We have been using the Mother Goose Time curriculum for just over 9 months now. I am BLOWN away by the quality of materials that are sent each month. I am so impressed with how thought out and planned each month, week, day and activity is! To say L-Bug and I have fallen in love is a complete understatement! She wakes up every morning ready to do school. Yes, there are some areas that aren't her favorite, BUT the best thing is there are so many ways to adapt this curriculum to help her love all areas of learning. In the past 9 months L-Bug has learned so many new skills, her mind has grown in many different areas! We were using the Little Goose Supplement a lot in the beginning and working with the "simplified" version of different activities, but L-Bug has pretty much outgrown the Little Goose Supplement. We still do quite a few "simplified" activities, but I'm noticing more and more that I can challenge her by doing the regular versions too! In August we were set a Baseline Assessment Kit to see where our children are starting off for the 2015/16 school year. Using this and realizing just how much L-Bug has developed over the past few months I've decided we are going to work on a few more challenging things. Instead of focusing on colors and shapes we'll be including more counting and number recognition! Instead of focusing on art projects were going to work through more of the science and cooking projects too. We'll be including the Little Journals and practicing our writing and letter recognition. I'm excited to see the growth and changes that come with this new school year! I loved the Baseline Assessment and I love that it gives me a "starting" point to really be able to track her growth over the next year. I've been looking into a few more of the Mother Goose Time resources and I printed off the recommendations for creating a portfolio. I was so excited when I opened the September box and saw some new additions to the layout of the planning journal! This has made planning for L-Bug's portfolio SO much easier (as always, they think of everything)! Now the Planning Journal includes this calendar view that shows you what skills are being used each day! While I look over the portfolio and observation schedule I'm able to find the skills that I need in this calendar view and mark the ones I need for the portfolio. Then I open up the Teachers Guide to each date and mark the activity (just like MGT had done in our August Books for the Baseline Assessment), so I remember to write down my assessment from that activity. Another great addition to the Planning Journal is this awesome grid that shows the art projects completed this month!
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This month has been full of so many great stories and lessons! I've really seen L-Bug's imagination grow and I love how she has become so much more expressive in her free play. I'll hear her making up stories as she plays with her baby dolls or I'll catch a bit of imaginative dialogue as she uses different voices playing in a doll house. It's been very fun watching her creative wheels turn and as her mind expands and grows. Some of the stories were a little to difficult for her to follow. That is what makes the Little Goose Supplement a nice edition for this month because it had a "simplified" version of the story in it. I'd read that story first so that L-Bug had a better idea of the story, then we would listed to the bigger story on our CD from this month. L-Bug had a blast playing this game that went along with your "How the Rainbow was Made" story! She wanted to just fill it all up, but we are working on following directions and taking turns. So the first time we took turns rolling the dice and finding the matching color. Then after the game was done and the rainbow was full I set it up in her manipulatives station so she could go to it during free time if she wanted to. She played with it quite a few times, filling up the rainbow and she even played with the color cube a few times! Another story we've read this week was "The Black Snake and the Eggs". In the story a chicken laid some eggs but every time she left her nest for food she would come back and she'd be missing an egg, because a snake kept stealing them. We talked about stealing and I asked L-Bug if she knew what it meant... I was surprised when she said "Yeah, boy stealing my toys! Not nice, boy". She was talking about playing with other kids in a group when another kid took one of her toys... We talked about how the snake wasn't nice and was stealing the chickens eggs. "How do you think that made the chicken feel?" I asked, "ummm, sad" she answered. Then I had L-Bug create her own nest with some blocks and put the "eggs" inside. She acted out the part of the chicken and I acted out the part of the eggs. I'd have her run from her "nest" to the door and back and see if I could snatch up an egg before she got back. After a few times of me getting the eggs she decided to reconfigure her nest so that the eggs were hiding underneath the blocks! I was so shocked! Then I asked L-Bug how it made her feel that I stole her eggs.. "Mad! I don't like you stealing those! Give them back, please!" was her response. I used that opportunity to make the connection that stealing is wrong. We don't take things that aren't ours. It can make people sad (like the chicken) or mad like it made her feel. L-Bug's favorite craft happened to go along with our Snake story too! We actually had two activities that turned into one project! First we used our discover science card to create colored noodles! L-Bug has improved so much on her following directions AND she was the one who told me what step was next by following the