January - Little Mice in the Snow

Here are a few notes from our week of Little Mouse fun!

We continued with our Songs, Verses & Movement for classroom routines.

Circle Time

#1 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#2 - "Morning Verse"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 13

#3 - "We Stretch Right Up to the Star of Our Birth" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 56

#4 - "We Stretch Like Cats, We Stretch Like Tigers" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 57

#5 - "Hippo Song" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 71

#6 - "Brrr It's Cold" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 66

#7 - "Snowy Hill" finger play
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 75

#8 - "Roll the Snow Over and Over" verse
from Winter, page 51

#9 - NEW - "Wintertime"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 70

Monday

• Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner
• Snow sensory bin with animals

We spent more time enjoying our Ivory Soap Snow, with the addition of some small animals to the sensory bin. Happily, it snowed quite a bit over the weekend so there were piles of real snow in the yard to enjoy as well! We also got the Pikler triangle back out for some fun tunneling play.

Tuesday

• "What Do Animals Do in Snow - Little Mice in the Snow," page 126
  from Gesture Games for Autumn and Winter by Wilma Ellersiek
• "Rhythm - Music Studio - The Magical Forest," page 106
  from The Children's Music Studio: A Reggio-Inspired Approach by Wendell Hanna

All this month we will be doing animal movements -- working our way through the suggestions in Wilma Ellersiek's book -- and playing music games. Our game last week and this week both fell in the category of "Responding." The children have a great time taking turns playing the instruments or hearing and responding to the musical cues.

Today during the morning indoor play time, the children spontaneously started playing "Marching Band." They went in circles for a long time, marching through the living room, dining room, and kitchen, enjoying the variety of musical instruments we have in our basket! Yesterday during indoor play I heard children making up strings of rhyming words. It is wonderful to see them experiment with the musicality in our language too.

Thursday

• Mouse Tiptoe art project
• "Mice" puppetry, finger puppet pattern (p.99) and poem (p.38)
  in Suzanne Down's Around the World with Finger Puppet Animals

Today we focused on mouse movements. We did a collaborative mural of "mouse prints," with each child putting his toes in a color of finger paint and scampering on tippie toe all over our piece of paper. At the end of the long roll of paper was a basin of warm soapy water and a pile of clean dry towels. The foot washing was just as much fun for us as painting with our feet!

If you have the book Mouse Paint at home, it would be a perfect follow up to this art activity.

We also enjoyed doing the puppetry for the poem "Two little mice." The children wanted to do it over and over and over again. It was our Circle Time story and we did it several times, and then we did it again when they came in from recess instead of our usual board game time. We used my little indoor tree (which I received as a housewarming gift the very first day I moved to Illinois) and it worked perfectly.

Suzanne Down suggests having the children all have mice finger puppets and having the adult be the lone cat, and this is what we did. I had fun Tuesday and Wednesday evening choosing different mouse colors of pure wool felt and sewing finger puppets for each child to keep.

And, of course, today was also Stone Soup Day! Here was our list of group contributions to the Stone Soup this week:

red onion
yellow onion
garlic
celery
carrots
parsnip
sweet potato
spinach

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