With our move going on and the time here while we're visiting with family we have been SO busy and getting school in has been a little more difficult than I was expecting. I've been on the go a lot, but the other day L-Bug was going to be home all day with her Gigi and her Grammy. So I decided to leave the diver school day for them to work on!
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This week our favorite activities have been learning out Jelly Fishes and Sponges!
L-Bug loved making this Jelly Fish hat! She's been working hard on her scissor skills so she cut all the pieces of ribbon. Another one of L-Bug's favorite projects from this week was our sponges project. We talked about sponges in the ocean and how they can hold thousands of animals and other things because they absorb it. I had L-Bug try to see how much of the coffee grounds she could pick up with the sponge be drying dry. Not much came up. Then we dipped our sponge in some water to see if it would pick up MORE coffee grounds if it was wet. I taught L-Bug how to ring out her sponge to see what would come out.
Last week a friend of mine (and a fellow Mother Goose Time Mom) and I, took our kiddos on a field trip to the Aquarium! We had plans to go to the beach that weekend as well but the weather didn't really cooperate with us. Our two year olds had an AMAZING time! They loved running from tank to tank looking at the "fishes" or "sea animals" as L-Bug calls them!
They got to see an up close view of how a fish breaths through it's gills! L-Bug was able to show me the sharks gills, fins, head, tail, body and eyeballs. The girls were VERY excited when they got to splash in the water tank and touch a live starfish! I talked with L-Bug about how the starfish's body felt and we said bumpy, wet, cold and rough. L-Bug LOVED these sea horses and the sting rays! We had such an awesome time with our kiddos and it was a great way to delve deeper into the lessons that we had been doing over these past few weeks!
This month the Mother Goose Time Bloggers' focus topic is Science! We have talked about how science is all around us and we discussed the fact that we often use and practice science skills without even thinking about it. I wanted to look a little further into what falls under the category "science". I found this very interesting: "Science skills include a child’s ability to inquire, predict and evaluate observations. It supports a child’s ability to explore everyday life, physical properties within the surrounding environment and to make sense of concepts such as weather, natural habitats, and technology. Similar to learning to count or read, learning how to “do” science is a lifelong process. Metacognitive skills develop as children describe what they see, ask questions about it, repeat the experience, and then think about how it connects to what they know about their surrounding environment (Ashbrook, 2003)." With that in the back of my mind we dove head first into our Ocean Commotion school curriculum this month. I have been paying close attention to all of the amazing science projects we've been exposed to and taken a more in depth look at the science section on the Mother Goose Time Developmental Continuum (I used this infant toddler chart for L-Bug). Click on the science chart photo for a more in depth review on each skill. Our Teach Guides clearly outline what projects we do that are science oriented. So I've been keeping an eye out for those as well as activities we do throughout the month that fall under this category! Here are some of our favorite :) Weather ReporterEveryday L-bug and I talk about the weather. We look outside and we talk about what we see. I ask questions like: "What do you see? Is it sunny or rainy? Are there clouds?" If we are outside instead of just looking from a window I ask: "Is it hot or cold? Do you feel any wind?" L-Bug is very vocal for a two year old and loves just starring out of the window and talking about what she sees. And of course if she sees sunshine and a nice day that means we should go to the park!
Easter Egg Coloring!We've colored eggs twice for Easter now. The first time in March was the first Time L-Bug has ever dyed eggs and it was interesting to see her observe the process and learn how to do it. The second time she knew what she was supposed to do and got to it! I loved watching her little wheels turn as she focused on her project.
Sweet & Salty...Here is a fun science project from that we did today! After our field trip to the aquarium we talked more about how all of those creatures live out in the ocean and we talked about how Ocean water was different than the water we drink or take our baths in. We did this fun little water experiment where we used our senses to "observe" this water.
Then we decided to TASTE it! Well... we decided they definitely all TASTED very differently! L-Bug described the Sea Water as "salty" and continued to smack her lips after every sip. I asked her what they tasted like and we talked about salty foods like chips, peanuts and french fries. L-Bug described the Sugar Water as "sweet" and "tasty". She decided to ditch the straw and start drinking straight from the cup. We talked about sweet foods like candy and ice cream! Then we discussed how the ocean animals lived in water that was salty. I told her the ocean is full of salt, but we can't see it just like we couldn't see it after we mixed it into our cup. Scientific Resoning: Observes and Experiments by exploring cause and effect. Uses senses to explore environment and investigates an object or group of objects in multiple ways. Science, It's All Around Us! These are just a handful of the projects that we have done over the past few weeks that show just how much science is a part of our every day lives! I'll admit before looking more into the science portion of the developmental continuum I never really noticed just how often we use science. My hope is that after reading this post you will see how easy it is to help your children understand the science that they are exposed to in a purposeful way. The more we try and shape the activities of our day to become a learning opportunity the more naturally it will come to our children!
