This month has been packed full of fun and exciting art projects! L-Bug always get's excited when she opens up a workbox and sees an art project. She loves to color! And when I pull out some strange bowl, cup or plate to color on she's always feeling the material and telling me if it's smooth or bumpy and then trying to decide if she should use markers, crayons or pencils! As much as she loves coloring she loves pulling random things out of the box and seeing how we are going to use them and what we are going to make! Mixing up materials is so fun to her. I usually show her all the pieces before we get started and see if she can guess what we are making! We talk about all the different materials we have and what we could use each piece for... She also really enjoys using different kinds of materials and tools and seeing how they work. Though they frustrate her, scissors are one of her favorite tools to work with! She is learning how to control them better, it's usually the paper she gets frustrated with because it moves all over the place while she's trying to cut... I hear "ugh, mom it WONT HOLD STILL" a lot when she's using them :) Kids learn a lot of important skills through art. They learn how to become more comfortable holding writing utensils and they gain more control over them. They learn how to cut and paste.... The pick up on the fact that one item could have several different uses (pipe cleaners can be for making bracelets or bug antennas, straws can be animals legs or stand for signs, etc).
Of course then there is the fun afterwards of playing with your art creation :)
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This week we talked a little more about the safari environment. We talked more about the animals that live in the safari and what their homes are like... grasslands, watering holes, etc. And L-Bug said a watering hole might get crowded if there were too many animals there at once (like on our story board)! She enjoyed making up her own stories with these pieces and giving them their own voices. We discussed the food chain in the safari. L-Bug learned that some animals eat grass and leaves and other plants while the bigger, stronger and faster animals eat them! I couldn't help but quote Lion King "when we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life." And now I think that will be our movie for family movie night this week :) Haha the great circle of life is the perfect way to illustrate the safari food chain. We also talked about the people that live in the African Safari! We talked about the huts they live in and what kind of materials they are made from... we talked about the ground around their homes v.s. the ground around our homes (rocks, dirt, mud, etc V.S. pavement, grass, rocks, etc). I made sure to remind L-Bug that the people lived in the same safari as all of the wild animals! I asked her how the people kept their homes and families safe from the wild animals and we talked about a lot of ways they could keep the animals out, I had L-Bug look in out back yard and see what we had to keep animals out of our yard and she saw the fence! So she used some blocks to create a wall/fence around her hut village. This combination of sensory (sand), construction (huts), engineering (wall) and imagination was probably her favorite activity this whole week!
Sometimes a simple game like this one perfect to use for observing the things a child knows (like colors), the things they notice (like the little details of a face) and the things they wonder about. These cute little elephant cut outs came in our Mother Goose Time curriculum this week and I decided to let L-Bug lead the activity so I could do some simple observations. The first thing L-Bug noticed was that some of these elephants were asleep (far right row)! As she shuffled through more she decided that some of the elephants were happy (middle row). When it came to the elephants in the far left row she wasn't quite sure what to make of their expression. So she asked me! I asked if they looked mad, no.... do they look sad, no.... what about surprised, YES! Then I told L-Bug we should line up all of the surprised elephants and after that she started lining the others up in their own rows too! Without even realizing it she had just sorted these elephants by their facial emotions. After she finished lining them all up I asked her how else could we sort these elephants. She was quite sure so I said "Well do you have one yellow one? Yeah, how about another one? I bet all of the elephants have one special match here!" So she sorted them all into piles by their color and she knew all the colors! Next I shuffled up all of the elephants and turned them upside down. I didn't say anything I wanted to see what L-Bug would decide to do with them. Would she get bored and walk away? Would she turn them all over and continue playing how she was before? No! On her own she started playing a matching game! We've only done this type of game a few times recently, but knowing now that each elephant had a matching color gave her the idea that she could play a game and find their matches!
