Rhyme Time - 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe

This month with Mother Goose Time, the theme is Nursery Rhymes.  Honestly, I wasn't too thrilled.  Nursery Rhymes are kind of freaky.  You bake birds in a pie, humpty dumpty breaks into pieces, people live in shoes, etc.  Of course, Mother Goose Time does a fabulous job of highlighting the fun and silly, not the freaky.

So far, I have been so happy with this theme.  Knowing these nursery rhymes is kind of a right of passage for children.  It's not something I want to neglect my children.  It's also been excellent for their understanding of rhymes.  Especially this day when we learned 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe.

You can really hear the rhyming words in this one.  I read it one time through and then the second time I would read all but the second rhyming word in each line and they would finish it.

Since we say "3, 4, shut the door" in this rhyme our invitation to create was door themed.  I showed Lachlan and Peter the rectangular plates and the inspiration photo of colorful doors and they were hooked.  I offered to get them paint, but they couldn't wait that long, they jumped right in with markers.  They each picked a door in the inspiration photo they were basing their designs off of.

This is the inspiration photo that I stuck to my window.  I used this sticky strip made my post-it.  You can stick and re-stick items to it and when it loses it's sticky, you just wash it.  It's super sticky again when it dries.  I find when I hang it up here everyone can see it at the same time.  You can see Adam checking it out in the picture below.

It took me a while to catch up with the boys and actually read what was in the Teacher Guide for this activity.  I love the discussion questions and prompts they give us.  It gives another level to the activity we are working on and really adds to their vocabulary and their ability to share their thoughts.  The prompt in this activity asked "What do you think is behind the doors in the photo? What would you like to draw behind your door?"

This just flipped a switch in their minds and got them thinking up the details of what would be behind their door.

Lachlan and Peter were having a blast with the doors but Adam really likes to do serious "school".  He wanted his journal.  I was kind of teaching on the fly here, so I handed it to him and then quickly grabbed the Teacher's Guide to see what he is supposed to be doing on the cover.

 He was supposed to trace his shoe, but I was too slow.  He was already tracing his hand.

 His other favorite thing to do with our Mother Goose Time curriculum is to review the Circle Time display.  I updated the calendar and said the pattern from the beginning.  I asked him what today was going to be and he didn't want to answer me, he wanted to do his colors.  He is a determined and opinionated child.  I did push him a bit to try the pattern.  I really love how we are back to a pretty easy pattern.  At the beginning of the year we start with something like this, an AB pattern.  Then it gets more complicated.  So the last few months I haven't tried really hard to introduce it to Adam.  But here we are back at an AB pattern and it couldn't be more perfect timing for us.

I drape the color ribbons over the top of the Circle Time board and I lift one up at a time and ask him the color.  If he can't quite recall it on his own I make sound it out slowly.  Often when he hears the first sound of the color he can get the rest.

Next we count the fish and go over all the shapes that are on the clouds.

He studied the back for a while, where MGT has a fun matching activity. They could match the rhyming words and then follow the funny line between the two.

When he was done with the cover he turned to one of the inside pages.  There are directions on how to use each page in this journal in the Teacher's Guide.  But since Adam is only 2 almost 3, I let him use it a bit more freely.  Now these pages look like a bunch of scribbles.  But if you look closer, the page on the left where he was supposed to draw the capital I, he drew a bunch of lines up and down.  Then if you look on the page on the right, he tried really hard to follow the tracing lines.  I am so proud of him!

The older boys were just finishing up their doors at this point.  Lachlan made a blue and red door and was just getting started on the backside.

 I guess the blue and red door was bathroom door.  Uh, oh.  The door is open and the poor guy was exposed.

 Peter made a yellow double door, like a kitchen door in a restaurant.  But I guess I didn't get any photos of the front.

 On the inside he drew the chef in his kitchen.

He showed the backside of his door on the top, then the chef standing between his two counters with bowls of different colors.

We continue to recite this rhyme and it's been days since we did these activities.  The boys think it's fun and it's really tuned their ear to listening for rhyming words.  I read another children's book to them that has this same rhythm and rhyming and I would stop before finishing the line and they had a lot of fun figuring out what word would finish the sentence.

We continue to learn and be challenged by Mother Goose Time, even though my oldest is in 2nd grade and my middle son is in Kindergarten.  It really can be adapted to fit many levels of learning.