This is a big month for our family! We are making a HUGE move from Italy back to the US, before we move into a new home we will be in a hotel for 10 days, visiting family for 20 days, in a hotel for another 10-20 days while we search for our new house…. THEN we should finally get keys to our new place. But, that’s not the end. After that we will be on the road visiting family for about another 5 weeks and after that our household shipment should finally be in from Europe and we can unpack. So over the next 2-3 months we are going to be practically living out of suitcases and we will be constantly on the go. I decided that I didn’t want to stop doing school during this time. I want to capitalize on all of the traveling and all of the different experiences we are going to have.
I took all of our circle time activities down and put them onto a tri-fold board. I had seen this before on a few different blogs and on Pinterest, but the problem for me with our board needed to fit inside of a suitcase since we will be bringing it with us across the ocean! I cut our board in half and to give me two pieces.
On the first piece I put our counting garden, birds nest, sight letter and word pails. Once you close it up the ABC flip strip is there! I'll talk a little bit more below about our feather, shapes and color birdies! I've got our letters and sight words in a small snap folder ready to be pulled out, I just hadn't grabbed them for this picture. I did realize that I accidentally packed up our weather cards SO I'm going to have to make some for us to use!
On the second piece is our calendar (and I forgot our month cards!) and our verse of the month from Mother Goose Time's Experience God Add-On! This is our first month doing it and we love it so much I'm going to be doing a WHOLE post all about it. The blank space to the right will be for focus topics throughout the week or our favorite art drawings... haven't decided yet ;)
Before the movers came I went through the entire month's curriculum and I sorted it all out. I pulled out any activities that I figured would be too advanced for her and I put them back into the box so they would all get packed up and sent off with all of our other stuff. Then I sorted through all of the stuff that we would be taking and made sure to have the materials ready to go into our suitcase. I really only pulled out 1-2 activities per day because A) I knew I wasn't going to have TONS of room and B) I know we aren't going to have TONS of time.
A few things I forgot to photograph are the actually daily bags, our art/craft materials and our manipulative pieces. The manipulatives are separated in ziploc bags. This makes it SUPER easy to keep them picked up and sorted. I also have glue sticks, tape and scissors in a ziploc and markers in another. L-Bug has a travel lap art tray that has some pockets where her crayons are being stored.
The daily school bags are actually in their original wrapping. Like I said, before the movers came I went through everything and pulled out the advanced activities that L-Bug wouldn't be able to do, BUT I kept the plastic bags and I wrote on the outside with sharpie "Day 1" "Day 2", etc. Those are all stacked up in order and I slipped them into a mesh zipper pocket inside the suitcase to keep them from spilling and getting all over the place.
L-Bug is loving the new ocean theme this month! In a previous blog post I mentioned how we are in the midst of our move. Before all of our stuff was boxed up I went through April's curriculum box and pulled out the materials that I felt would be too advanced for L-Bug and sorted our lessons down to 1-2 activities per day. This is our hoard from the past two weeks! We are missing our beautiful oyster because it accidentally got packed up. But we have been busy fish!
L-Bug loves these theme posters! She's got the hang of it now and searches for the images. I really like them because it helps me explain other things throughout the month to L-Bug. When I'm talking about the ocean I usually have her look at our theme poster so she can visualize and imagine it more. When we talked about whales, oysters, sharks and the octopus I showed her the pictures on the theme poster to help her understand better. They are really useful!
Here the project was to draw our own ocean scene. I put the theme poster next to L-Bug and talked to her about the different ocean animals while she colored her picture. Obviously at two I don't expect her to draw a boat, but as she was scribbling away she was taking about one so I'm guessing that's what she thought she was drawing. There was also mention of a castle, but... I'm not sure where she got that from!?!
I knew that a project like this would be a little to advanced for L-Bug so I did a majority of the threading. I would poke the needle into the plastic matt and tell her to pull it out. She did great! Then she wanted to cut the yarn. She's started to really enjoy cutting with her scissors so we used up the scrap yarn by me holding it tight while she sniped it up with her scissors.
Lately I can't just introduce a new concept letter on it's own. I have to pull out ALL of the letter cards and cut out so L-Bug can look at them and line up the pieces like a puzzle. It is a great excursive though because we repeat each letter as she finds it's place on the cards.
Despite the big words and long descriptions L-Bug really enjoyed our new book from earlier in the week! It is an A-Z book about ocean animals and while I read to her L-Bug traced the letters with her fingers. The first time through I showed her how to trace and she wanted to read again. The second time I read she traced the letters on her own, of course it was all over the place but she gets points for the attempt!
