We had an egg-citing week this week!
I’m sure you could probably guess it… but E is for E-gg. Surprise!! haha…
I started the week a little unprepared. I had put several books on hold at my library, but they did not come in prior to us starting the letter E unit. I’m so thankful that The Peaceful Preschool always seems to have one day prepared for moments like this! So we began our week by taking a dozen eggs from our refrigerator, counting all the eggs, discussing how many equalled “one-dozen” and then proceeded to allow my 5 year old to try cracking all the eggs for our morning breakfast! I need to just take a moment and praise him… he cracked FIVE eggs all by himself and not ONE spot of egg ended on the counter and NO egg shells were in the bowl! Woot!
Then while eating the eggs the kids helped me prepare, we read a beautiful little poem from Robert Louis Stevenson called Nest Eggs.
Birds all the sunny day
Flutter and quarrel
Here in the arbour-like
Tent of the laurel.Here in the fork
The brown nest is seated;
For little blue eggs
The mother keeps heated.While we stand watching her
Staring like gabies,
Safe in each egg are the
Bird’s little babies.Soon the frail eggs they shall
Chip, and upspringing
Make all the April woods
Merry with singing.Younger than we are,
O children, and frailer,
Soon in the blue air they’ll be,
Singer and sailor.We, so much older,
Taller and stronger,
We shall look down on the
Birdies no longer.They shall go flying
With musical speeches
High overhead in the
Tops of the beeches.In spite of our wisdom
And sensible talking,
We on our feet must go
Plodding and walking.
~Robert Louis Stevenson
Even with “flying” by the seat of my pants, we were able to have a wonderful discussion about this poem! We talked about how poetry sometimes doesn’t just say what it means, but rather paints us a picture. I asked my son what does, “Here in the fork the brown nest is seated” mean? At age 5, I was sure he wouldn’t know, but when I explained to him that it was the crook of the tree where a bird would make a nest, his eyes lit up with understanding!
I’m a firm believer that unless something has meaning to you, there is no purpose in remembering it. So we discussed our new verse for the week. We are able to rejoice and have great joy because God is ALWAYS in control. His reign is forever! He is the God of the universe and yet he cares for the tiny sparrow.
“The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.”
Psalm 97:1
Thankfully the next day our books came in and we were able to spend a fun morning going to the library and then for a fun “surprise.” I discovered recently that there is a bird exhibit at our local sports zone! Seems like a random place to have a bird exhibit right??? That’s why I would like to encourage you to really explore your area and ask questions. You may feel like there isn’t anything available to you, but it might just be a hidden gem like this place is!
We read our stories: An Egg is Quiet and Rechenka’s Eggs while surrounded by birds and eggs. Then we had fun walking around, looking at all the stuffed birds, admiring their beautiful eggs, finding the smallest eggs we could, finding the largest eggs, picking out our favorite bird, discussing the different structures for birds nests and meeting an elderly gentleman who use to work at Yellowstone National Park researching the wolf population.
Throughout the week the “egg” theme continued. We read An Egg is Quiet again, picked out our favorite egg color and made nests for our little eggs out of play dough. My son took great care in constructing his nest, while his sister liked to smash hers every time it started to even remotely resemble a bird’s nest. haha!
For math, we sorted “eggs” (AKA: beans) into an egg carton. My son was asked to put the amount of beans into each spot that corresponded with the number he was counting. For instance: 1 bean in the 1st spot, 2 beans in the second, 3 beans in the third and so on. My toddler just had fun working on her fine motor skills by transferring the beans back and forth from container to container 🙂
The kids really enjoyed reading Rechenka’s Eggs. My son is very literal (though with a great imagination), so he kept asking me how a goose was able to lay colored eggs. I love that he is so inquisitive! I had to explain to him that it was just pretend and that not everything is life has an explanation. Some things are just true miracles! I suppose if God wanted a goose to lay ornately colored eggs, he could make it happen! We then took a little time to watercolor paint our own eggs, just like Babushka.
There were so many other little things that we were able to discuss about eggs, such as the different shapes and textures of their shells. Did you know that some eggs are oblong because this prevents the egg from rolling too far? If a seabird’s eggs were round, they would roll right off a cliff, but because they are oblong, they roll in circles instead. To demonstrate this, we had fun trying to roll a chicken egg across the table. Of course it turned every time. My son thought this was great fun!
Oh there is just so much else we did this week that included several worksheets and continuing with Handwriting Without Tears!
A little brag moment: we have been working through Progressive Phonics the past few months. To be honest, we haven’t been very faithful with it, but have looked at it once a week. A few nights ago, my son and daughter were playing “school” and my son was writing random letters on the board while sissy took “notes.” I asked him from across the room, “Do you know how to spell cat?” Thinking for a moment and sounding out the word, he proceeded to write C-A-T on the board! Of course now I’m curious… what else can you spell? He spelled everything in the picture below flawlessly! I think he could have spelled more, but he was done “playing” that game, so we moved on.
Let this just be an encouragement to you. When the timing is right, your child will just “get it.” Learning needs to be enjoyable!