directions on the card. After we finished coloring our noodles I had her recall what steps we did from beginning to end. I gave her a pen and paper to "draw" what we did. She told me each step as she made a few different scribbles on the page! Then I asked her what she though we would do with them next. "Cook them?" is what she though! I thought that was pretty good reasoning! But we didn't cook them! After the noodles dried we used the noodles and some yarn to do a fine motor skill project! A noodle necklace :) L-Bug had fun getting these noodles on the yarn, she actually wanted to put more on there! She was very proud of her noodle necklace! We had a lot of fun with the "Continent Jump" game! I gave L-Bug her world ball and I gave her a different action (roll, kick, toss, etc) to move from one continent card to the next :) She liked doing this so much that we put the ball aside and used some of the gymnastic moves she's been learning for the second round (log roll, somersault, tip toe and other action moves like crawl, hop, slow walk and run). L-Bug really enjoyed our pot painting project! I asked her if she could practice painting slow and making small lines and dots. She was very focused and kept telling me "paint it pretty huh mommy!" I loved the "Anasi and the Pot of Wisdom" story. We saved it for our last day because of the Pot of Wisdom activity. This is an activity I want to start doing every month :) L-Bug had so much fun with it and it was a great way for me to assess how much she learned and remembered from that month. I took a handful of pieces from our different activities throughout the month and put them in pot. Then L-Bug and I sat down and she pulled out one piece at a time for review. I asked her "what is that?" She remembered the letter B, Our shapes: oval, tear drop & circle, Paul Bunyans breakfast, the snack necklace, and the names of Paul Bunyan, Babe, Bessie, Zacchaeus & Jesus. When she didn't remember a certain piece I'd remind her about the story it went along with and see what parts of the story she could recall. She was really proud to look at all of the things she learned and she loved when I told her that her pot was full of wisdom!
I just can not believe how much L-Bug has grown and learned in the past 7 months with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! L-Bug knows a lot of her colors, a handful of shapes, she can sing along to just about all of the ABC song, count to four all by herself, and she knows all of her body parts and so much more! She is growing into this little girl with a love for learning! I've decided that with the beginning of a new school year we are going to start focusing and learning more about number and letter recognition, phonics and letter sounds, writing, etc! This is the first month we will have actually used the My Little Journal that comes in our Mother Goose Time curriculum kit. I’ve always thought that it was a little too advanced for L-Bug since she’s only two. But I’m ready to give it a shot! I'm excited to look at these at the end of the year and see how much things have changed and grown!
After a couple of days using our journals and helping L-Bug practice her tracing I let her trace the circles all on her own and she did really, really good! The only circle she didn't do on her own was the one I x-d out. You'll notice notes I put on some of the pages. These are so I can look back over the workbooks at the end of the year and see what kind of progress L-Bug has made! With me guiding L-Bug's hand in this journal I wanted to have notes to remind me what she was able to do on her own.
Last week was all about Aesop's Fables and this week L-Bug got to learn about the infamous Paul Bunyan! We read through several different stories about Paul Bunyan and the first story was all about the birth of Paul Bunyan. We talked about how Paul grew really big! I wrote down some of Lily's heights since birth and then we measured her height now. In another story we met Babe the Big Blue ox AND Bessie the Yellow Cow. We made a yellow and blue collage. L-Bug practiced her cutting and pasting, then we used blue and yellow paint and L-Bug got to see what happens when you mix blue and yellow! We talked about how if Babe and Bessie had a baby cow it might be green! We really had fun making Paul Bunyan some breakfast! We read a story about how Paul Bunyan LOVED flapjacks and L-Bug and I talked about how big of a pancake we would have to make for Paul. Then we went downstairs and cooked up some pancakes of our own! Breakfast for lunch :) L-Bug helped mix up the batter, then she stood and "observed" as I cooked the pancakes. Then we ATE! I think that was her favorite part. We had a lot of fun shape sorting! I started with just circles and tear drops, but she did it way too easy so I decided to add in a few more to give her a bit of a challenge. We worked with seven different shapes. L-Bug was a little confused at first and kept trying to switch match up the colors, but once I showed her a few times to match it shape to shape she took off! We practiced following directions using our story pieces. I would name a story piece and then tell L-Bug where to put it. In another story L-Bug read about how Babe the Big Blue Ox cleared a river with a flick of his tail! She really has loved all of the story pieces we've gotten to play with this month. L-Bug really liked this strip puzzle we did! I knew she wasn't going to be able to put the numbers in order on her own so I wrote out 1-8 on a piece of paper to help guide her. She did really good finding the next number from the number line. It's been a week full of GIANT adventures! I'm sad that we only have one more week left of Folk Tales and Fables.