Again simple activities like this can be used to give your child some room and see what they know, what they remember and even wha they learn on their own! This week has been full of animal fun! we learned about all kinds of animals. There are some that she has seen before like zebras, giraffes, lions, etc and others that she just learned about like gazelles, rhinos, etc. It was fun to have her look at a hippo, an elephant and a rhino and tell me the similarities and the differences! L-Bug really enjoyed playing this matching game where she had 6 pairs of animals to find. L-Bug has observed different safari animals on posters and as she looks at them we talk about the different things she notices. It was fun to hear her realize that elephants have no fur, but they have wrinkly skin. She giggled as she told me about the giraffes long necks and the lions fluffy manes. This week there was no shortage of fun art projects! L-Bug and her daddy created lion masks. I think this one was her favorite craft! She loved mixing up the materials and drawing with chalk on the white zebra cut out! While she was coloring on the blue page she was telling me about the grass, rocks and waterfalls she was drawing! :) L-Bug loved the idea that giraffe's have very long tongues. She says she wishes her tongue would grow really long too so she could eat all the leaves on the trees like a salad.... hehe! During our pattern making game we used our Animal Fun Facts to find out which animal print went with which animal. The questions at the bottom of each card were fun! L-Bug raced around the room like a cheetah, tried to wiggle on the ground like a snake, found wrinkles and freckles on her body that made her different like a zebra's stripes and she stretched her tongue out as long as she could like a giraffe!! L-Bug thinks that being a little girl is way better than any of the animals though because she get's to play with a doll house and have lollipops.... lol Once we had found all of the matching animals to go with the print cards and read the fun facts about the animals L-Bug got to work making her pattern! This game and our new friend Ginger the Giraffe puppet made math & counting really fun! In this game Ginger the Giraffe picked a random card and turned it over. Then we identified the number and we gave the giraffe poster that many spots. Another fun game she played this week was a tour of the safari reserve. We talked about going to the zoo and buying a ticket. Then we talked about visiting the animals. Mommy turned this game into a math game too! L-Bug sorted her animal counters that came in our curriculum kit this month. At each of the different animal piles I put down a few picture cards with that animal on it. Each animal group had a varying number of cards at that pile. Then L-Bug went around to visit the different animals and collected one card at a time from the piles. She brought them back and then marked one circle off of there ticket. At the end she counted how many times she saw the different animals in the safari!
Daily Routines are important in our family because it gives us a sense of normalcy! AND as L-Bug grows and gains new skills she is able to do more and more things on her own. For example our typical morning starts with waking up, having breakfast, doing our Bible studies, getting dressed and making our beds... in that order! Months ago I did all of those steps FOR L-Bug, but now L-Bug has grown and learned new skills! After we wake up we go downstairs and L-Bug sits at the table looking at the pictures in her Bible while I get breakfast ready. After she eats L-Bug does the rest of the morning routine with minor help! She puts her dishes in the sink then she goes up stairs and helps choose her outfit for the day. She gets undressed and puts her dirty clothes in the hamper and gets dressed nearly on her own! Then she makes her bed and brushes her teach.
So what is my point in telling you this? A routine gives L-Bug the opportunity to repeat the same steps over and over each day and learn how to do them on her own! The same goes for our school room routine!
We don't always do school at the same time every day, but each week we have a general routine. Our school time routine is typically the same every day though. I have been using a "work box system" for several months now and it has really made our school day run smoothly AND it has given L-Bug a little more structure so she knows how many more lessons we have before our school time is over. She get's to help me move from one lesson to the next by getting out the next work box which I have pre-prepped with just about everything we need for the lesson!
Once our intro song is done and L-Bug has found come and sit down for Circle Time I like to play a little game to help get any wiggles out so she can focus. We use action cubes to act like animals, move in certain ways or find different items in the room. Once we've done a few different turns and L-Bug has gotten a chance to move around we jump into Circle Time!
I love how Mother Goose Time gives us ideas for our opening Circle Time routine, it makes it easier for me to jump into it on days I haven't had much time to prep and it gives me a starting place for when I want to do some modifications.
We start our school day with Circle Time. I turn on the Mother Goose Time Greeting song and L-Bug knows its time to clean up whatever she's doing as quickly as she can before the song ends. Then she comes over to our circle time board and has a seat! We start with calendar and there are a few songs we sing. If it is the first or last week of the month we sing our months song too, but otherwise it's our days of the week song. We find our day of the week cloud and put it up on our circle time board and then we put up our calendar day. Next we move on to weather and we've recently welcomed a new friend, Kyle the weather man, to help us with this task! Kyle and L-Bug look out of the window and talk about what they see and sometimes when the window is open what they feel. Then L-Bug goes through the weather symbols and gives Kyle his velcro ones and puts the other ones on the calendar board. Then she take the stick of the day and puts it in the weather cup that coordinates!
