We got our first box of goodies this month from Citrus Lane! I was blown away by how many fun things came in this box!. It's too good not to share! For $25 all these fun toys were shipped right to our door. L-Bug is going to get a new surprise each week and I know she's going to have a blast exploring all the new toys. Here is our September Box! I think L-Bug's favorite will be the Alphabet Stacking Blocks. Lately she is really into building castles and these are perfect! Melissa & Doug toys are always have the most vibrant colors! I love all the fun animal pictures on the sides too. I think the coolest part about these blocks are that they stack right inside of each other and store inside an easy to carry box! I love this book and it comes with a CD that plays the song too! Even though the entire book isn't really about a mulberry bush it's fun because our Mother Goose Time school theme for October is "In the Orchard"! This puppy slide flute is really silly and fun! You blow in the puppy's mouth and pull his tail in and out to make different wind noise! L-Bug doesn't have many musical toys so this is a nice addition :) This mini first aide kit is a nice size and it will fit right inside of my make up bag in my purse! It has some cremes and quite a few different styles of band aides! The only thing I think it needs are a few alcohol wipes and maybe some neosporin. I will add those myself and it will be perfect! I do really like the cute tin everything came in though1 I LOVE this little Story Blocks game by Melissa & Doug! 8 Little blocks that fit perfectly inside of a wooden frame. Tell the story of who, what, were and when! Roll the blocks, put them in order and then create your own story. L-Bug may be a little too young to completely understand it all, BUT I think she will have fun learning how to play with mommy and daddy! What do you think about everything that came in the box?! Use this link and get 40% off your first box <3 Let me know what awesome surprises you get!
0 Comments
Self Concept: How did you see your children identifying and managing his emotions this week while doing a specific Mother Goose Time activity or project?
L-Bug tends is going through a stage where she doesn't want mommy to "tell her what to do". She gets frustrated and wants to stop the activity. It's great timing because when I see these emotions I'm able to link it to the lesson. We've talked about what frustrates her how she can use her words to explain it to mommy. Sometimes it's as simple as "I want to glue it myself" and other times it's me explaining that we need to follow the directions because it is too difficult to do on her own. I explain that once I help her finish writing her name then we can move onto the fun part of coloring and she can do it all by herself! I've also realized that she is wanting more independence so instead of helping her write her name every time I have alternated letting her do it herself (even if that means it doesn't come out perfect) with me helping her do it. Sometimes I write the dashed lines for her to trace on her own, other times I have an example on the white board so she can try to write it by herself... regardless of how its done it's creating less conflict in our school room and she's proud of doing it herself! Another emotion we've gotten to work on with this month's theme is excitement! We talked about how when we get excited sometimes we get a little crazy. So we talked about other things we can do when we get excited. We can wiggle our legs while we are in circle time instead of running all over the room. We can clap our hands instead of shaking the paper and ripping our project. We can have big smiles but quite voices so we aren't talking over mommy while she is showing us the project.... and so many other ways we can show we are excited! L-Bug has been really good at working on "respectful" ways to show me she is sad, mad, excited, etc!
Social Relationships: What Mother Goose Time activity or activities did your child do this week where you noticed him playing cooperatively, taking turns or considering the feelings of others?
L-Bug has always been pretty perceptive to other peoples feelings, but ever since our second week of lessons I noticed her explaining it more and more to me as we were out and about. She would tell me that the lady in the grocery store was happy, the baby crying at church was sad or the bear in her book was scared as it ran through the forest. She has also been more ready to say sorry lately. Before when she did something that she needed to apologize for she would nearly shut down almost as if she were too embarrassed to say sorry. Lately, she is happy and ready to say it even if something wasn't her fault! She was playing in a room full of other children who were running around when one boy plowed right into her and knocker her down. She came over to me and said "that boy knocked me down and hit my face on the ground." I explained to her that it was an accident and he probably didn't mean to it. L-Bug went over to him and said "it's ok it was an accident, I'm sorry". I was shocked at my two year old being so kind and thinking about that little boys feelings! I've also noticed her happily taking turns with me! She has asked me to join in and color with her or she will tell me it's my turn to roll the dice when we are playing a game. It's fun to see her learning to share and take turns more rather than just being antsy for her turn to come :)
Self-Direction/Self Regulation: What is a typical thing that distracts your child? What do you do about that? How did you connect that typical "distraction" to a specific Mother Goose Time activity? How have you noticed Mother Goose Time help your children build and maintain attention span?