Encouraging Choice (Investigation Stations)
**How do you use the Investigation Station suggestions in the Teacher Guide? I usually pick 2-3 different stations to choose from each week. I don't have a special area set aside for these stations, I usually just set it up in the station that it goes with. I start off by letting her play on her own so I can observe what she does and how she comes up with different ideas. After a while I sit down and play side by side with her. She usually watches what I'm doing and then mimics it OR she tells me what I should do. I also set up "Busy Boxes" for Monday-Friday. Each busy box is filled with our concept intro or review for that day. **What types of choices do you see your children making? L-Bug loves role play, so that is usually what I see her doing whether it's a box of cars or little bunnies. She also likes to line things up regardless of color, size or shape! Sometimes the investigation area is a little difficult and L-Bug needs help. Typically she'll try it a couple of times, get frustrated and tell me she needs help. Then I'll walk her through it step by step.
Outdoor Learning
**How do you take Mother Goose Time outside and continue learning? When we take a walk I like to talk about the different things we are learning in our lessons. Sometimes we talk about the weather, other times we talk about the different concepts we are learning (letter, number, shape, color, etc). We talk about stories or games we played, maybe a "question of the day" from our theme poster. I incorporate things we see on our walks that can tie into the different ideas and concepts we are learning. If the weather isn't too hot I like to pack up a lesson (something easy to bring along like a coloring page or a book) and when we get to a shady spot in the grass or at the park we pull it out and have our lesson right there in the fresh air! Messy projects that have to do with water or painting I really prefer to take out to the back yard and do if it isn't too hot!
Room Set-up:
**How do you set up your room with Mother Goose Time materials? We recently made a big move from Europe this past summer so I'm trying to set up our school room in a MUCH smaller room! I've been anxiously awaiting for our new room decorations that will come in our September curriculum box and I was into it just a few minutes after it showed up on our door step!! I love how Mother Goose Time suggests separating different learning areas! We have (going around the room to the left): --Circle Time Board (with our monthly & daily theme posters, our bible Bible Verse, our "today is", alphabet grass, friendly bees, color & shape of the month), Weather Station in the window & our calendar! I still have a few things I want to do with the calendar and I also plan on creating a weather girl and season chart for this area. --Blocks Area: I still need to do a little work in this area to find a way to keep it neat and organized. I want some kind of table here for L-Bug to stack the blocks on. She has a giant foam blocks, wooden blocks and rubber legos. --Math & Manipulatives Station: We have ALL kinds of fun things here <3 I've got a few counting charts on the wall, our new hands on number tree, puzzles, shape sorters, color bean bags, stacking cups, and all kinds of Mother Goose Time manipulatives that we have collected over the past few months! I have a small drawer shelf that has a few of the items in it and others are sorted into different bins on the shelves :) --ART Station: Here is L-Bugs table with all of her coloring utensils, scissors, glue, etc. This is where we do our different art projects! On the wall I hung a boarder and inside I put used sticky tabs to hang clothes pins on so I can swap out L-Bug's favorite art projects each month. I have all of the different coloring tools in drawers so it's easy for her to choose what she wants to color with (pencils, crayons, markers, etc..). On top I added a small jar for her to put pencils that need to be sharpened in, that way I don't have to dig through the drawers looking for broken pencils to sharpen. --On the back of the door are all of my teacher charts and the monthly theme web. Underneath it is where our map is and underneath I have a hanging pocket chart where I can add our new "friends from around the world" and "country flags"! I like keeping things lower on the wall so it's more eye level for L-Bug. --Reading Station: Another work in progress! Right now it's just where all the books go lined up along the wall, but soon it will be a fun little reading nook for L-Bug to sit and enjoy reading in! --ABC Station: I was so happy to get our tree back up on the wall! For those of you