Learning with Roo - A Day with Frogs

This post kind of has a silly title so let me explain.  Roo, is Adam's cousin Riley's nickname and she and Colton were over for the day when I got out the Mother Goose Time day about Frogs.  She was so sweet and did the whole day along with Adam.  Then she created her own lesson and taught him to count to 20.  It warmed my heart.

But first we spent some time at our Circle Time display.  I set it on the floor this time and Adam got right up close.  He actually knocked it over so I put it up against a little bookshelf we have in the living room.  He started pointing to and naming all of the animals on the calendar, which I did not update.  It was actually the 29th of March when we did this.

But not to worry, the calendar is still good for something.  Fresh off learning about patterns with our pattern set the day before, we followed the animal pattern on the calendar.

Then Adam walked me through all the colors.  He asked me what color they were for the first few and then he called out the name of the color for the last few.

 While he was at the display I was sitting next to him putting together his frog mask. He could have done parts of it on his own, but he wasn't interested.  I thought once he had the headband put together he would get interested.  At first, he would wear it but didn't want me to take a picture, but when Riley AKA Roo got involved he was all in!

And there she is, Ms. Roo.  This young lady is the only girl cousin out of all the cousins on her Mother and I's side of the family - 6 boys and 1 Riley.  As they get older she gets a little more into the girl stuff and the boys have gotten a little more into the boy stuff, but she still puts up with them.  She is one smart and special young lady.  She loves anatomy and science, it has been a joy to watch her grow and I can't wait to see where life takes her.

So here they are, the two frogs hopping the toy frogs we got from Mother Goose Time onto the numbered lily pads.  I told Riley, that Adam doesn't know his numbers yet, so if she could say the name of the number when the frogs land on them, that would be super helpful.

 They played, she said the numbers and I took pictures.

 He wasn't sure how to jump the frogs at first and she gently showed him how.

 Here is one in mid air.  After playing this for a while, Adam started to recognize some of the numbers for himself.  He had one land on 7 and he said 7.

This is where Roo got creative.  She took the left over strips from the headbands, stapled them together and made a race track for the frogs.  She numbered the circles but her numbers when into the teens.  Then the froggies raced down the track.  After they were done racing she sat with Adam and had him count with her to 20.

The last activity had us roll the pocket cube with the letter F, a fish and a frog as well as two other letters of your choice. I chose Ks.  Adam was again super hesitant until Roo chose to join in.  They rolled the cube and got the frog, so they hopped across the pond or blanket.

 Next they rolled the letter f and so they were supposed to write f on a paper.  Adam came to the paper, scribbled all over it.  Riley didn't care and didn't tell him that's not f, she just went with it.

Then she took her turn, but of course she had to write her name at the top of the paper first.  I remember how important that rule was at school.  With that many kids in a class, if you didn't have your name on it, it got lost and the teachers always made sure we had our names on everything!

 Then they rolled frog one more time.

It was so nice to have a new friend to do Mother Goose Time with.  Adam and Roo had so much fun together.  It's fun to see another child teach a younger child.  What's neat, is that they have no preconceived notion of what Adam should or should not be able to do at this age.  So why not teach him all the numbers to 20?