This weeks theme: Nocturnal Animals
We spent our week learning all about nocturnal animals! Each morning after we did our regular calendar and weather routine, we got out books and dug right in! The girls spent about 30 minutes each morning looking at pictures in books and discussing amongst themselves what they saw. Avery is getting so good at reading the pictures she sees and making up stories to go along. I just love listening to her do this - the things she comes up with are way too cute! Kinsley is also very good at this - she is gettig so good at looking for the details in the pictures to get the "whole" story. Often times she can tell me what's happening before I even read the page!!
Our sensory table this week was filled with tree blocks and the preserved leaves from a few weeks ago. The girls had fun making homes for the different animals we were learning about!
On Monday, we spent most of our day learning what the term "nocturnal" really meant. We read about it, watched a short video about it, and then turned off all of the lights and pretended to be nocturnal! I secretly hung glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls and cieling. The girls were so excited to discover them when I turned out the lights!! It really felt like night time with those stars shining bright!!
Avery wanted to pretend that we were lost in the woods, so we did that for a little while too! (And she played it that night at home too right before bed time and made Daddy carry her to bed because it was "too dark in those big woods")
We also learned that even some insects only come out at night! We made lightning bugs in a jar! The girls painted with glow in the dark paint to make their bugs! We also painted our finger nails with glow in the dark finger nail polish and twinkled them in the dark - they looked just like little lightning bugs flying around!
On Tuesday, we focused on hedgehogs, porcupines, and skunks! We made paper plate hedgehogs and play doh porcupines! The girls really enjoyed poking tooth picks into play doh and then trying to count the quills as they pulled them back out!
Below is a picture of nocturnal animals in the woods - we can't see the animals (it's too dark) just their glowing eyes!!
On Wednesdy, we learned about bats! Kinsley loved learning all if the facts about the different types of bats! She couldn't believe that the bumblebee bat only weighed as much as a dime or that the vampire bat is the only mammal who lives strictly on blood!
We painted with cookie cutters (a bat, a moon, and a star). We also read the book Stellaluna and watched a short video of Stellaluna. It's a great picture story book book that also gives a lot of factual information! It was great for both of the little girls, as well as Kinsley!
On Thursday, we learned all about Owls! Avery was all over this - as we know her love for owls has been quite a big deal for about a year now!
We made peanut butter owl cookies. We did this by rolling the dough into balls, setting two balls side by side to bake and when they came out we added Hershey kiss eyes and a cashew beaks.
Avery already has quite a collection of owl books, so of course we brought a few to read! We also had a ton of library books, both fiction and non fiction, about all of the nocturnal animals we were studying.
We practiced "whoo whooing" by blowing into plastic bottles filled partially with water. We learned that different kinds of owls make different noises, not all owls whoo (some whoo, some whoot, some bark, some even sound like "who cooks for you")
One of the most surprising things we learned about owls is that they do not build their own nests - they use the left over nests of other birds and that some owls even live in dens under ground!
On Friday, we learned about raccoons. I was so excited to read the kiddos "The Kissing Hand," it's one of my favorites!
We also made raccoon masks, which everyone loved!
The weather was beautiful this week so we took advantage! We spent a lot of time outside playing in all of these crunchy leaves! Avery couldn't get enough of the leaves - we don't have any at our house. I have been very happy the past 4 years we have lived here not to have any leaves, but this year I am thinking it would be fun to have a few!
Lucky for us, the Murray's have a TON!!
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