who don't know, any fabric will NON-permanently stick to the wall using fabric starch (yes the kind you use for ironing clothes). I did a little altering by adding string and clothes pins to the top of the tree so we can add our alphabet flags each month! I also kept our alphabet flip strip so that is on our ABC tree too. Next to the tree I have a white board table top for L-Bug to practice writing on! We have letter charts, toys & games here too! Whenever we get alphabet MGT materials they go here or get rotated in if we have too many :) --Inside the closet there is a shelf where I store different items that I don't want L-Bug getting into. On the left side of the closet I also have my own wall hanger for putting my teacher's journal and planning guides! --SOON TO BE-- Sensory, Science & Technology Stations: This is a project I am working on setting up! I need to find the right table to fit this area. But it will have all of our sensory items (play dough, floam, rice, beans, etc). Our science will be set up right next to the sensory area! I also want to leave a little space in here for our technology station. We don't have too many technology toys yet, but I do want space for it when we have some! --Daily Drawer Cart: Some people refer to these as "work boxes". I'm working through a few ideas to set this up so it will work for us! I'm so excited because I just got this in and I'm hoping it helps give L-Bug some independence when it comes to lessons and following a routine. -- Music Station: I have a white board here with a few music sign language pictures, this is where I set up my computer to play our Circle Time CD on and any other music we listen to during the day. Under the board are a few music toys! That brings you full circle in our School Room :)
Intentional Materials
**Which Mother Goose Time included material(s) do you find is most helpful for inspiring the mind and curiosity of your children? This one is too hard to choose from! There are so many items that L-Bug loves to do! I'd say that any of the manipulatives and art projects are her favorite and get her the most excited. Mother Goose Time is intentional about EVERYTHING they put in our curriculum boxes each month so that our kids cover a wide variety of skills and expand their learning. When my curriculum box comes in the mail I can not wait to dig in! BUT, I wait patiently until L-Bug is down for her nap or bed so little fingers aren't running off with different pieces before I've gotten a chance to start organizing... but as soon as she's in bed I DIG IN! It's usually here about two weeks before the beginning of the month and I love having that time in case there is something I need or want to get to add to the materials. This month was an exceptionally large box because it's the beginning of a new school year and we got an entire new display set up AND Mother Goose Time also sent an Open House kit for all of those who run a preschool or day care! Here is what came in our September box:
Here are our favorite add-ons! The Little Goose supplement is great for those who have little ones under preschool age. It modifies a few of the lessons in the Teacher's Guide so the little ones can do it to. The Experience God curriculum is my absolute favorite! It comes with 5 minute devotions to do with your little one for every day of the month and 4 lessons to do once a week! We also get the Dance N' Beats a fund DVD with dance videos and a teachers guide that includes 12 different activities! If you have a preschool you can include a Dance class in your routine.
Setting up for the next month's lessons is part of all the fun! You get to check out all of the fun new pieces that are in the box. I open up the box and set aside the manipulatives bag and the experience God packs! I use my Teacher Tool Guide and Planning Journal to get started and work through one week at a time. I open each day bag, and prep the materials by doing any cutting that I can, etc. I set aside any pieces I won't be needing or can't use. Then I slip all of the pieces back into the bag they came in. I like to read through each day in the Teacher Tool Guide because it gives me an idea of what we are going to be doing each week. Then I write down notes in the planning journal of things that I will need to gather each day to be ready. I also write a star at the bottom if there are any pieces from that day that need to be used in another day later so once we are finished with it I remember to put it into the day bag that it'll be used in! This really helps me because otherwise it would get stuck in a pile in the office and a few days later when I need it I would have NO IDEA where I put it!
