Learning about Hibernation with Mother Goose Time

Last week, we continued our monthly theme Weather by learning about how animals react to different kinds of weather. We studied hibernation and migration.  The kids found these lessons really interesting, especially the activities from our Mother Goose Time curriculum.
We are blessed to receive Mother Goose Time and the Little Goose adaptation for free in exchange for sharing our journey here on our blog. We are really enjoying telling our readers all about the things we are learning, what we like best, and how we use the curriculum with three very different kiddos.

On Wednesday, we studied hibernation with a focus on bears. We started our lesson by reading Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip C. Stead. Since Nana was visiting, I let her participate in story time. The children loved all her character voices and fun facial expressions.

Next, we went outside to participate in some dramatic play with the daily STEAM Station activity. We didn't have a big enough box to make our animal home, so we used Noah's pop up tent. The children all decided to be bears! They had great fun pretending to be sleeping bears in their "cave" and then "waking up" when I announced the arrival of warm weather.

Then, everyone got a chance to make their very own Bear Den in an outdoor activity that focused on communication skills and pretend play. The children enjoyed choosing items like acorns, twigs, and leaves to complete their "dens."

When we got back inside, everyone gathered together to Wiggle & Giggle with Frere Jacques from the Circle Time CD. The kids had fun pretending to go to sleep and wake one another up.
After a few dances, we all gathered at the table to make "bear tracks" in our Tray Play activity. Noah wanted to discuss different animal tracks, so he retrieved several different animal figures from his room to "stomp" through his play dough leaving tracks.

Finally, we finished the day by playing Race to the Cave together. We played the Table Top Literacy version from the regular teacher guide rather than the adapted Little Goose version. I was worried that they wouldn't enjoy this board game as much as they had enjoyed our earlier activities, but I was wrong! Noah and Ada Grace took turns playing Race to the Cave until we had to clear the table for dinner that night.

Click here to read about how we used Mother Goose Time to study migration the next day.