Happy “Almost the end of January!” How did that happen? This month is flying by. We will take it though, time flying just means that it is getting closer to “snuggle time!” with Baby C. The kiddos are pretty excited too. Baby C and our January theme from MGT is a great mix. We are talking about Baby animals this month: waiting for baby, carrying baby, keeping baby safe, and how babies change. As we discussed last week, the waiting for baby, I made the connection on how we are waiting for my baby. Pregnant Moms was an interesting conversation piece! I was very creative with my answers about “How do babies come out?” I didn’t lie but I showed great restraint with answers that I gave. I am not quite sure everyone was ready for the full blown answers of questions that was being asked. So we “surface” answered the questions and quickly moved on. So if you get questions about it at home, I may have not satisfied their curiosity. But I really didn’t tell them to go ask your mom and dad! (….like I wanted to.) *My 6.5 was the one who’s gears are running on this topic! (I’m sure we will have a little more detailed conversation closer to baby C’s arrival. He is very curious. 🙂 lol)
Helper Dads was a big hit too. We talked about SeaHorses and how the daddy carries the babies in a pouch to care for them until they were big enough to come out and live. ZC also shared with us his knowledge about the dad penguins who also share in taking care of the babies. Helper Dad’s are amazing and awesome! I’m glad we have helper dads too!
Last week we also combined our celebration of babies birthdays and pet adoption. We discovered that everyone including animals have a birthday. Most of the time, we celebrate those days if we know about them (even our pets). But we also celebrated the day when we add a new pet into the family. We celebrated with a BIG Dance party! Wahoo! Exercise, music, and freedom. We made our party hats, put them on and danced till lunch was on the table.
This week we have learned about carrying babies around. We learned that a tiger/cats have to use their mouths to carry their little ones. As one child connected, “they don’t have hands to carry them.” The daily photo from MGT was a little shocking at first. The kids didn’t understand what was happening when I showed it to them. Here we are talking about mommy’s and daddy’s and how they take care of the little babies then I show them a picture of a tiger with a baby in her mouth. I actually got some gasps from them. I shared how the babies are ok with it because of how they are made and that the animals do not have hands to walk and carry them. All week we introduced different ways of carrying the babies… In the mouth with the tiger, on the back with turtles, in a pouch with a baby Joey, on the chest with a manatee, and in the arms with a gorilla.
We played with the little animal manipulatives that we had collected. I gave them a mini-muffin pan to play with the animals. We started out sorting by how they carry the babies but then they took to sorting in many different ways. I asked them to sort them three or more ways and it was fun to see how they “saw them.” They did a great job of sorting and classifying.
I also wanted to let you know about a change to the website and postings that will be happening in the near future. I will be posting a specific posting on our Mother Goose Topics each week. I will be calling it Mother Goose Monday’s. Thanks for reading and I welcome any suggestions on topics that you might be interested in knowing how or what we do in the playroom.
Ms. Sally
Joyful Kidz 