Saturday, March 15, 2014

Explore the Pond - Snakes

Our 3rd son finally arrived at 41 weeks, March 7, 2014.  At 7 days old he is starting to take longer naps during the day.  At first it was just 30 minutes here and there.  I would set him down, run around the house, getting dressed, cleaning up, feeding children and all the necessary things that needed to get done just for survival. 

As his naps started getting longer, I would run out of necessary survival tasks to do and start looking for more.  Yes, if he was my first son, I would sleep when the baby sleeps.  But since I have two others, that's not an option.  What kept tearing at my heart was the fact that the big boys haven't had much attention from me and were taking it like champs.  So I decided, some good one on one time would be the best thing to do with what ever remaining time I had. 

I took most of February off of school in preparation for baby's arrival.  It was a nice break, as we never did take a break for summer.  I think the boys and I both needed it.  But it didn't take long for us to start missing it as well.  Lachlan, started a few days ago, asking "when are we going to do school again."  Soon, I hope, would be my response. 

So I grabbed a day bag from my Mother Goose Time box.  It happened to be a day about snakes, which Lachlan and Peter have both loved lately.  Pretending everything from a beaded necklace to their stethoscopes are snakes. 

I started with the opening question, how do you feel about snakes? "Good" says Lachlan.  "I love them.  Some squeeze people, the big snakes. And the small snakes bite."  Then we said the tongue twister. 

Sixty-six slithering slimy snakes, 
Slither silently in the sand.

Next we started on There Was a Turtle which had us read the Rhyme Time Poster that came with this months kit.  I said a line and Lachlan repeated it as we read through.  The opening question was, what do you think snakes eat?  Peter said "grass" and Lachlan said "ones with sharp teeth eat meat."  We had just watched a Super Why? show that was about dinosaurs and how we could tell what they ate by what kind of teeth they had.

We moved on to the second activity, Feeding Frenzy, which turned out to be the last activity of the day, as Adam woke up.  But it was a fun one.  I had two sets of animals, 3 with a blue background and 3 with purple.  These are the two colors for the month.  I also had a set of blue foam diamonds and purple diamonds.  I punched those out, set them on the counter, mixed them up and then gave the boys each a pair of tweezers or tongues.  I gave Peter the purple set of animal cards and Lachlan the blue and had them grab the matching diamonds to feed their animals.




When they were all done feeding their animals I asked them how many they fed each animal.  Lachlan had fed each of his three animals equal amounts.  Two for the frog, two for the snake and two for the turtle.  Peter had fed 3 to the first animal, 2 to the second and 1 to the last.  It was a counting activity on top of the sorting. 

So maybe I didn't get them dressed and they were still in their jammies.  But hey, I am still happy with the little bit of school we got done. 

Okay, publishing with out previewing.  Please excuse typos!

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