Experiencing Winter and Math

This week has been so much fun with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! The theme this month is Winter in the woods and while it is a perfect theme for the month of December, I think we are relating to it in a very real world way because of our move. We are for the first time experiencing a real winter. So instead of just reading about season changes, cold weather, snow, and hibernation we are actually experiencing it. It is 25 degrees out in Washington right now and it hasn't snowed yet but there is frost covering the ground in the mornings and it is beautiful. On day 4 the invitation to create was all about making tracks in the snow so of course we bundled up and made tracks in the layer of crunchy frost that was covering the grass. It was a super sensory experience for them, and something my little San Diego natives have never experienced before. We looked at our foot prints and felt the frozen plants. Then we came back in to warm up and used shaving cream mixed with glue to make our own tracks in the snow art. They both loved this project, the texture of the shaving cream paint was so much fun.

This week there was a big focus on math. Which is great for my little guy because he is very interested in numbers lately, he wants to count everything. He is a lot more confidant in this area then he is at letters and writing. That is coming along though, he continues to write his name and is even tracing the letters in the journal lately. The first day we learned to measure distance by pretending we were jumping deer. We made cute deer headbands and then some great imaginative play took place for awhile. They pretended to be deer in a forest and they leaped over items around the house. They also pretended that one of them was a lost baby deer looking for their mom. After they tired of this we became a little more focused and used masking tape to make a starting line for jumping and then used another piece to mark the landing. We investigated if you could jump a greater distance by jumping standing still from the starting point or if you could jump a greater distance by getting a running start. We measured the distances by taking foot steps and counting how many foot steps each jump was. Preston had a little trouble understanding this concept at first, but big sister helped to walk him through it. It was nice seeing them take a break from bickering and work something out together.

Later in the week we worked on grouping, this lesson was on day 2 which was all about hedgehogs. This was interesting because it was the first time he has been asked to group items and then count the groups. This months box came with little counting bears and todays task was to put them in groups of 4 and then count how many groups there were. First thing we did was use the included looking glasses to find various items and animals on the theme poster. He found the 4 hedgehogs on the poster no problem and enjoyed counting them. I made sure to point out groups of animals on the poster to him. Then we got out the bear counters and I asked him to make me a group of four bears. He did this and then we made more groups until all the bears were used. I then asked him how many groups we were able to make. He kept wanting to count each individual bear at first so I got out little baskets and asked him to put each group of bears into a house. He put each group into a house and then I asked him how many houses there were. He counted the houses and I explained that each house had a group of bears so we then counted the groups of bears. I think this helped him to see it in a way that made more sense to him. Having them separated into houses helped him to see the groups a little more clearly. We then sorted the bears into colors and counted the groups of bears by color just for some reinforcement.

This first week of Winter in the Woods has been so much fun, we are really excited for next week which is going to be all about pine trees, pine cones, snow flakes, icicles and snowmen! hopefully we will actually get a little bit of snow by the end of the week so we can make a snowman, even if it is a tiny one. We also have a great trip panned to our first cut your own tree farm. It will be a great trip to go along with the pine tree day. I just love winter!