Skip to main content

Learning About Birds

Every month I get so excited about our Mother Goose Time Curriculum and I say its our favorite theme, but then the next theme is just as good. They are really nailing it this year. We are learning about Birds and Eggs for April. This week has been amazing. The suggested stories have been great, the activities engaging, and the information we are getting about our feathered friends has been phenomenal. I am also doubly pleased because again I can use this as my daughters science as well. It is so convenient to be able to teach the science and social studies units together. Makes my job easier and lets them learn and work together. It's a beautiful thing.

Week One is titled In the Nest. It is all about nests, eggs, hatchlings, bird food, and learning to fly. We have learned all about the birds life cycle and most importantly we have learned about adorable baby birds. The first day was about nests. We wrote our names on eggs this month instead of name tags and then placed them on a poster of a nest. Then we took our supplies outside because we finally had some sunshine and we needed some fresh air. I love that Mother Goose Time is so flexible and portable. We put a blanket down and did the invitation to create activity. We made little nests out of the materials and even used some grass and flowers to decorate the nests. After the nests were built we decided to make some origami birds to go in them. You can not make a nest and not make birds My daughter has been really into origami after watching an old Reading Rainbow episode we checked out from the library. We also played the Stick Stack game while we were outside. It was a lot of fun, we used our pocket cube as a big dice and them placed the amount of sticks that was rolled onto the nest picture to build our own nest. We mixed the adding numbers with the subtracting numbers on the cube to make it more challenging. We also looked at birds around our lake and listened for birds while we were out there.



Day 2 was about eggs and was also filled with fun facts and activities. We made the invitation to create which was a cut out of an egg, an egg carton and some pom poms and clothes pins. We put our paint in the egg carton and then used the clothes pins to pinch the pom poms and turn them into paintbrushes. After this I made some play dough out of Peeps candy and let him use the E cookie cutter from this months box to make impressions and cut outs in the dough. They loved making and playing with the Peeps dough. This was from a recipe that I found years ago and don't remember where I saw it. You put 5 Peeps in a bowl then add 3 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 1/2 tsp cooking oil. I microwaved it for 30 sec. then stirred it until it became dough like then kneaded it a little adding more cornstarch if needed. If your kids have never microwaved a Peep its a lot of fun to watch. They get huge! We also read a book that we own that gives more information about eggs and hatching times and chick development. 






Another highlight of the week was our bird inspired tea time that we had. We like to have tea every Thursday and eat treats that we made together while reading great books and poetry. The kids love it. This week I found a couple great poetry books featuring birds. We made strawberry oat bars and bird nest candies. While we were waiting for the bars to cool we did the Bird Feeder activity and then hung our feeders around the patio.



Also I just wanted to share a really proud moment. My husband and kids watched a movie a couple nights ago while I was at work and my daughter realized that the mosquito in the movie that was drinking blood was a boy. She remembered last month when we were learning about mosquitos at the pond that only the females drink blood. She proudly told me that the movie was wrong and I did a happy dance that she actually does listen to me. Thanks Mother Goose Time!


*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*


    

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Filling in the Gaps

This is our second month using the  Mother Goose Time More Math and More Literacy workbooks. I have really noticed a change in my 4 year old son since using these workbooks. He will be 5 in just a few more months and I thought that it might benefit him to have a little more in the way of practice pages and reinforcement so when I was given the opportunity to try these out I jumped on it. He was really excited to have his own workbook and I noticed that he started to try a little harder to do his work. I focused on the More Math workbook this month because I already know he needs work on his letters and letter sounds. I was curious about his math skills. He is stronger in his math skills right now and I wanted to find out what areas needed more reinforcement and what areas are pretty much mastered. The pages in the workbook go along with the months theme and have great pictures. They are fun and inviting and he feels like he is doing big boy work, which he is so its win...

More Literacy: Alphabet Island

We have learned so much this month with the  Mother Goose Time Alphabet Island theme. This has been sort of a wrap up month for the curriculum, we have reviewed numbers, letters, and colors that we have learned all through the year. We gotten to be pirates going on treasure hunts, ship captains discovering new islands, and cave explores searching for beautiful and amazing natural treasures. This curriculum comes with everything you need to have a well rounded and fun month of learning. And while all this is great they also offer add ons to help make this curriculum work for babies and toddlers or all the way up to about age 5 or 6. We have been receiving the More Literacy and More Math workbooks for a few months now and are really enjoying the added practice with the skills and concepts being taught. We don't use the books everyday right now, but I do see us using them more next year as part of our school day. The workbooks match the months theme and are r...

Mother Goose Time Our Way

When I first started homeschooling I wrote out schedules and times for when we would do certain subjects and activities. I pretty much drove myself crazy trying to keep up with our strict schedule. I felt stressed and most of all I felt like I was failing. I've come a long way since then. Our homeschool is so much more relaxed and homey feeling. I think the biggest change I made is going by a routine instead of a schedule. A schedule is so rigid and gives you this feeling that you can't stray from the schedule. A routine, for me anyway, is so much more flexible, and  Mother Goose Time has fit in so seamlessly with our routine. In fact I will be a little sad when my kids are to old for this program because I love the way Mother Goose Time enhances what we do each day. Our morning routine pretty much starts off the same each day. We start with what I like to call Breakfast and books. This is the time that I introduce the Daily Topic for the day. Mother Goose Time provides a Da...