Kitchens...

We have been learning about different rooms in a house all week so far.  Our Mother Goose lesson for Wednesday was all about kitchens!

Mother Goose provided us with this Oatmeal Porridge recipe card. 

Leslie Falconer over at Mother Goose Time wrote a new version of Goldilocks.  This book was provided in our box of curriculum this month!

I set up a cooking station right away in the morning.  The kids had so much fun making their own oatmeal porridge for breakfast!!!

I needed to adapt the recipe card a bit to meet the safety concerns of so many kids (I did not want any children getting burned by hot water).  I let the kids choose a flavor of Quaker oatmeal from the box.  They ripped open their package and dumped it in the bowl.

 

They added about a 1/3 cup of water...

...and then gave it a quick stir.

They loved pressing the microwave buttons! 

Patiently waiting...   Hey!  We learned about the word patient!

We added a bit of cold milk to get it to the consistency that we like and to cool it down a bit.

I provided raisins and dates for the kids to add if they chose to.

  Dates were new to most of the kids, so they all had to give it a quick taste to see if it was something they liked or not.

 

I also gave the kids the option to add fruit to their oatmeal or just put it in a separate bowl to eat.

 

They got to pour their milk on their own too!

I have never seen these kids eat oatmeal so fast!  Every time we cook something together the kids are 10 times more likely to eat it because they took part in the process!

Yummy!  What a wholesome healthy breakfast!  Thank you Mother Goose Time for encouraging us to eat healthy foods!

In our new book "Goldilocks" the girl cleans up the bear's home, and then her own bedroom.  I made a point to bring the kids back in to the kitchen to help with the clean up.

Packing away the leftover raisins...

Each child even took a turn at the dishes!

Next, I thought it would be fun to play with porridge!!!  I put oatmeal in the sensory table!  I added containers of different sizes for measuring and estimating, different scoops, and plastic bears!

I also set out three stations at the table near the sensory table.

A scale...

Making oatmeal muffins...

Bowls for making porridge!

The kids loved this!

After we cleaned up our oatmeal sensory table, we worked a bit in our workbooks.
The kids cut and paste cups in the correct spots according the directions and positional words given in their math workbook.

They worked on the letter H in their literacy workbook...

They also worked on their favorite letter in their journals.  They circled their favorite letter, and then drew a soup with that letter for pasta.  They completed the sentence, 'The soup is..."

"The soup is blue."

This month we have been working on the sight words: my, make, and for.  Mother Goose provided us with this new emergent reader book.

The pages read as follows:

I Make Food

I make eggs for breakfast.

I make a sandwich for lunch.

I make soup for dinner.

What do you make for dessert? (The kids could draw the last illustration and label their picture.)

We did our reading activity outside at the picnic tables.

First we read the book together, then I had the kids practice reading by themselves, and then they did a buddy read with a friend.

We ended the morning doing circle time outside!  What a beautiful day!!!

We added G and H to our alphabet house!

  For our books today we read "Alphabet Soup" and our Mother Goose "Goldilocks" book.
Alphabet Soup is about a boy that has a magic pot of soup.  When he is in a predicament he stirs his soup and finds the letters that he needs to make something become real.  He goes through quite a few adventures with his soup! 

My two oldest kids read one story each to the kids!  They did a phenomenal job, and all the kids did a great job listening!

I took our radio outside too and played the song "Alphabet Soup" from our Mother Goose Alphabet House CD!

I set our Lakeshore Alphabet mats on the patio and encouraged the kids to hop or walk from letter to letter as we listened to the song.

Later in the afternoon I saw these two taking an interest in our alphabet mats...

 They spelled our sight words for this month!

Mother Goose provided us with these alphabet cards for today...

On the backside of each letter there was a picture of something that matched each letter (beginning sound).

In the afternoon I brought our sensory table filled with oatmeal outside and placed all the letter cards in it.  The kids could pretend they were making alphabet soup or porridge (just like in the story we read).

 They always get a giggle when they see U is for underwear!

L came back from his trip to Colorado today!  He was so sweet and sent us a postcard while he was gone!!!  The kids loved it!  He also brought back a ton of souvenirs that are unique to Colorado to share with the group!  Thank you so much L!!!

 What a sweet message on his postcard!  We missed you too L!