Another thing I'm really excited about is teaching the little ones about the kitchen! Week #2's lessons are all about Kitchen Safety, Cleanliness and Kitchen Tools. There is lots of great things the kids are going to get to learn AND they are going to get to help prepare food, watch it cook and then enjoy their delicious work! I love these recipe cards that come each month in our curriculum. I'm still trying to find a nice large recipe box that I like to store these in. Any ideas?! And check out our book for this month! "How Are You Peeling - Foods with Moods"!
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One thing that has been really important lately is getting organized! I have SO many great resources from our Mother Goose Time curriculum every month and so many of the pieces can be used and played with again and again! One thing my daughter loves are the board game sand participation stories, they have been in ziplock bags, boxes, sacked up on a shelf.... etc. Finally I found an easy way to keep them sorted and stored! Folders and page protectors :) I used an Expo Marker on the outside of the folders to write what types of materials where in the folder as well as what months the materials came from (this makes it easier for me to find a specific theme if I want to). The expo marker doesn't wipe right off, BUT it will come off with water and a paper towel! Inside of the folders I used clear page protectors to slip all of the materials into. Some of the pages have "You'll Need" notes. This is a quick reminder that some of the pieces we will need to do the activity or game aren't in the folder and are somewhere else in our school room. Those were typically materials that we used all the time in our school room (foam shapes, tangrams, etc) OR they were bulky items that wouldn't fit (frog flippers, little dinosaurs, dice, etc). Check out the vide to see more!
So one of my favorite "extra's" or "add-ons" that we get from Mother Goose Time is the Experience God Curriculum. If you have seen my other posts about homeschool, I like time saving... I like utilizing programs that are easy to follow! With me opening my own Child Care Home time saving and easy to follow lessons are going to be VERY important. We use the Experience God Pack as our daily Bible Study with my daughter. She loves the stories and activities! I LOVE that she is learning about God <3
Above is a picture of the entire Teacher's Pack laid out! It comes with several great tools whether you want to do a simple at-home Bible Study with your kids or whether you plan to do an entire Sunday School lesson! The pack includes: 1 Teacher's Guide, 4 Story Cards and 1 Bible Verse Poster.
Check out this video with more info!
There it is! So how do we do this at home? Usually I have the Teacher's Guide and Children's Pack right next to my Keirug in the kitchen. And each week I also prep the activities that we are going to do ahead of time. So if I need ABC cards I find some in my stock pile of alphabet cards and add them to the bag. This way right at breakfast I grab the bag and sit down!
We pray for our breakfast and for the lesson we are about to read, then I open up the Teacher's Guide and turn to the day we are at. We read the monthly Bible Verse from the verse poster and we talk about the question for the day. Example: "Where does our food come from". We brainstorm about the animals and plants that our food comes from. We work through the activity as we eat breakfast, or if it's a really interactive activity then I skip it and continue with the rest of the routine (we do the activity after we are finished eating). Next we move into the Explain portion of the lesson, example: "God created the Earth to grow lots of different kinds of food for us. The animals and plants that we talked about, He made ALL of them! That's why we pray and THANK HIM for our meals." Then we usually read the Bible Verse of the week. If we still haven't finished breakfast I put on our Truth Tunes CD (quietly) so we can listen to it while we finish up and talk. The art activities from the Child's Pack are included as part of the lessons in the Teacher's Guide so we usually do those after we have finished eating. I have everything we need ready to go and after we clear the table we continue talking about our lessons and do the activity. In the Teacher's Guide there are SIX days planned for you. But there are seven days in a week.... SO usually Sunday's we do our "Take Home" Sheets. First I read our story for the month using the Story Cards from the Teacher's Pack. Then we do the activity on the sheet. Usually these get brought with us to Church that morning where L-Bug plays with her activity or colors the page (if we haven't already cut it up) before the kids are released for Children's Church. It is nice to have something quite for her to do until then. Thanks for reading about one of our favorite activity packs! If you want to win a "God Cares About My Health" Child's Pack be sure to enter to win :) So my curriculum is ready to go and now I am working through my welcome packets and contracts! I never really realized how much goes into the "paperwork" for childcare. There are LOTS of guidelines for FCC (Family Child Care) providers, lots of papers to be signed. BUT I didn't want my welcome packets to just be all about the contracts. I wanted to include a way for me to get info about the child, their family, and for me to share with the parents what they can expect for the month and explain about my assessment process. I dug through some of my Mother Goose Time materials from my welcome kit this year and the online resources. I found some tools to include in the welcome packets! Above there are three awesome tools I can utilize! 