Alligators and the Letter V

Hey all! Another great week in the Shader home! A lot going on in our lives recently... We closed on our first home! We are so excited to be living in a home that is all our own. What a blessing! We are moving to our new home in South Carolina on June 15th so Jon can start his residency at the Medical College of Georgia. Exciting times ahead!

This week Mother Goose Time had us say goodbye to butterflies, and now we are doing a new theme called Bubbles, Boats, & Floats. It includes learning about all kinds of water and water animals. This week we learned all about rivers and the animals that live near them. The kids and I had SO much fun! Our favorite day was definitely the alligator day. Jonathan has always loved alligators, so this day was especially fun for him!

We started this day by remembering a special alligator farm we visited nearly two years ago in Arkansas. I pulled up some of the pictures and videos of our time there, and the kids LOVED it! What a wonderful memory. We also wrote what we knew about alligators on our board... I loved the part where Jonathan said that alligators eat hot dogs. :)

Jonathan: age 3, Hope: age 1

We took some time to review the letter V, making the letter with our fingers and arms and saying the sound.

Mother Goose Time provides these wonderful letter books that the kids always love! They write their names, trace the new letter, color the pictures, cut out the book, and then read me the words. It is a GREAT activity.

Our curriculum includes two new books every theme, and the book this month is super cute. "Rowing Down the River" is a rhyming story with a very large alligator as the end, and the kids love it!

Sometimes school time includes a sucker! :)

The next activity was awesome! The kids used golf tees (alligator teeth) to count to the numbers 17 and 18. I also had them roll a foam dice, put the golf tees in some play dough, and write down the number on a sentence strip. Thank you, MGT, for including all the things we needed for this activity, right down to the number papers and golf tees.

Jonathan gets so frustrated with writing the number 5, so this was definitely a stretching activity for him. Sometimes school can be hard! He recovered nicely once he practiced a bit more.

Our last activity was our favorite. The kiddos drew a card, wrote that letter down on our big pad of paper, and then fed the card to our alligator. So much fun! MGT had families feed the letters into a box with alligator teeth, but considering we had our very own stuffed alligator, I thought this would be more fun!

Another great day in homeschool! Thank you, MGT!