Next comes the Daily Topic Poster! L-Bug loves pulling out the photo poster for the day and grabbing her magnifying glass to explore it. She tells me all the things she sees and asks me questions. At the bottom of each poster is a question for me to ask L-Bug and talk about, which always leads right into our lessons for the day!
From there we either move into our lessons and activities OR we do a concept intro and review, it just depends on what the lessons are and whether they include the concept in one way or another.
All of the lessons I have planned for the day are set up in the work boxes in the order we will do them in. In the very last box is typically a game or a coloring activity for L-Bug as well as a piece of candy! This gives her something to look forward to and work towards throughout her other lessons. Knowing that that last box has a special prize in it makes her work that much harder and generally keeps her focused! I also have a playlist on my computer of instrumental tracks from our collection of Mother Goose Time CDs. It has a few hours of playtime on it so I play that music quietly in the background. Once she finished her game or coloring activity I end with our Closing Time on our circle time carpet. I ask a simple question to kind of review what we have learned that day and we finish with a song!
We typically have 3 hours of school time a day in our class room. L-Bug takes short breaks in between each lesson as I get the old lesson cleaned up and put away. She either grabs a book in her reading corner, a coloring page at her art desk or sometimes plays with her manipulative or blocks in the counting station.
If there are any lessons that involve snack or outdoor play those are saved for after nap time and are our afternoon activity. L-Bug typically doesn't think of them as school because I don't think she really knows that I'm doing a lesson with her :) One thing I like about having a routine is now that I have started working at our chapel nursery and L-Bug's daddy does school some days with her L-Bug is able to help him through the school day because she knows the routine and the order of things! I set up the work boxes for him just as I do for myself and L-Bug knows to go from top to bottom! Every month I get more and more excited about our Little Passports kit that we have subscribed for! For a little extra fun I have incorporated our Little Passports kit into our Mother Goose Time curriculum :) I feel like it enhances our geography lessons! L-Bug loves seeing Max and Mia from Little Passports so when they introduced our new friend from Egypt she was so excited to find this new friends home! The hint was to find the zebra on our map to find out which continent Egypt was in. Once L-Bug found the zebra on our map L-Bug and I talked about Egypt and the landmarks that we could find there. We also talked about safari being in parts of Egypt. Next L-Bug opened her Passport work book and got out her Little Passports landmark figurines and found them on her page. While writing this post I just realized L-Bug now has three work books that she regularly works out of throughout the month! She's growing up so fast :) Here is our Mother Goose Time Global Friends collection! It's fun to add new friends each month and to explore the places they live. It's been a great way to incorporate more geography into our lessons! It's fun incorporating our Little Passports materials in with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! L-Bug loves her Mother Goose Time map and her geography station continues to grow.
L-Bug is a bit young to start reading words, BUT I think one of the first steps towards reading is letter recognition. L-Bug had such a fun time playing this letter game today where she fed Mr. Elephant leaves. Mr. Elephant could only eat leaves with the letter <E, e> on it. If it was an S, s or Z, z then L-Bug had to put them in a separate pile. Each time she turned over a leaf L-Bug would say the letter and then put it in the appropriate pile or let Mr. Elephant eat it! Even though L-Bug can't read she can match! She loves the little "I Can Read" books that come in our Mother Goose Time curriculum. She loves using the sight word pointers while we read through the book. I have her use her left hand to point to the words as we read the lines and when one of the sight words comes up she grabs the matching pointer and grins as she lines it up! L-Bug loves going to the box in our reading corner and pulling out her "I Can Read" books. Sometimes she pulls out sight word pointers and tries to find the matches in the book, she'll ask me "what does this one say again?" and then she says the word over and over as she searches for it in the books!