1) Family Questionnaire: this awesome little booklet has some great questions that I can have the parents fill out and it will give me a little more info about their family and their child! 2) Family Newsletter: I get these awesome sheets each month for each child. I can send them home before we start the next curriculum theme. The newsletter has the theme web so the parents can have a good idea of what we will be learning AND there are lots of tips on how to include learning at home, some fun themed songs and even a book list if the parents want to check out the library! 3) My Baseline Assessment Overview: this booklet is all about the child who will be in my care. On the front the child get's to draw a picture of themselves and write their name. This gives me and the parents a great starting point at the beginning of the year (or when they first start care with me) for us to assess how they have grown and learned throughout the year! Inside of the Assessment booklet are the different skills from the development continuum. They aren't ALL here, but these are the four core skills (social, emotional, physical, language & literacy and mathematics & reasoning). This is the tool I will use throughout the first month the child is in my care to assess all of their different skills and see where their "baseline is". On the back of the booklet I have space to discuss the learning goals with the parents and make some notes to refer to later. Once I've filled out the book it will be put into the Child's Portfolio that I will be filling with work samples and assessment notes from each month! I LOVE this awesome tool that I found in the Assessment Section online. It gives me a great outline for what and when to collect children's work for the Child's Portfolio. And there is a great Assessment Tip's flyer that will help me to track what skills to observe each month throughout the quarter. I like these tools because they keep me organized. I can put them in the Child's Portfolio box with the Baseline Assessment booklet and each month as I do my assessments I'll be on track and at the end of the quarter I can compare the new assessments with the baseline to see how each child has grown! On the front of each Child's Folder I have a small label where I can put their names :) I also want to look at a scrapbooking store for cute little picture frames that I can put onto the front of the file. That way I can slip profile pictures into the from of each file! This is all starting to feel so real <3 I can't wait to meet the little ones who will be joining my program.
April's curriculum is all about Food & Fitness! So I'm really excited to get my kiddos moving with the some music <3 I love the monthly CD that comes with our Mother Goose Time curriculum, the songs are fun, easy to learn and educational. My little one loves to listen to the CD and we have "boggie" or "wiggle" time where we shake it all about before Circle Time! We also use the music during Circle Time for different things like calendar, weather, etc. We have collected just over 12 of these themed CDs now and I went through them all and found the instrumental tracks and a few songs with words that were very general and created a playlist! It's fun to play while the kids are doing art or free time. On top of the monthly music CD I like to order the Dance-N-Beats Activity! This fun add on is a DVD filled with several dance videos that kids can easily follow along to or make up their own moves! The DVD helps get kids moving and active. Watching the dance leader on the screen teaches kids develop their fine and gross motor skills and learn the different ways their bodies can move :) Here is a fun example video to check out! What are some of your little ones favorite songs to move to?!
I am so excited! I am just a few steps away from finishing all of my certifications and I will be officially open for enrollment as an FCC provider :) Now, I've been a little bad about school time during this long process... My poor daughter has really wanted me to open our curriculum boxes and do some school, but I've been hoarding it! What can I say I am REALLY excited about the themes and I want to start off my preschool class with these fun topics. Haha For those of you Mamma's and Daddy's who are checking out this post to see what kind of curriculum I'll be offering in my care, let me start at the beginning! Just over a year ago I started using a preschool curriculum with my daughter called Mother Goose Time. Over the past year we have worked with the curriculum and WE love it! My daughter loves all the fun she has and I love all the things she learns! It's so cute to see her light up when our "Yellow School Bus Box" get delivered.
While we were in Italy I had toyed with the idea of being and FCC provider, however living off base posed too many complications. However, it was nice to know that the Mother Goose Time company creates it's curriculum with state standards in mind! These resources are key to fulfilling licensing requirements and achieving a five star quality rating through whatever state I live in.
