (which is probably shared by very few other people, but it is shared by my husband, which is what counts) I need to start being more consistent with his learning time.  

Mother Goose Time is provided to us at no cost in exchange for us sharing our pictures, experiences, and honest opinions.