I try to alternate the activities of the day where we have a focused activity and then an "energy releasing" activity. Sometimes our Mother Goose Time lessons for the day already have these incorporated but when they don't, I find that having L-Bug do physical activities, free time or even playing a few rounds of hide and seek help get the wiggles out and when it's time to come back to lessons she is more focused. I ALWAYS start our circle time routine with some dancing and then we use "activity cubes" to burn off a little extra energy. I definitely have noticed that L-Bug's attention span has grown! She is more focused when we are practicing our writing or when we are working through a puzzle. The better she gets at something more time she is willing to spend doing it! Counting used to be the worst so we would do something physical while counting, like clap our hands or hop... but now that she can almost count to ten all on her own she is more focused and will touch items slowly as she counts! I decided that this week I was going to talk a little about our Circle Time routine. L-Bug has really come such a long way and I realized that the more we practice our routine every morning the better she gets at 1) paying attention, 2) interacting & 3) learning and remembering the different steps of our circle time routine! Instead of just taking pictures I decided we would do a video mashup of the different activities and steps in our routine! All of our circle time materials are in the top drawer of our daily work box shelves. We have our "stay put pieces": glue stick, calendar dates, weather pictures and magnifying glass that always stay in the drawer. Then at the end of our school day I set up the next days drawer by adding the day of the week stick, the "today is" cloud and our daily topic poster. Usually L-Bug starts her morning off by coming in and having a little free play while I review my teacher's guide. When I am ready to start circle time, I start our Circle Time playlist on my computer. The first song is the Mother Goose Time theme song and it's Lily's cue to clean up. I challenge her to get all her toys cleaned quick before the song is over then she runs to our circle time rug! The next song is the Circle Time song and L-Bug loves the part where she gets to: jump, jump, turn around and then sit down, at the end of the song the most! Before we start on our Circle Time work box I like to play a game with Lily using these different cubes we keep getting over the different months. For instance I used the animal cube and the item cube and we roll then Lily moves like that animal to get to that item in the room, example: Hop like a Bunny to the Blocks! We do this a few times to help get all those wiggles out before we sit down and do the rest of our routine! L-Bug pulls out her Circle Time drawer and we get started! We start with calendar. I like to ask her if she remembers what yesterday was. More and more lately she remembers! After she tells me what yesterday was I hand her the "today is" cloud and she puts it on our Circle Time board. Then we sing the next song on our playlist, the days of the week song. After we sing she grabs her glue stick and the calendar date and puts it up. I like to have her say the full date: Today is Friday, September 18th. A few times throughout the month we play the months of the year song and every time they say the month we are in L-Bug JUMPS!
Next comes weather! We grab our day stick for our weather cups and go look out the window. First we talk about the sky and I ask L-Bug what she sees. It's either cloudy or blue! If it's cloudy we look at the ground or the air to see if it's dry or wet (dry means it's just cloudy, wet means it's either rainy or snowy). If it's blue then we look at the trees and the flag we can see in the backyard to see if they are still or waving (still means it's just sunny, waving means it's windy). She has really gotten good at telling me the weather that sometime I don't have to go through that whole process with her. She sees the rain and yells it out! LOL Once she has determined the weather she grabs her weather picture and puts it on the calendar, then she takes her day stick and puts it in the correct weather cup. This may seem like a lot, BUT I like having TODAYs weather on the calendar and at the end of the week on Friday's we look at the "weather pattern" to see what kind of weather we have had throughout the week! We also talk about how it FEELS outside just because it's sunny doesn't mean it's hot... and I want her to be able to understand that. The next step is our Daily Topic poster and L-Bug hangs it on our Circle Time board, then she takes her magnifying glass and tells me what she sees on the poster. The we start talk about the daily topic, we also talk about what we have learned this past week and throughout the month. I like to pick L-Bugs brain to see what she remembers! Finally we do a small activity with our "concept intro" or "concept review". Each day we either introduce a new shape, color, number, letter, country friend, friendly bee, etc or we review one we have already learned! After we finish up we put all of our "stay put pieces" back into the drawer and slide it back into the work box shelf. Then L-Bug grabs the next drawer and we get started with lessons for the day! This week has been full of some great lessons! L-Bug has been identifying emotions, talking about friends and how we can build better friendships and SO much more. I pulled out this science card from a different month because of how much L-Bug loved it. We gave each color an emotion and talked about how these emotions can sometimes mix! We've learned several new letters this week! L-Bug is starting to enjoy letter and writing time MORE! I'm so excited to see her face light up when I tell her it's time to practice her writing. Every time we learn a new letter we sing our ABCs and we follow along in our number grass that is on our Circle Time board. These tracing activities really have become one of her favorite things to do! We played a fun game for our concept review of #2. Our Mother Goose Time curriculum came with