On the lower right you can see the colorful pages, that is my weekly layout in the Planning Journal. The black and white one is another weekly layout, but this one has to do with the daily topics. The page next to "week one" shows a three column graph, I love this section because it gives me space to track my students thoughts, ideas and questions! The columns say: "We Know", "We Wonder", and "We Learned". Each morning when I ask that Daily Topic Question I can record the answers right here and write down some of their questions as well! Then at the end of the week we can do a little review to see what we have learned about each topic (that's my favorite part!). The images to the left show a few of our Circle Time tools. Each month we have a set of basic concepts that we learn about: letters, numbers, a shape, a color, a "heartitude" (as a I call our Friendly Bees) and new Global Friends for geography! We also get new music and fun songs that go along with our theme study and a colorful poster for the kids to explore. All of these cool pieces and concepts are introduced during circle time and then I incorporate them into my room so the kids continue to see them throughout the month and the rest of the year :) You can see how I incorporate all of these pieces after circle time in my post about Our School Room Set Up! One of my other favorite things about using Mother Goose Time curriculum is that every month new Manipulatives (fancy word for learning toys) comes! This month we to a basket of adorable fruits for counting and playing with. And a Geo-Pattern Board! How many of you had these growing up? It's a double sided peg board where children use rubber bands to make patterns <3 It really works their fine motor skills. The other images below are just a few more great examples of what activities your child will get to make each month to aide their learning experience! I know that is a LOT of information, but at leas now you know if you decide to enroll your children in my pre-school program they will be getting taught from a wonderful curriculum! A few other great things to mention are:
#1) Each month you will get a family take-home newsletter that talks about what your child/children are learning each month so you can talk to them about it and maybe even incorporate some of the ideas into your family activities to continue more learning opportunities at home! #2) I will be doing observations and tracking your child's progress from day one of their enrollment! I will be creating a portfolio box where I will keep work samples, storing my notes and doing quarterly reviews on the skills your little one(s) is/are learning! I will also provide (and highly encourage) quarterly meetings, just like parent teacher conferences, where we can review your child's portfolio work and see the progress they are making! This gives us time to talk about learning strengths and ares that may need a little extra support. #3) I am planning an Open House! I want to invite you, your child/children, your spouse and any friends/family you would like to bring along :) The idea of the open house is to welcome you to come meet me, see my child care room set up & let your kiddos loose to play, take a look at the curriculum and ask any questions that you may have! If you would like to join us please send a message to me via e-mail: [email protected] or via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KiddieKornerKare/?fref=ts Thanks for taking the time to read all about my program! Feel free to post any comments below :D How perfect is it that the focus topic for March is about individualizing instruction! As I go through my curriculum and look over the lessons for the month I was thinking about the fact that for the first time I will be teaching more than just one child and the ages of the children I will have could vary! So I realized that while preparing my lessons I will have to think about each individual child's likes/dislikes, skills/areas that need improvement, and their ages! I REALLY found our topic this month helpful because it gave me the perfect steps for individualizing my lessons so that each child will have an optimal learning experience :) Interest
Differing Developmental & Age Levels
Observations
So if you read my last blog post you already know there are some big changes going on around here right now! We are going from the life of stay-at-home mommy and homeschool to Family Child Care Home! I've finally finished rearranging... and man did I rearrange :) I moved the entire school room downstairs, moved my daughter's room to the old-school room, moved our guest room to my daughter's old room and we moved our ENTIRE living room to the old guest room! Yeah... I rearranged! But it all worked out perfectly because one of the things so many providers kept telling me was that I needed to find a way to keep "Child Care Life" and "Home Life" separate. Basically we need a place that is just ours, the isn't taken over by in home child care. So moving the living room upstairs gives my husband the perfect get-away space when I have children here. SO! Now I have an entire area designated for my child care space. And I am in LOVE with it!! When I was making the plan and setting up my school room I put a lot of though into my set up. I LOVE the idea of "stations" or "areas". When reading through my Mother Goose Time Teacher Guide I really liked this explanation of Investigation Stations, " Young children benefit from an environment where they can make choices about their learning and can try out and explore different roles, responsibilities, emotions and problem solve through play. We believe that children are active participants in their learning journeys and should be given independent access to materials as well as space to interact with others." And I love the room model picture in the book as well. When I get a few more shelving units I plan to extend them into the room to have more space on my shelves and to define the spaces more. I set up my school room to include several different stations! Some are going to need toys and materials added, but for now I am VERY excited with how it turned out! Here is a panoramic image :)