Here is our latest craft from this week! A shark fin. L-Bug loved this because after our craft she ran around the room with the fin while I sang "Baby Shark" to her. It's a song she's learned from playgroup and it's definitely a favorite, it goes like this:
"Baby Shark! Do, Do, Do - Do, Do, Do X2
Mama Shark! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 Daddy Shark! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 Grandma Shark! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 Grandpa Shark! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 Saw a Shark! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 Swam Away! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2 I'm Ok! Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do X2"
Every month I like to find a few little toys that go along with the month's theme for L-Bug to play with on her own. Things that will just help to reinforce the learning that we do during school time.
Here are a few things that I found for this month! Some ocean animal bath toys and this ocean animals puzzle and book pack!
Until recently the Little Goose Time supplement was the only add-on we had purchased to go along with our monthly curriculum. I had been wanting to do the Experience God add-on for some time and I'm so excited we finally did it! Once again I was AMAZED at how much comes with one kit... This is one month: One Classroom Pack and one child art pack. The Classroom Kit came with a teachers guide, four story cards (one for each week) and a memory/verse of the month card. The Story cards have fun, colorful pictures on one side and the bible story on the other. There are four in this sequence (one for each week) and the story is Jonah and the Whale and covers chapters 1-4 from the book of Jonah. I love the quality of these and I know I will laminate them! I'm already trying to think of ways to save and use these in the future... make a book with some craft rings, leave them separated and put into a folder to use in the future as a memory game (have children put them in the right order on there own) or put them in a binder along with other story cards we get in the future. I'd love to hear some other ideas of what to do with them! The teacher book had great info on all the Experience God curriculum options. If you do plan on ordering yours be sure that you order the Teacher Pack AND a child art pack PER CHILD. On the opposite page we have our overview that shows the different domains and skills that your children will use as they go through the different activities provided in the book! I LOVE using this in our regular monthly curriculum to check out what areas L-Bug is excelling in and which ones I can focus on to help her to do better in! The curriculum can be used at home like we do using this great 10 minute daily routine! I love the idea of getting L-Bug into the habit of doing a daily devotional. If you don't have the Mother Goose Time "Truth Tunes III" CD use any Bible Song CD or sing some together that you know! Spend a few minutes per day doing the "devotional" talking about the discussion question, doing an activity or project together and learn more about God. Don't forget to pray at the end of each devotional time. Try letting your little one pray and see what things they come up with! The teacher guide lays out each day with a discussion topic, a fun activity or art project and an explanation that makes it easy to help your kids fully understand the story and the message WHILE having fun! You can also use the curriculum to teach a sunday school class! The teacher guide book makes it easy to plan, prep and lead a class of any size! And that was just the teachers pack! Each Child's activity pack comes jammed with some great materials too! The child's pack comes with four craft/art activities and four family take home activities. On the front is a discussion, a verse for the week, an activity and the instructions for the activity. On the back is a coloring page. All of the activities require you to cut up the page so what I did with L-Bug was while I went over the "discussion" with her she colored picture. Once she was done we cut up the activity and played the game. Another option would be to copy the coloring page and print a new one so that when you cut up the activity they still have their picture. Here is an example of the family activity page for Week One. The "Let's Discuss" section outlines what your child would have learned in the Sunday School/Children's Church lesson. If your a parent doing this at home it's a great review! L-Bug and I did the Sunday School Lesson plan on Wednesday and then on Saturday we did a review using the family take home page. L-Bug enjoyed all of the bright pages and fun characters! The lesson is so fun and easy for her to understand, this has easily become my new favorite add-on from Mother Goose Time.
Then I pulled out the #8 counting card since that is our concept number this month and I pulled out the eggs from our curriculum kit back in January. We took them outside and had an Easter Egg hunt! I hid 8 eggs for L-Bug to find. On a side note I love how this program gets L-Bug so interested in learning! It’s rarely a battle and she seems to get so much out of it. After our egg hunt we played outside for a while and L-Bug was picking some of the little white flowers that are strewn all over. She brought them over to where were were counting the eggs, set them into a pile and said “come count mommy”. I flipped the counting card over and told her to put one flower on each triangle and we will count them. I love this picture because you can see her mouth caught in the middle of counting “four”. After we filled all the triangles she wanted to count them again using her finger to point as we counted. We do this on our Circle Time “Counting Garden” number line, but I still have to remind her to go slow and touch each number. Before I even started counting she looked at me and said “slow, touching”. It’s the little things that make a home-school mom soar… LOL. The first time I helped her start out and moved her hand along as we touched each flower. Then she wanted to “do again, more counting” we counted the flowers three more times! And by the last time she was counting to four with me and moving her finger left to right as we counted each one.
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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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