Once I've done this for each week I put all of the days, teachers tools & manipulatives back into the MGT box they were shipped in and I put it aside until it's time to start a new month! <3 Once we have finished one unit study I usually have the weekend to finish my set up! I take out day's 1-5 and put them (inside their bags) in my wall rack. I put the Little Goose Book, Teacher's Guide and Planning Journal in the first day on the wall rack. Then I get to work on setting up the display in the room! I hang the new monthly theme web chart, poster and Bible verse card! I set up our new calendar by writing the dates on the calendar and I pop all of the date cards and put them in the back pocket so they it's all ready for the month. On the first day of lessons we sing the Months of the Year song and add the current month to our calendar board! Each day L-Bug get to swap out the "Daily Topic Poster" during circle time! I also download the monthly CD so it's on my computer and ready to use each day! I put the CD on my computer to use for lessons and put the CD in the car so we can listen to it on the go too! This week has been a blast, yet again! L-Bug is really loving all the story time we've been doing especially since we took a trip to the library and brought home some extra stories :) L-Bug has spent quite a bit of time in her reading corner flipping through pages and talking about what she's sees on them! It's exciting to see her imagination flourish. L-Bug really enjoyed all of the fun activities we did with The Crow and the Pitcher. We used our pebbles to watch our pitcher drawing fill up to the top and drawing a water line as we went. I also found an old friend from our "Growing Gardens" lesson box, our scare crow puppet! L-Bug had fun letting him drink up the water. Then we used a cup of water and our pebble manipulatives. Before we got started I asked L-Bug what she thought would happen when we dropped the pebbles into the water. She told me "ummm it'll splash." I thought that was a pretty good observation (from my little nature detective). Then we started adding the pebbles one at a time and we watched the water line rise! Our story about the Boys and the Frogs was really fun! I pulled out my numbered bags 1-5 and put different items in each one. I had L-Bug close her eyes and put her hand in to feel what was inside, she really enjoyed the game! We talked about what she felt and how all of them were different textures. Then we talked about the difference between a TOAD and a FROG and how they have different textured skins. Then I pulled out our #1-5 for this project! I cut out five pairs of eyeballs and laid them out next to each number and told L-Bug to put two eyes on each number. Then I gave her the cool textured dots and I told her we were going to count out the dots for each number. I helped her with the counting but had her put the stickers on them all on her own. It took quite a bit of coordination for her to line up the dots on the small numbers! We also talked about the way frogs move and hoped all over the room like froggies!!! L-Bug made a Crab Craft! She had fun snipping with her scissors and practiced cutting along the straight lines I drew for her. We also introduced the letter C this week and ever since we have been really emphasizing the different sounds the letter C makes. Any time we are on a walk I try to bring up different things we are talk about that week, earlier today on our walk to play at the park we were talking about the letter C and we tried to see what we could find that started with the letter C! C-urb, C-loud, C-row, C-rumbs (at the park on a bench), L-Bug asked me to C-arry her, we even thought of the ice C-ubes in my water bottle! The list went on and on! Each time I made the C sound and said a work L-Bug would repeat me. I also brought some C-rayons to do our Bible Lesson on at the park! L-Bug was really excited that we got to do school at the park :) She even C-olored our C-raft picture there. Next week we start talking about the infamous Paul Bunyan! Those should be some fun stories <3
I'm so happy we are finally getting settled into LIFE here at our new duty station. Who knew it would take us so long to get acclimated to this new home and location. I'm finally getting more projects done for our school room! We never really stopped doing school over the summer, but I have quite a few things I want to introduce with the new 2015/16 school year. I've been wanting to create "Busy Boxes" for L-Bug for a while now! I just wasn't 100% sure what I was going to put in them... Well I finally went shopping and grabbed the boxes and a few extra supplies. I decided I'll start off using them for our concept intro/review. Each day in my Teacher's Guide we have prompts for either a concept intro (something new that we will be learning) or concept review (something that we will be reviewing that we have already learned at some point in the school year). I'm going to pack the Busy Boxes for each day based on these prompts! Our concept review on Monday was Numbers 1-5. So I grabbed a variety of items and packed up the busy box. L-Bug was so excited to find out what was in the box! Since this was her first time with the boxes I showed her how to pull everything out and helped her set up things like the puzzles and the play dough mat. My idea is that soon she'll learn how to pull it all out on her own and have independent play & exploration! All I will do is talk about the concept intro/review from the prompts in the MGT teacher's guide and then I'll let her dig into her box. Here are a few different counting books that were small enough to fit into the box. I tried to only find ones with #1-5. Of course we had to have some manipulaties to count! These are a few things we have collected over the past few months with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! Being OCD I had to make sure that there were five of each different thing and that they all matched color wise... lol Link, People & Keys! Play Dough for sensory! Here is a fun counting mat (helps keep the play-doh from getting stuck in the carpet! I also included the #1-5 stamps for L-Bug to use so she could stamp out the numbers. Now that I have finally gotten our MGT supplies all organized I went through our past counting games and pulled out this little gem. Daddy SeaHorse and his FIVE little babies! L-Bug loved seeing this again and used it more for dramatic play as she talked in baby voices and daddy voices. New puzzle set I found at Costco! It's targeted for Preschoolers and this is just a small fraction of it (numbers, letters, colors & shapes). For each number piece there is a matching piece with different pictures. 1 = 1cat, 3 = 3butterflies, etc. They are "self-correcting" meaning that the wrong pieces won't fit together! L-Bug seemed to really enjoy all of the different things I included in the box, especially things like the new puzzle, play-doh mat, and seahorse game. I think she liked these the most because she doesn't have free reign to play with these items whenever she wants. One of the other reasons I like rotating things, because once she hasn't seen or played with something for a while it becomes like new all over again! Do you use Busy Boxes with your preschooler or toddler? Do you incorporate them into your homeschool lessons? I'd love to hear how you use them!
**Please excuse the PJ pictures! Since we have been so into stories these past few days L-Bug has wanted to wear her "princess shirts", who am I to argue when she uses such good manners and tells me how pretty they are!!! We finished up our first week of Folk Tales and Fables! This week we have saved a lion, broken sticks, fed a grasshopper, raced a hare and lost our bones :) L-Bug has loved acting out all of these stories we've read. I really love all of the wonderful morals that comes with each story even though some of them may be a little above L-Bug's grasp. On Day 4: The Tortoise and The Hare we talked about speed! L-Bug ran fast and walked REALLY slow... I taught her about talking fast and slow. We talked about how even when you are the fastest it doesn't mean that you will win a race. At the beginning of the story L-Bug told me that the Hare was not being nice to the Tortoise. I said she was very right. The hare wasn't being nice because he was making fun of the Tortoise for being slow. We talked about how it's not kind to make fun of other people because they are different than we are. She told me "Not good manners, mommy." Here is our board game this month! This is the first time L-Bug and I have talked about the (+) sign and the (-) sign! Every time we rolled I'd ask her is it a plus or a minus? She had fun with this one! For our investigation station, I set up a race car track with blocks and cars. We pretended to race our cars through the track. L-Bug enjoyed it so much she wanted to continue playing so we left it set up and she continued to return to it for free play in between our lessons! I like the investigation stations like this because they give children different ideas on how to use toys that they play with all the time. On day four we also watched an episode of one of L-Bug's favorite shows: Mickey Mouse Club House- Road Rally. This episode is about Pete who is "the fastest" racer, but he keeps loosing just like the hare. On Day 5: The Dog and His Reflection we talked about greed and sharing. L-Bug agreed that sometimes it's hard to share because you want to play by yourself, but sharing is kind. We also talked about the different manners you use when you want something or when someone shares with you: "Please", "Thank You" & "Your Welcome"! L-Bug had a blast with this art project! She created a puppy mask and got to play with some bones. The craft for making the dog mask and the bone were simple! Essentially all you would need is construction paper, string and something to color with and you could have puppies of your own hiding bones :) She really enjoyed the activity of "burying" the bones all around the room and having me find them and then I'd hide the bones and she would go find them. This turned into a game of hide-n-seek ourselves! Reflection was a hard concept for L-Bug to understand, so we went to the mirror for some investigating! We talked about how we see our reflection in a mirror just like the dog in the story saw his reflection in the river. As I mentioned in an earlier post this week we are working on adding a few more activities to our school time. L-Bug is excited to be doing calendar again. She loves the days of the week song and she knows that "Mrs. Morgan's class (gymnastics) is on TUESDAY". Every day we do the calendar I have L-Bug tell me the full date: "Friday, August 7th". Sometimes she remembers what the day is and tells her daddy when he gets home from work "It's Wednesday, Daddy!".
