Learning about Lily Pads with Little Goose

This morning, while the kids were finishing their breakfast, I started setting up a fun math activity from Mother Goose Time. By the time they were done with their eggs, I was ready to teach them about lily pads, logic, and scientific reasoning. 
We receive our Mother Goose Time curriculum and the Little Goose teacher guide supplement for free in exchange for sharing our journey on the blog. Today I'd love to share our adapted Little Goose lesson about lily pads.

I got creative with our first activity and decided to put them in the bath tub. The children immediately jumped in for Floating Lily Pads, an activity that promises to build scientific reasoning skills and listening comprehension.
I gave each child a paper plate "lily pad" to float in the water. Then, I gave them water beads, small rocks, and plastic blocks. Here's a picture of our "supplies."

The children were encouraged to explore using the different items to sink their lily pads. We talked about which objects are heavy (rocks) and which are light (water beads). They also explored numbers as we discussed how many blocks or rocks were needed to sink a lily pad. The answer is 4 rocks just in case you were wondering.
[I wish I had more pictures of this fun activity, but it so happens that when you show my children a bath tub... they immediately take off all their clothes and hop in!]

Next, we dried off and went to the table for a fun visual art Make & Play activity where we practiced fine motor skills by making our own lotus flowers.  I explained to the children that lily pads are actually lotus flower leaves and asked them to use the tools they had been given (paper plates, cupcake liners, markers, crayons, and glue sticks) to make their own lotus flowers resting on lily pads.
Ada Grace did a great job manipulating the glue and crayons. She kept repeating "Green! Green!" as she colored. Noah thought carefully about how he wanted to stack and glue his cupcake liners and the result was really cute.

Then, I showed the children their new My Little Journals for November. The Little Goose guide suggested the children draw lily pads on the cover and focus on making circles and counting them. Instead, my kids insisted on drawing their own versions of a rainforest with lots of shades of green.
I brought back the focus by having them count out loud with me while they worked.
Finally, we finished our little goose day with Wiggle & Giggle (a song about the layers of the rainforest) and Cuddle & Snuggle. My kids always have a great time dancing to the Mother Goose Time songs. Today, they especially enjoyed snuggling with me to say the letters of their name and get extra cuddles. With a new baby on the way, these little moments cuddled together are precious to me and my babies.