Wow we have had such a busy and full month so far! Summer hit us hard here in the desert, but that hasn't stopped the kids from enjoying every minute of our Discover the Desert theme this month! Our first week the kiddos were Cowboys! The enjoyed making lassos, hats and boots! I think the lassos were one of their FAVORITES that week. After the project was over they spent nearly an hour in dramatic play! I had a housefly of lassoing cowboys :) First they wrangled the castle and then they went around the room catching everything from blocks to babies and dinosaurs! I heard lots of "yew-haw's" and "giddy-up's" that week! And EVERYONE was a partner! I love how Mother Goose Time includes so many fun projects that get the kids imaginations working. I see their littler personalities come out and the more fun they have while learning the more of it they remember! The kids favorite activity while we were learning about the Sahara desert was our pyramid craft! Every age group had a blast with this. They got to dip rectangle sponges into glue and "build" their pyramids with the glue and sand :) They enjoyed feeling the sand and watching it run through their fingers. It was a great sensory activity! We also got to learn about desert plants and animals! We did a sensory and discussion activity on the cactus plant and cactus seeds. We compared the tiny cactus seeds to other plant seeds we've seen before (sunflower, pumpkin, apple, watermelon, etc). The older kids enjoyed sorting the bowl of seeds to find different sizes, while they younger kids liked running the seeds through their fingers! The kids really enjoyed making their desert Cotton Tail bunny puppets. This was another art project that turned into an extended dramatic play session AND the kids learned a new song "Peter Cottontail"! They wanted me to sing it over and over until finally they had nearly memorized it! Our FCC office on post was having a summer camp for the kids. One of the days worked out perfectly with our desert theme because the Desert Wildlife Manger came out and did a lesson for the kids. He had all his animals out for the kids to see. They got to learn about and see a live desert tortoise, rattlesnake (caged) and owls! There were several other types of animals and bugs too. He had great information about how the animals live in the desert, which ones are dangerous and why. He also explained what to do if you saw a dangerous or injured animal. It was great! The kids got to pet the owl and they LOVED it! We also had a friend over late on Friday so we had a Friday Fun Day! I had done some searching and found a lesson from great old friend and someone every teacher looks up to: Miss Frizzle!!!! <3 I found a great Magic School Bus episode all about the desert. This has been such a fun theme packed full of learning and I LOVE the kids response. Because we live in the desert I've gotten reports on how many cacti were counted on a walk with the family, one child talking about a pack of burros they saw (we call them the neighborhood watch because they roam all over post), A-Bear told me all about a bunny she saw while she was at the park, and so many more great stories the kids have brought in about what they've seen in our desert :)
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My FCC home has grown and expanded! I've welcomed several new littles and with the additions I'm having to learn how to teach a multi-age classroom. Kids in each age level learn differently and on top of that every child is on their own path! With varying ages you have to make sure that you are proving lessons that aren't TOO challenging and frustrating for the younger ones, but at the same time they can't bee too easy or boring for the older ones. Finding that balance is important.
Over the past few weeks I've been reading, researching and practicing different techniques to help my multi-age classroom be the best it can be! What does this mean? It means that our lessons vary depending on the children's ages and they are also slightly different from child to child. Sometimes the children work in age groups and rotate through an activity. The oldest ones might be reading books while I help the younger ones work on puzzles. Maybe the twos are in free play while the three+ are doing a board game! Other times the kids might be doing one activity as a large group with minor variation for each child. The older group might be working with markers while the younger ones have chunky crayons! One example where I use the "rotation style" is writing. When my older group is working on their name tags, work books, or tracing sheets I like to be able to focus on them. I like to watch their "pencil grip" and make sure they've got a good hold on their writing utensil. I like to observe their letter formation and remind them to give their BIG I a "hat" or "shoes" if they forgot. With these little learners starting to write they need those reminders and guidance, but if I have a one or two year old at the table with us the bigger kids have to worry about their papers getting pulled away or bumped. I am more focused on making sure the younger group doesn't have the crayons in their mouths... etc. SO, first my older group either has free play, book time or I may have a station set up for them. My younger group gets to sit at the table and we do a letter activity! They aren't writing yet, they aren't at that developmental level. So we work on letter recognition instead. Check out Big-E here using these Sassy foam letters. My little kids love them because they have cool textures :) In this activity we dumped the whole bucket of letters on the table and then went through saying each letter as we put it back into the bucket. Next we found all the letters in his name and spelled his name out. He really liked the part where he traced his name with his fingers!
When the youngest were done with the activity they were happy to go play! I find that working with the youngest first helps keep them from getting anxious and pushy for their turn. It really keeps them from disrupting the older group who are trying to focus. The youngest are tired of sitting at the table and are ready to go play again :)
So now the older group gets to come to the table and we get out whatever materials they are using for that writing activity. Sometimes its our Mother Goose Time Little Journal work books, sometimes its a tracing sheet, other times it's their name tags... I like to mix up their writing utensils to help them get used to an assortment of things! Their favorites are when I get out the big kid pencils (golf pencils), for some reason it makes them feel so grown up! They also use markers, crayons and pens.
