Squirrels...

On Monday our Mother Goose lesson was all about squirrels...

 The kids started out the morning working in their math and literacy workbooks.

Here they are measuring leaves and sequencing them from shortest to longest...

 They also practiced reading and searching for the letter R in a new raccoon book from their literacy workbook.

 Next, they constructed a -ig family word wheel...

 During circle time we reviewed our ABB pattern on our calendar for this month.  I asked the kids to come up with other orchard related words to make up new ABB patterns (ex: squirrel, leaf, leaf).

 We sang, "One Nut, Two Nuts" to the tune of "One Potato, Two Potatoes."

Mother Goose provided us with these apple photo matching cards...

 We played Memory with the cards, but instead of collecting the matches the kids used a tweezers and seeds to mark the spots that were matching.

 Next, the kids completed this two-sided color-by-letter activity...

 Mother Goose provided us with this math story problem activity!  I also provided the kids with real acorns to explore with.  I explained that nuts in the shell are important nutrition for squirrels.  The nuts help satisfy the squirrel's gnawing needs.  I LOVE that Mother Goose made one of these for each child to take home!!!  I encourage the parents to work one-on-one with each child.  I demonstrated how to complete the problems with a few volunteers, but nothing can replace one-on-one time with mom and dad at home!

I encouraged the kids to make up their own math problems, and when they did they got really silly.  I was so impressed with their story telling abilities, and they all had fun giggling together!

 This was our book for the day.  It was perfect!

 I explained to the kids that squirrels can live in nests, hallowed out tree trunks or underground tunnels.  Since tunnels are similar to tubes, I took out five different tubes of different sizes.  I encouraged the kids to explore finding objects in the room that could fit in each tube.  The kids thought nothing would fit in the smoothie straw, until they tried out our seeds that Mother Goose provided for us this month! I didn't snap any photos of the kids playing with these, but they really did have fun!