Counting comes easily to L-Bug if there is a game involved! Tell her you want to play hide and seek and you'll see just how quickly she can count to ten while you run to find a hiding place :) But when there is no fun and games counting just becomes a chore.... SO playing games is the way to go during math time in our school room! Sometimes the game is as simple as rolling a die and having L-Bug count out that many animals! Each month we learn two new numbers! L-Bug can count as high as 11 now, but number recognition is still something she is learning! So I have her practice tracing the number with her finger on the counting card, finding the matching number on her number poster, etc. Here you can see L-Bugs number card as she counts the animals and places one on each of the oval shapes on the card! She has been loving these little animal counters she received in our "Going on Safari" Mother Goose Time curriculum for January!
What games do you play with your Preschooler for Math Time?! A big thank you to the Mother Goose Time team! We received an awesome Christmas Gift. Meet our new weather man Kyle! L-Bug named our new friend :) She was so excited to do calendar and weather this past week because she knew Kyle was going to be there help! It's so funny because creating a weather woman was actually on my list of craft projects to do within the next few months! Kyle came in an adorable Mother Goose Time school bus and he came with weather symbols, an umbrella, a hat and sunglasses! He adds a little extra fun to our Circle Time Routine, because he loves to sing along to our circle time songs ;)
To see more adorable Mother Goose Time Puppets check out this page! Like I wrote a few posts back L-Bug has learned so much during the first half of our 2015/2016 school year. She continues to grow and learn and surprise me! As fun as it is watching her learn it keeps me on my toes. Always looking and learning new ways to challenge her so that she will continue learning! The past few months she has really blossomed when it comes to learning her letters! She can sing nearly 3/4 of the alphabet on her own and she has been recognizing more and more written letters. Over our winter break I took some time to read and learn about children's learning habits and how to expand on them! I'm very excited to begin a few new things this last half of the school year. I'm hoping that they will continue to challenge her learning and help her to grow! One of the things I'm chasing in our School Routine is our Concept Introductions! Each month we introduce a new color, shape, numbers and letters. To make letters and numbers more fun we are going to do different games on Intro and Review Days! I found that because we have used the Mother Goose Time Curriculum for over a year we have built up quite an amazing stock of resources and tools to help reinforce the learning and there are different games for her to play. Our concept Intro today was the letter Ss, so I started out by having L-Bug put together her alphabet puzzle. I told her that one piece was missing. I helped her name all of the pieces as she put them onto the board. At the end she found that the letter S was missing! Next she pulls out her work box drawer and found her alphabet mat, the missing puzzle piece and her Ss stick! I told her we were going to sing the alphabet song. Once we got to the letter S she was going to yell the letter and jump up and down. We did the song three times with a different action each time, i.e. whisper and spin, monster-voice and roll... she loved it and was happy to sing the song again and again. While we sang I had her help me point to the letters on the paper. Then I gave her the stick and said we were going to find the letter S around our school room! Both the alphabet house poster and the letter flip strip are from past months that came with our Mother Goose Time curriculum. It was nice to be able to incorporate them in today's lesson! Her next work box drawer had the letter flag and cards for the month in it! Along with our Phonics sound key. L-Bug loves the letter sound song. I used the letter cards to have her identify the capital letter S and the lower case letter s. Since we had done the SEE part of our learning for the letter S I had her use the alphabet key to HEAR the letter S sound song. Then I had her turn over the letter cards in her box and we talked about words that begin with the letter S: suitcase, star were on the cards. We came up with sun, sky, soup, etc. We sounded out the S at the beginning of each word as we said them. Finally I worked on WRITING the letter S with L-Bug. I used a white board to demonstrate how to write the letter. I had her sit in my lap while I guided her hand through dots that I made and had her trace them. Then I gave her a page to do out of a new fun work book I got for her. A Sesame Street Color, Letter and Number Preschool workbook :) She loved it and was very excited to do it! Our concept intro took up the whole morning half of our school day, but I was pleased with the way it turned out! Seeing, Hearing, Saying and Writing a letter are all important part of learning it.
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Proud supporter of Mother Goose Time curriculum!All the posts in this blog are from real life experiences. We've taken the activities and materials provided in the Mother Goose Time curriculum and modified it in different ways to fit our lifestyle. Enjoy the read!
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