September - Brothers & Sisters

I have discovered that the best place to do Circle Time in our home, is at the breakfast table.  We talk about the question of the day, we do the Opening Rhyme and we talk about the weather and the day of the week.  When breakfast is over we head to the display wall and place the calendar piece up and do the weather.  On this day it was a late breakfast.  I couldn't get Lachlan to sit down and eat and Peter had eaten earlier.  So about 10 we sat down, Lachlan, Peter, Riley and Lucy.  The question today was, how are brothers and sisters different?

It was so perfect that Riley was here on this day.  I was able to ask, is Riley a sister or a brother?  Sister.  Is Riley a boy or a girl?  Girl.  "Aah, I see, so a Sister is a girl and a Brother is a boy." as if I had a moment of revelation.  Yes, they told me, that's right, you figured it out Mom.  Yay for me.  This was a fun topic because in February Lachlan and Peter will be getting a new brother or sister.  I keep asking them if they want a brother or sister and they always say brother.  I wasn't sure if it was because they only know what a brother is or if the knew the difference and still wanted a brother.  When I asked them again after this conversation, the answer was still brother.  So we shall see.  I want to take them to the ultra sound and have the ultra sound tech tell them if its a brother or sister rather than tell me if it's a boy or girl.  I thought that would be kind of fun.  We might need to keep working on this vocabulary between now and then.

Next we did the Opening Rhyme along with it's hand movements.  They put down their spoons for a second and played along.
Two little siblings sitting on a hill,
One named Jack, the other named Jill.
Go play Jack.  Go play Jill,
Come back Jack, come back Jill.

We used our fists for Jack and Jill and had them climb the hill and go back and forth just like the rhyme.  They really enjoyed this and had me do it over and over. 

Next I asked them what they did with their brothers and sisters?  Lucy is an only child but she immediately looked at the boys when I said this.  Very sweet.  Both the boys talked about all the different things they play with their brothers.  Then I got out the Jack and Jill Rhyme Time Poster.  I read the rhyme of Jack and Jill.  The first time reading it through slowly, pausing to talk about what might happen next.  I ended up reading it several times through and had them repeat it after me.  When I asked them if they wanted to act it out, they were game!
It was a wonderful breakfast!  Everyone was done eating and we hopped down to start acting it out. 

Lucy played Jill every time and Peter and Lachlan took turns as Jack. 

This is the hill they walked up each time.

They always came running back towards me to tumble down.

Awe

Two Jacks and a Jill.

 Here they come running to tumble down the hill together. 

Next we looked for Family Members in the Theme Poster.  We got out our Look and Find Glasses and I gave one to each child and two to Peter.  He was the most excited about this.  They took the Look and Find Glass to the poster, found the object and then gave the glass back to me so I could read the question on the back.  One of them that I remember clearly was when we found the Dad in the poster.  It asked what color pants he was wearing and if there was anything else in the poster that color.  His pants were blue and we spent a lot of time at the poster finding everything else blue.  So fun and simple. 

Peter seemed to want to find things with his foot.

I don't have a picture of the pails Mother Goose Time provided but they are so cute.  Little silver pails for them to collect green and yellow circles in.  Green and Yellow are our colors this month and a circle is the shape.  We got foam shapes that I punched out and they sorted the colors between the pails.  They sent a green and yellow ribbon, one to tie to each pail.  So we had one pail for green and one marked for yellow.  Still have this one set on the counter at the top of the learning tower. 

At the end of the day with just my two boys we did the art for the day.  It was a large piece of paper with a well at the top of a hill.  The hill was blank for us to paint green.  But we didn't just paint it green, we used blue and yellow paint to mix green on the page.  One brush for yellow one for blue and we acted out Jack and Jill with the brushes.  As we tumbled them down the hill the two colors mixed and turned into green!