Structures Around the World

The final week of our Mother Goose Time It’s a Small World theme, we learned about Structures Around the World -specifically, man-made wonders of the world including: The Great Pyramid, Machu Picchu, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Leaning Tower of Pisa and The Great Wall of China. While these seem like rather large topics for preschool, it’s amazing how much fun it is to learn about these wonderful places and what fun activities can be done!

The Great Pyramid

Camel puppets- coloring, snipping, spreading glue and sprinkling sand completed these fun puppets.

Cup Pyramids: What can you build with cups?

Machu Picchu

I liked the “Counting Stairs” activity:

1. Discuss: Where can you find stairs? How many stairs might there be?
2. Explore: Invite children to explore the room, building or outdoor area for stairs in a safe location.The Incas built over 3,000 steps in the city of Machu Picchu. The stairs linked the city’s many different levels.
3. Play: Invite children to go up and down the stairs as they count them out loud. Encourage them to clap each time they reach the number 6 or 16.

Perhaps my favorite –

St. Basil’s Cathedral

The St. Basil’s Cathedral collages my group created. I have 2’s and 3’s mostly, so I cut the pieces and they created and glued their collages. Too much time spent on cutting would cause them to lose interest in finishing the project. More cutting would be appropriate for older children. Another option would be to allow the children to cut as much as they decide and them help them finish.

We also taped some collage pieces on our smaller wood blocks so we could build our own cathedral.

Other related activities: Make Tomato Basil Soup (we didn’t do this one)

Leaning Tower of Pisa

This was also a wonderful day of learning! My group especially seemed to be interested in the Leaning Tower. As you can see, they found their own “leaning towers”, the counter stools! I thought that was quite observant for a 3-year-old to determine the stool tilted looked like The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We had a great time with this music & movement activity: (tune of “London Bridge”)

Sideways Leaning

Sideways leaning,
Will you fall; will you fall; will you fall?
Sideway sleaning w
Willyou fall?
Now stand up straight.

Fowards leaning….
Backwards leaning…

The kids took turns leaning as far back as they could while I was holding them. Leaning is fun!

Building towers with Magic Nuudles  and toothpicks.

Just a side note, tonight a parent texted me this:

It was the highlight of my day! The little girl just turned 3. Kids really understand and take in more than we realize so even with a topic as big as wonders of the world, preschoolers are learning with Mother Goose Time!

Honestly, we didn’t get too far with the Great Wall of China lesson due to unforeseen circumstances that sometimes rock our schedule. We did paint with Legos, representing the bricks, or blocks of the wall.

Other activities: building block walls and walking on a balance beam.

We finished up our Small World theme with a couple more projects:

Postcards from our “trip” featuring our favorite places we visited:

“Would you rather” graphing activity – the question was “Which do you think would be the most scary? Climbing to the peak of the Matterhorn, up the Great Pyramid or the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”

This is one of my all time favorite Mother Goose Time themes! Next we’re on to another trip — into space!