We've also started using the Little Journals that come in our Curriculum box! Though L-Bug isn't too excited about the work that comes with writing on the lines, tracing slowly and having mommy help... I am excited to see the different levels of progress that each month will show me. Do you use work books with your preschoolers? How hands on are you? This is L-Bug's first time and I don't want to crowd her and essentially do it for her by holding her hand and helping her trace, but at the same time how else is she supposed to learn if I don't show her? Ideas, thoughts? Here is L-Bug hard at work decorating the cover of her Little Journal!
I have been so excited to do this month's unit on Fables and Folktales! L-Bug loves to read and tell stories, she is our little book worm so the fact that we have a new story every day is PERFECT! Our first & second week are all Aesop's Fables and of course Mother Goose Time published a BEAUTIFUL Aesope's Fables book just for this unit. Something a little different for this month is instead of our normal music CD we got an audio story CD that goes along with the book!
After glancing through the different themes of the day as I was setting up the curriculum for the month I got even more because the different days have some great focus topics: kindness, working together, being helpful, etc.
While we are in circle time I read L-Bug the story that is included in the Little Goose Supplement. It's basically the same story, just a little easier to understand!
Then I give her a coloring page for the day (one for each story) and I put the Audio CD on that tells the story in the Aesop's Book and L-Bug colors her sheet. Once the audio story is over we talk about a few of the things that happened in the story and I use the characters on her coloring sheet.
We do a few other lessons/activities for the day and later we come back to the story book. So far there has been a craft or activity to go along with the story so we do it and then we read the story from the book and look at the pages. For our first story "The Lion and the Mouse" L-Bug made story puppets! So by this time L-Bug has heard the story about three times and we've talked about different elements from the story throughout the day in our other lessons! Then we do some review and I see how well she was listening and how much she remembers.
Some of L-Bug's other favorite lessons/activities this week were:
L-Bug likes the games, stories, dancing and art. Because she started Mother Goose Time so young that's all we really did. But for this new school year we are going to start working on some of the harder more academic lessons, like: writing, letter & number recognition, counting, etc. Some of L-Bug's not so favorite lessons/activities this week...
This week has been a blast playing with mud and dirt! Unfortunately most of those outside activities I didn't bring the camera along for because I broke it during the water week :( SO, until that gets fixed and I learn to be more careful I'm sticking with the less complicated activities to take pictures for! Haha We talked a lot about dirt this week! We talked about the things that birdies find in the dirt to eat: worms, bugs & seeds were a few things L-Bug named. Then we took some colorful feathers and practiced our counting and grouping! Even though L-Bug can't do these on her own we do the simpler math cards together! She loved counting them out and telling me the different colors :) We used our theme poster to find all kinds of things you can do in the dirt! You can dig (like the picture L-Bug found). You can write in the dirt using different things like your fingers (that was a fun and messy day!) and sticks. We also talked about the different animals that live underground in holes and burrows. We made a mouse friend and met some ants! And L-Bug learned about a new animal-- watch this video where we searched the animals on the poster and found a Hedgehog! Here is her creating a Hedgehog she named Penny. This is the first time L-Bug has practiced patterns! She did really well matching up the cards in the pile to the pattern on the board. We've finished up our Nature Detectives theme and it was a great month packed full of all kinds of awesome things to learn about! Now we are gearing up for August ~ Folktales & Fables! I'm really excited to delve into this lesson AND to do a Baseline Assessment for L-Bug so we can set goals for our 2015/16 school year :D
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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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December 2023
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