Learning About Pigs - Toddler Time

This is my 550th post!  Wow, who knew I had so much to say.

Today we are looking into day 2 of Mother Goose Time's Down on the Farm theme.  This is such a cool theme, and 3 years ago we got a lot farther into the topic.  But this year, I find myself focusing more on the basics of school with my older children and less time with my little one.  I don't think this is fair and I don't think it's as fun.  I believe we have over committed to too many classes and gatherings outside of our home and hope to cut back next term.

But when we need it, Mother Goose Time is always there with awesome learning activities that are engaging, fun and teach important lessons.  The fist activity we started with was the Muddy Pig.  We were given this rectangle of pink foam with fringe cuts on one side and a blue rubber band.  First we rolled it up and rubber banded the non-fringe cut side and made a little brush.

I asked Adam to brush certain parts of the pig and we started with the feet.

Then I read that we were supposed to go on a nature hunt and find a stick to turn into a brush.  I sent the older boys out on a search.

 Lachlan brought one in for Adam and himself.

 We got Adam all set up with a stick brush of his own.

 Then I had them brush his ears, it was a team effort.  We counted his ears too.

We actually did not get out the brown paint to make the pig muddy until the next day.  At this point we got down from the table and I set up the theme poster on the ground for Adam to explore.  I also included the brown ribbon wand and the look and find glasses.  Mother Goose Time recommended we have them look for something brown.  I tried to get him to focus on that, but there was just too much there to explore.

 He found the pigs right away.

Still focused on the pigs, he says, "I love pigs."  I had a fascination with pigs when I was little too, maybe it runs in the family. I was proud of him when he picked up the look and find glass that is just open in the middle.  He said "I use the circle".  He is really picking up on shapes, colors and counting really fast.

I took a quick video of us exploring the theme poster.  I used my DSLR camera and you can hear the lens focusing, I need to figure out how to better use the video option, until then, if you can look past that background noise, it's pretty neat to see all the things kids can find in these posters and all the topics we can cover as we explore.

Did you notice Peter missing from all of these photos so far, that's because he was on a stick hunt, remember?  Well he found his stick.  Not sure how you are going to paint with that buddy, but it's cool none the less.

The next day I finally got the courage to mix brown paint and sand.  But I was smart enough to have Adam paint in just a diaper.

I had him set up with the inspiration photo, but I don't think he looked at it much, he had his own plan in mind.

He started at the head and moved all the way to the tail.

So much joy in creating.

Peter was next up and he covered every square inch of the pig.  He was not interested in adding any sand.

They each get to do their own thing, which is the great part about these open ended invitations to create.

Sure we learned about pigs on this day but let's think about what else we covered.  We learned about parts of the body, feet and ears.  We talked about a circle which was last months shape.  We covered colors by looking for brown, this months color and also looking for green, last months color.  We talked about a sleeping pig and a boy with glasses.

And we learned the difference between clean and dirty.