Here is an example of when I implement the group activity with minor variations depending on the child. This was a Mother Goose Time art activity where the kids were learning about cacti. We talked about how they are poky and they used "pokey" materials to paint with!
While my older kids felt a real cactus I gave my boys (both 2yr) pokey "cactus balls" to feel. I was a little nervous about little hands grabbing the cactus and getting hurt. They loved the cactus balls and they had fun putting them into the empty paint trays. Neither of them seemed to even notice the real cactus that the older ones were feeling.
Next we moved into he art portion where the kids got to use wooden forks and the cactus balls to paint their own cactus with. During this activity I sat near the younger boys so I could help them with ripping, cutting and gluing their green paper to create a cactus. Then I let them loose with the paint. The older girls had scissors and have already learned how to use them safely. They still asked for a little help to finish cutting, but they did everything else on their own!
Big-E wanted NOTHING to do with the paint. He was to into sorting the cactus balls and trying to scoop them up onto the fork. Because I was sitting next to him I used the opportunity to work on his vocabulary and speaking skills. We talked about how the balls felt, what colors the paper and paint were, the plant we were making, etc.
Buddy-B on the other hand was ALL OVER the paint! He couldn't wait to dip his cactus ball into the paint and roll it on his paper. While I was talking with Big-E I included Buddy-B in on the conversation and we described the movements he was using to paint... dot with the fork, rolling the ball, swishing the fork, etc. The girls giggled and would say I can "swish my fork too!".
The nice thing about these large group activities is you have a mentorship going on. The younger kids watch and learn from their older peers and often times if an older child sees their younger friend struggling they'll offer to help. It really is great friendship building and helps the children be aware of each other.
I really enjoyed this post from the Mother Goose Time Blog, there are several great multi-age partner play activities!
Summer is here and living in the desert water play is a VERY big part of our outdoor activities. Water Play is fun, but important for so many reasons!! Check out this great post from Mother Goose Time about why children need water play :)
Water play can be free play where you give the kiddos some toys and a table full of water... and that's it! Let their imaginations and curiosity take it from there :) Here are a few of my Kiddie Korner littles in free-play at a summer bash event we went to with our local FCC group. They had nets, cups, squirt toys, etc in the water tables and the kids had a blast playing!
Other water play activities can be lesson based and directed. Here was a super simple water play activity I used during our Bees and Butterflies module. I used some simple pipettes for the kids to use to transfer water. The lesson was based on how bees and butterflies get nectar out of a flower. They use their proboscis (long tube like piece of an insects mouth used for sucking liquid)! The kids got to suck water up into the pipette just like a bee :)
For some extra fun during the activity I had two separate colors for the kids to mix into their cups. They thought it was awesome who the yellow and blue made green!
HOW DO YOU STAY COOL IN THE SUMMER?!
Science is an important part of life, it's all around us! I love doing science with the kids because they get to ask questions, tell me their ideas and then test those ideas out. Without even knowing it they are building the foundations of the scientific process. In May we did A LOT of life science. We studied bees and butterflies. The kids spent nearly three weeks learning about our metamorphosis! They got to spend and entire month learning about how things grow. Our Mother Goose Time activities and discussions really helped the kiddos learn more about the basic needs and that plants, animals and even themselves have. We got to see little tiny caterpillars and talk about how they would grow. We discussed how we eat food and it helps us to get bigger and grow taller! They observed the caterpillars growing bigger too. The littles got to see the cocoons forming and a few of them even got to witness the butterflies emerging :) After our butterflies had emerged and had time to stretch their wings we talked about why we needed to let the butterflies free! We discussed places where the butterflies might like to live. We live in the desert, with very little flowers. The kids knew that the butterflies would need flowers for food so we talked about the community garden and how there were lots of plants and some flowers there. I set up a field trip with the garden and the kids couldn't wait! The kids also got to observe a little earth science during the release! Originally we were going to do our release on Monday, but it was raining and VERY windy. I asked the kiddos why today might not be a good day to let our butterflies out and they all said the rain would be too hard for them to fly in. They observed the weather on Wednesday and we decided that the nice sunny day would be perfect AND there wasn't too much wind that day. The kids were so excited to see the butterflies go free. While we were there the kiddos made a few observations: "we should let them out by the big flowers, so they have lots of food to eat", "there is a net above the garden that's nice and shady, will the flutters like that shade?", "there aren't birds in here so they might be safe and not eaten", "when the flowers get water the butterflies will be able to get a drink", and so many other cute little things were said!
The littles were all hard at work exploring the new environment for our butterflies and how all the things in the garden would work together to help our butterflies grow. Science is FUN! |
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Proud supporter of Mother Goose Time curriculum!All the posts in this blog are from real life experiences. We've taken the activities and materials provided in the Mother Goose Time curriculum and modified it in different ways to fit our lifestyle. Enjoy the read!
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