Nursery Rhymes recap

We had such fun exploring the classic Mother Goose this past week.  Each day we read 5 or more classic nursery rhymes, beginning on Monday with Mother Goose herself, the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, Jack be Nimble and perhaps my favorite (and your children's too?) Humpty Dumpty.  Part of the fun was really exploring the nursery rhymes -- the kids had fun jumping over a candlestick (it was not lit, and rather short too).
Humpty Dumpty was our real focus for the day.  We talked about eggs -- Humpty was an egg after all.  The most fun science exploration I've ever done was having the kids dropping eggs to the floor.  To make it feel a little more like a wall (and to make it different from just dropping an egg on the floor), we borrowed a 3-step step ladder.  One at a time, the students climbed up our "wall" to the top step (there was a handle for them to hold and Elena & I were on each side).  I introduced them to their own Humpty Dumpty and handed them an egg.  Yes, it was a plain, ordinary, raw, uncooked, egg.  We had one of our 'brick blocks" representing a real wall to sit the egg on (if they chose).  Some enjoyed holding the egg for a bit, while others were eager to drop the egg immediately.

What fun watching 10 eggs smash open on the floor! 

Yes, school is a great place for making messes!  To ease our clean-up process, we had spread a black trash bag below them and most of the eggs crashed onto it -- only a few missed the mark ....  One by one, each child climbed up our ladder to the "wall", received their Humpty Dumpty and then let him fall off the wall.  Then we talked about if we could put Humpty back together again .... truly, the cumulative impact of egg after egg after egg smashing open was fun to see.  Everyone was entranced and several would have been glad to crack a few more eggs -- but we whisked them off to Recess outside (so we could really clean the few messy spills).  Back inside, they each made their own Humpty Dumpty out of Model Magic -- they will be coming home later this week.

That was Monday's fun.  On Wednesday we explored many Sheep related nursery rhymes:  Baa, baa Black sheep;  Mary had a Little Lamb; and a few others which I can't recall now (such a poor memory!).  We had a huge woolly sheep puppet that helped sing the rhymes AND we had Three bags of Wool (well, cotton-filling).  Art this day was pulling 'wool' from one of the bags and gluing it onto their individual black sheep shapes.  The children enjoyed retelling this story, taking turns with the puppet as well as having fun batting the bags of wool around.  We also had a little stuffed Humpty Dumpty for them to retell his story with -- this Humpty never cracked into a million little pieces though (love an easy clean-up once in awhile!)

On Friday, we explored a few more favorite nursery rhymes, ending with the three little kittens who lost their mittens.  Naturally we had a few kittens available to help tell this story -- and a momma cat too (I love cats!  even if I can't have a real one in my home due to another's allergies).  We also squeezed in my favorite Winter story that we missed (due to my illness), The Mitten by Jan Brett.  It is not a nursery rhyme, but the theme of mittens fit nicely just the same.  The folktale is a sweet story -- but I won't spoil it for you (in case you don't know it).  We have a white mitten that the children took turns adding new animals into it, each getting a turn.  Serena was the Mitten-Keeper; Eden had the hedgehog, I've forgotten the others (have I mentioned my poor memory?) perhaps your child remembers if they were the mole, the rabbit, the fox, the badger, the owl, bear, or the mouse.  Jan Brett's books are beautifully illustrated -- take a peek at her website to see samples and learn more about her work   http://www.janbrett.com

Tomorrow and the rest of this week, we are looking forward to more fun -- this time it will be all Circus related shenanigans!
Elena and I look forward to seeing everyone back at school again!

truly,  Cathy