Gg- Goat

This week was suppose to be Ii=Insect, but I decided to wait on insects until spring for several reasons. The biggest reason was that Boo begged to do a ladybug farm when we got to insect and it's too cold here for real ladybugs! So we will be coming back to that one at the end of the school year. Instead we started the Gg-goat unit. The only draw back to skipping units is that letters "Ii and Gg" will be new to her phonics worksheets making it a little bit harder than learning just 1 new letter.

The above picture was taken just a couple months ago when we got a chance to pet, feed, and chase around a bunch of goats. Since it was still fresh in her memory we talked about the goats we saw and we looked at our pictures from that day.This unit was actually all about farm animals and not just goats. The next 3 units will be about different farm animals.  Her words to remember were "Jesus died for my sins." It's a hard concept for a 5 year old, but I tried my best to explain old testament sacrifices (that's how the Bible portion tied to goats and lambs.) Then we talked about how Jesus died for our sins ( the Lamb of God) so that we no longer have to offer the blood of an animal for forgiveness. I think she got the basic concept on a 5 year old level.

We talked about animals that usually live on a farm. We looked at some pictures online. One of the activities we did was learn the names of baby farm animals. She thought it was super funny that a baby goat is called a kid. We cut out our animal baby cards and played a match game, matching the adult to it's baby.



 We also sang Old MacDonald Had a Farm and practiced her letters "E-I-E-I-O." We colored and cut out farm animal puppets to use while singing the song. After the song she begged to put on a puppet show, so I let her play with them for a while.

I'm seeing her progress so quickly with her blend ladder and reading skills. We're still slowly working on her handwriting and number recognition for math using flashcards.


We actually ended up squeezing all 6 days of this unit into 4 instead of 5. Birthdays can be official holidays when you homeschool, so we took a day off to celebrate Baby Bear turning 2 and went to a pizza place to have a little party instead.

We read  two farm related books for story times. Eric Carle's "The very busy Spider" and "Inside a barn in the Country."

Our manual suggested a rhyming activity, so we tried to think of words that rhyme with farm animals cow-now, goat-coat..etc. for some reason this is not easy for Boo. Just about every rhyme that she would come up with was a made up word! We worked on it for a while and she finally came up with some good ones. We wrote all of our rhyming words down and then Boo made up a poem using those words. I made this barn for her using red construction paper glued to a piece of white paper. I just free handed it otherwise I would post a link to a template. It's pretty basic and  easy to make with a ruler though. We put her poem inside the loft window and then she drew a  picture to go with it inside the barn doors. I love looking back at stuff like this in their portfolios. The poems and stories they come up with are always funny to read when they're older. Sis loves writing stories and poems so she joined in on this project too.

The most fun thing we did for goat was read the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. I found these cute free printable face masks Here  so we decided to put on a play and act out the story. This was a lot of fun. I had to be the big billy goat so that we had enough people. The girls set up a (doll and stuffed animal) audience for our play and  Baby Bear got to have a part too as the little billy goat (even though she was really scared of our troll.)