So looking at it from the other angle you'll be able to see what was behind me in the first pano. Basically here you can see the dramatic play area in a little better lighting. Also here is my entry way for drop-off and pick-up, parent info boards and bulletin board (lots of regulations to be posted for us FCC providers) the entry into the kids bathroom and the kids cubbies! I really love the aesthetics that Mother Goose Time provides with it's curriculum so you'll see a lot of their themed posters, counting charts, alphabet charts, station signs, quotes, etc in my school area! One thing that was very important to me was to set up a space so the kids will have their own cubbies. I like having it right in my entry way so that when the parents are doing drop-off they can get coats hung up and shoes tucked in the bucket. This also allows me a place to put any papers or crafts that need to go home with the kids at the end of the day! I found some really cute colored wire baskets at Target, but I wound up using them in other areas in my room. So I will definitely have to go back for more because I want to have an easy way to store the kid's daily care items: diapers, wipes, toothbrush, lotion, sunscreen, etc! My bulletin boards have LOTS of papers required by the FCC office. I actually have THREE boards! The front one (pictured above) which has my certificates, training, evacuation route and menus and meal times. The other two boards (pictured below) are to the right of the sign in area. The right side has all of my required posted documents and info for the FCC home. The left side has my house rules, our daily schedule, my monthly Mother Goose Time theme web and below it will be my modified monthly calendar. I love that Mother Goose Time provides these! It is an easy way for parents to see what their child will be learning throughout the month with the curriculum. Below that board I posted the Development Continuum so if a parent has a question about progress we can easily refer to it! As I mentioned in the pano the left side of our room is mainly school focused. This is where a majority of our lessons will take place! Starting with Circle Time :D I'm excited to have so much space for our Circle Time area. I found this interchangeable calendar on Oriental Trading and I really like it! I've also got some great tools like the season bar and weather spinner. Kyle the weather man has his own bin with all of our weather pieces so nothing gets lost! I kept my original display board for Circle Time because I like how interactive it is! I can use all my Mother Goose Time monthly pieces here and the kids can have hands on experience with it. I created a fun art wall where I can hang the kids projects throughout the month's lessons! If you can't tell the reading area is one of my favorites! We've got our Reading Nook, book shelf and one other small seat here. I am so excited with how full the ABC tree is getting! L-Bug can identify SO MANY letters now :) She loves singing our ABCs and reading books like Chika-Chika, Boom-Boom by the tree! It makes it visual and hands on! Next to the reading nook is our Alphabet and Writing Station. I have put just about anything and everything that has to do with letters here! I feel like hands on is so important for kids and my daughter loves doing letter searches in this area. I will show her a letter flag (usually one of our new one for the month) and then she searches though the different baskets to find the letter! We've got our phonics alphabet sound toy, Melissa and Doug magnetic letters, Mother Goose Time popsicle sticks and Sassy foam letters for her to search through during that game! Next we have the Geography station. This is one of those that I feel I need to amp up a little! I have our Mother Goose Time world map, as well as a few Mother Goose Time games we've collected that have to do with geography. I also have our Little Passport Suit Case and some world wonder statues inside! Do you have any ideas or toys you can think of that are geography related to help enhance this area? Please share them below this post in the comments section :) To the right of the geography station is my Math and Manipulatives area! This area is probably second best to the reading corner ;) Mother Goose Time provides so many wonderful manipulatives every month that this area is BURSTING with great toys for the kids. In fact, I have so many that a few things are upstairs in a closet and I will have to rotate them in at some point! Along with those manipulatives I have our blocks, shapes, puzzles, matching games, etc here. Now this area is actually to the left of the art station, across the room from the alphabet and writing area. This is our technology and station.... it is probably the one that needs the most enhancing! Technology is on top and right now there is a view finder, tablet and play computer. Yeah... I know. BUT I do have a few things upstairs to go through and bring down! Below is the music box and there are a few play music toys in there, but I really need to get some drums, shakers and a play piano or xylophone! I've been looking at a Melissa and Doug music kit box, but I just need to order it already! One big enhancement I want to make to this area is to mount a small TV on the wall to watch the videos that go along with lessons, listen to our music as well as an easy way to watch our Dance-N-Beats DVDs from Mother Goose Time! So that is the run down of our "lesson stations" but another huge and important part of my school room is the free play and imagination station! Don't mind the deer in the corner.... my husband promises he'll move it to our living room upstairs so the kids don't want to play with it ;) I feel like imaginative play is a huge part of a child's growth, development and learning! So much of what they take in and learn can actually be observed in their free play time! Yes I have a three year old daughter, so a LOT of this is geared towards girls... BUT I have dinosaurs and cars as well as a car rug for the boys! Below to the left is the infamous Barbie Castle for all things imagination with Barbie dolls. My daughter got it from Santa this past Christmas... We also have a pony farm and van. One thing I plan on adding this area is a few boy targeted toys, male barbies, GI-Joes, etc. Below to the right you can see Barbie storage in the minnie mouse baskets, a baby stroller and a box full of baby dolls. I have a few puppets and puppet "stage" to bring down and add in once I have another small shelving unit to go here. Behind it you can see "house play". "House Play" as I call is basically anything and everything to do with dramatic play in a house. We've got the kitchen, food, dishes, table, cash register, shopping baskets, vacuum, dress up, etc. I do have a few boy oriented toys here! I have the pirate sword, the fireman's horn, cowboy hat, flash light toy, cell phone toys, key's etc. I do want to get a few boy dress up outfits too. Three stations that you don't see are Science, Sensory and Gym. Those are in my outdoor area and that is still a work in progress at the moment. I'm hoping to have it done next week though!
Phew! What a lot of info :D I am so excited about this space I think I could write all day... but I'll stop now. I can't wait to share more as the process rolls on! Oh! And I finally decided on a name :D How does "Welcome to Kiddie Korner" sound?! |
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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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