Game Reserve...

Our Mother Goose lesson on Wednesday was all about the game reserve...

Mother Goose provided us with these new fun safari animals!  We can do so much learning with these...patterning, sorting, counting, estimating...

We started out circle time by hiding one yellow animal under a cup.  I labeled the cups with numbers 1-9 (9 is one of the numbers we will be learning about this month).  The kids took turns guessing which number the animal was hiding under.  I left this activity out for the kids to continue playing with during their free-play time.

We sang, "My Camera Goes Click-Click" to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell."

When do you need a ticket?  We discussed sport games, movies, amusement parks and museums.  I taped a large oval on the floor with painter's tape.  We set the safari animal counters along the oval path and inside the oval.  I explained that when we go on a safari, the animals live in a protected area.  To enter the park, we have to buy a ticket.  I asked the kids to cut out their game pieces and then pretend to buy a ticket for nine dollars.  The kids drove a toy car on the path and checked off the animals on their ticket as they saw them.

The kids learned a lot from this activity and they had A LOT of fun!

Being "patient" is or friendship word for the month.  The kids and I talked about how to be patient in line as they waiting to buy a ticket from their friend N (N sat with the cash register).

Where do you like to hide?  Where do you think an elephant (lion, giraffe, etc.) would hide?

Mother Goose provided us with these safari animal photo matching cards.  I separated the cards and hid one of each match around the room as they kids closed their eyes.  I gave each child a card and asked them to find their match.  When they found their animal card, they were asked to describe to me with positional words where their card was hidden (under, above, beside, between, etc.)

We used our animal counters for our next activity...

I explained to the kids that animals like to group together with their same kind so they stay safe and feel more protected.  We worked together as a group to sort the animal counters by their kind, and then by their color...

Next, the kids worked on a couple of pages from their math and literacy workbooks...

Mother Goose provided us with this NEW board book for story time!

After reading the story we played CHARADES!  The kids acted our their favorite animal from the book!

For our closing song we danced to "Big African Animals" from our Mother Goose CD.  I asked the kids to dance like a mommy/daddy/grandma/grandpa/baby animal that I called out.  We laughed a lot during this exercise!

Lastly, we celebrated K's 5th birthday on Wednesday!!!!  I just LOVE how happy and excited she is!

K requested a Rapunzel cake!

Putting her candles on the cake...

Cautiously blowing out her candles...