B is for Birds

We had such a fun day yesterday with our Mother Goose Time.  We have pretty much been scraping by with the basic subjects the last few weeks with our home torn apart and our routine out the window.  So to come back to MGT was a great joy.  I really focus the MGT towards Adam who is just over 2 and I can do that easily with the Little Goose guide.

I had opened and not completed a few of the day bags.  So I had a bit of a random selection.  I chose to first look up what the Little Goose guide recommended to do with the color birds.  They told us to put the birds under plastic of some sort and let the kids "wash" the birds.  I used our handy dandy pouches and gave him a barely damp sponge.

I set him up on our new counter!! while I prepared lunch.  Well I had to take a quick break from food to take pictures and to talk colors with him.  I would name a color and he would try to find it and wash that bird. 

He doesn't know his colors quite yet though.  So I was more or less pointing to a colored bird, naming the color and then having him wash it. 

 He loved this activity!!!

After lunch we picked up where we left off.  I was busy cleaning up so I told Lachlan to be the teacher.  This is an awesome opportunity for him to be the "boss" which he so desires to be, at least some times. 

Next I handed out the zookeeper books to all the kids.  The first year we did this the boys were so young I just made the complete A to zoo zookeeper book and gave it to them to flip through.  This year I gave them just the book with the first few letters and plan to give them one new letter a day as we work through all the animals. 

Adam chose to write on his zookeeper book.  I did not stop him because I know how great the writing practice is for him.  However, 3 years ago, had Peter tried that, I probably would have taken it away from him.  I wouldn't want him to ruin it.  After years of using Mother Goose Time I now know that if I saved EVERYTHING that they give me I would have at least a closet full of stuff.  And that's just of the things they give us that can be used over and over again. 

Slowly, I have let stuff go.  Some recycled and some gifted to friends who are interested in homeschooling or just wanting to have some extra fun and learning over summer break. 

Adam was so concentrated on writing and he was being so careful to make small detailed marks on his page.  He often scribbles and happily cheers that he "wrote my name".

After our bird washing I moved onto the camel lessons.  One of them was to talk about their eyelashes and how they are used to protect their eyes from sand.  Before I could even start talking about this Lachlan started describing the details of the camel including the eyelashes.  He made it easy on me. 

Inside the day bag for Camel day was also the Look and Find Glasses.  So we got down the theme poster to take a closer look.  He is really good at finding the little white mouse in a children's book series we have but he does struggle with finding the correct image from the Look and Find glass on the poster.  Here we were searching for the camel and he got really close.

There it is!

Yay!!

Arms in the air celebrating. 

Everyone loves the theme poster.  Soon brothers were all around him. 

Each month Mother Goose Time provides a blank Look and Find glass to discover all the details of the poster.  It always makes for a cute photo.

We found the hippo, Lachlan's favorite animal.

I let Adam keep exploring the poster as I moved onto spelling with Lachlan.  We are using All About Spelling 1 for him.  He is 7 and in first grade.   Here he was spelling with tiles.  His spelling words were all words with U as the vowel. 

Meanwhile, Peter is pounding the water bottle with the paint brush we were using as a camel eyelash example.  I often have him join in with spelling.  I asked him to write out the words as Lachlan spelled them with tiles.  Then they can trade. 

 Lachlan came up with a photo idea so we arranged the letters in his hand to take a picture. 

 He was proud of his idea.

The next word was sun and he really wanted to be done with the lesson but I teased "don't you want to hold the sun in your hands?"

 This time I got him to smile. 

 What ever brother does, Adam has to do.  So Lachlan helped him hold a letter in his hand. 

I have really enjoyed using All About Spelling and what is most important is that they boys have really thrived under their lesson design.  The letter tiles that you see here are all on a magnetic white board.  As part of the daily spelling routine they place the tiles in alphabetical order.  The consonants are blue and the vowels are red.  

When we spell with tiles I say a word, then they pull down the first letter, the second letter and then the third as they sound it out.  In doing so, they have spelled the word.  It's not quite as simple as that because there has been a lot of foundation laid to get us to this point.  But I will have to write a whole post about All About Spelling at some point. 

The All About Spelling are affiliate links.  I started sharing about the program before I knew there was an affiliate program.  All opinions are my own and authentic.