Play With Me

I wasn't sure if the kids would enjoy Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets since the pictures were rather simple and only a couple of them were in color. I definitely have full color type children. We spent the week talking about how God created the animals and plants as preparation for our big trip to the Zoo. The two websites that we used were http://learningpage.com and http://kidzone.ws. Both of these sites have great zoo info and excellent free printable worksheets. This storyline intrigued Stephen and we have been able to have more and more conversations about the details in all of our books. The story begins with a little girl that wants to play with various animals, but they keep running away from her only to reappear to her at the end of the book. We talked about habitats of the various animals, feelings and reflections that we saw in the water created by the little girl and animals. We even managed to see some of the animals on our recent Zoo trip including a squirrel. I know there was a chipmunk in the book, but the cookie-eating squirrel at the Zoo playground was close enough. We had planned to go over the pond to see our own reflections, but it got cold on us after our trip to the Zoo AND there is a chance of snow AGAIN!!

Like I said, we were able to go to the Zoo today thanks to our Zoo membership from Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas gift. Our first stop was to the Family Play Zoo and we were quite impressed. Stephen was more interested in getting an overview of the place instead of focusing on any one activity unless he was grossly interested. I am sure we will get to see more on our return trip :-) Rhea enjoyed playing dress-up while Stephen really did enjoyed the Vet area that emphasized the care of baby animals. He very carefully "helped" all of the animals get better and stacked their cages one by one when he was finished. It was really cute to watch and Rhea join in after she was done running in circles around the building. The kids also had a chance to feed some smaller animals and water the plants with spray bottles. We look forward to going back since the kids were really excited to move on.

Our next stop went by the bears and into the Children's Zoo where we brushed the goats and saw many other animals close up and personal. We put together an animal picture book yesterday and brought stickers to mark the animals we saw. This excited Stephen for the first couple of animals and then he didn't show any interest again until we were headed out to the car. I reassured him that we would come back to finish the book. We also took some time yesterday to print out a map and being to navigate through it today at the Zoo. I numbered the place we were going to go and highlighted the buildings he wanted to visit. His sense of direction still needs a bit of work :-) but at least he understands the concept and not everything relies on Mommy's phone navigator that talks to her in the car.

After a trip to see the monkey's, we finished the trip at the gift shop since Grandma had sent some cash for them to buy what ever they wanted. They of course drifted towards the annoying and potentially dangerous toys, but I think we found things that made everyone happy. Stephen found a bunch of Zoo cars and trucks while Rhea found a bucket of animals and trees to make her own forest. As you can see from the last pictures, we had a fun day and can't wait to go back.

Katy No Pocket

We just finished Katy No Pocket by Emmy Payne this week and as always, had a great time. The best go along book was Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle. I don't think there are any Eric Carle books that I don't like and this one fits right in by helping us talk about mommy animals and their babies. One of Stephen's favorite was Gluey: a snail tale by Vivian Walsh since he has become interested in magical fairytale type books. Imogene's Antlers by David Small, The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson were also favorites of the week. Stephen was able to recall the Katy No Pocket story by the second evening and it wasn't long before we were ready for our big family activity. Katy was a Kangaroo that didn't have a pocket for her baby. She was very upset that she didn't have a pocket for her baby, so she decided to ask other mommy animals how they carried their babies. She finally asked Owl how to carry her baby and he said to go to the city to get a pocket. This was a great way to talk about nocturnal owls. The owl in the book was upset that Katy woke him up during the day. We talked about how Owl sleeps during the day and plays at night. Katy went to the city and found a man with an apron that carried tools. We decided to use our aprons to carry our stuffed animals. We found that some of the animals were too big and some were just right.

We usually lay our our matching cards on the floor, but I did it differently with the Katy No Pocket Cards. One set was laid on the table and I handed them the matching set one at a time. This gave us time to talk about each letter since Stephen is starting to recognize letter and recall their sounds.

Rhea's animal file folder game by http://preschoolprintables.com/

Itsy Bitsy Spider Book by http://www.kidzone.ws/

Stephen painted his kangaroo, pocket, and baby first and then cut out the pieces after it dried. We then glued it together and made a nice frame that Stephen was especially proud of.
Rhea's kangaroo

Stephen cut out pictures of all the animals that Katy put into her pockets. I highlighted the beginning of each word and we worked on starting sounds. I pasted the words and he was pretty successful in matching starting sounds and beginning letters to the appropriate animal.

Our last activity of the week was to measure how far a kangaroo could jump. We looked it up on the computer and found that the average jump is 25 feet, but someone must have recorded 40 feet. We marked out both 25 feet and 40 feet and decided that 25 feet seemed to be more reasonable unless it was a REALLY big kangaroo. We tried to jump as far as a kangaroo, but the kids quickly lost interest in that activity since it was impossible and riding their bikes seemed like more fun after being couped up in the house for so many months. How could mom possibly try to make us learn something when we could be playing? The upside was that Stephen remembered how far the jump was by the next day, so I call this unit a sucess.

Little Rabbit and ABC Bunny

We managed to get only a little Before Five in a Row work done during the month of March. Besides, it was Easter and we had so many bunny books to read.

We did many art project from the KUMON Method and A Becka craft books, but our favorite project was from Little Rabbit. We talked about how the pictures in the story were taken from different angles. Stephen recalled each angle without prompts and took the following pictures. His only problem was trying to figure out how to take a picture "from below". I had to help him process through that one and then Rhea insisted on taking a picture of her brother all by herself so not to feel left out of the project.