these fun heart stampers and Lily was SO excited about them. We played a little game where Lily put two stamps on her paper and then we did an action like: run and grab two blocks, do two somersaults, clap your hands two times, jump twice, etc. We did this until we had twenty hearts on our page and then we counted up all the hearts. We talked a lot more about emotions this week and did some fun projects with them. Here are L-Bugs favorites from this week: her sad puppy and her hide-n-seek surprise clown! The clown was a blast! L-Bug loves playing hide-n-seek so after we finished the craft we played and whoever was hiding had to shake the clown and yell surprise when they got found. It was really, really fun! I was so proud of L-Bug because when it was her turn to count she made it all the way to eight! Here is a fun little video of L-Bug identifying the different emotions on the action cube from this week. L-Bug loved this game so much I just have to share it with you! Thank you Mother Goose Time for the awesome idea :) This game is so simple you can easily DIY. You'll need 3D tangrams, a paper bag and some "feeling shapes" to go with your tangrams (grab some construction paper, scissors and a pen)! I started with all of the paper shapes in the bag and I let L-Bug pull them out and identify the shape and it's feelings: "Sad Rectangle", "happy Triangle", etc... Then she laid each shape on the table and matched the 3D tangrams to them. At first she was a little confused because she was trying to match the colors instead of the shapes, but she figured it out :) Next we moved all the tangrams back to the side and put all of the paper shapes in the bag. I had L-Bug pick out one at a time then she found the matching tangram and traced it on the page. After she was finished I would ask her "How does the rectangle feel?" and once she told me I would draw the face inside. After we did the first few shapes I had her draw the faces! She was so concentrated on drawing two eyes and one mouth, it didn't matter if it came out happy or sad she was just happy that she did it! I love how much time she took actually trying to trace her shapes! So simple, yet to a toddler... SO FUN!
This week we have talked about a very big range of emotions! L-Bug is a people watcher, she likes to observe other people so this weeks theme has been all she talks about. At the grocery story she tells me about the lady that is happy and a man who is mad as he talks on the phone. She tells me in church that the baby in front of us is crying and he's probably sad... We've also talked a lot about HER emotions and how we can show our emotions respectfully. I have to do a little shout out to Mother Goose Time here. They truly think of EVERYTHING! This is the perfect age for L-Bug to learn more about emotions it's even more awesome that Mother Goose Time's Friendly Bee for the month is Respect. I think that it's very important to teach our young children that though we may feeling upset, angry or even excited there are respectful ways that we can share these emotions. I explained to L-Bug that it's ok to be happy, excited, mad, sad, etc... but how we show those feelings is important. We can't hit someone or throw something because we are mad. We can't grab a book and start swinging it around because we are excited. There are ways we can manage our feelings and be respectful with how we show them! She has been doing great at talking about and practicing the different ways we can express how we feel! A perfect example was when we were playing with our bouncy balls from our Mother Goose Time curriculum. I was bouncing them on the wall and L-Bug couldn't catch them, she was getting frustrated. She grabbed up all the balls and went to sit in the corner. I asked her if it was frustrating her that mommy was bouncing the balls to fast and she said yes. I explained that the way she was showing me she was frustrated wasn't polite. So she came over to where I was sitting and I said if something is upsetting you, use your words and explain why. She said "they're going too fast and I can't play too". I said "Ok! Well how could we play with them so they aren't going too fast for you?" "Let's roll them!" She said. So after we had played with them by rolling them for a little while I explained that now we were having fun again. "When you are frustrated or upset all you have to do is use your words to explain. That way we can find a new way to play so that you aren't frustrated anymore. That is the polite way to explain how you are feeling. It's very rude when you take all the toys and go pout. That doesn't help me understand WHY you are upset and it doesn't help us find a new way to play." L-Bug loved this craft where she got to make her own mirror! She practiced making a few faces before we got started. She colored her frame and then glued on some jewels, which were definitely a hit! Then she made all kinds of faces at her self in the mirror.... I'm surprised at how many different emotions Lily can identify, but I'm even more surprised at how many she can show on her own without having any visual aide to imitate. L-Bug really enjoyed the I can read book for this month. For these books we go through it 2-3 times. I know it way sound silly because it's such a simple and small book, but I feel like it's because it is so simple that L-Bug can learn so much from it. The first time through I just turn the pages (without reading) and let Lily make observations about what she sees. When I turned to this page she said "Hey, they're not sharing!" I asked "How do you think they feel because their friend won't share?" She told me "They're really mad. The should play nice." Then we talked about a few things they could do instead of fighting over the ball or how they could respectfully tell each other that they are mad that their friend isn't sharing. In my opinion the first time a young child reads a picture book they are too focused on the pictures to really even notice the words. So by letting L-Bug just look at the pictures the first time she is able to focus more on the words the second time. The second time through I read the words. I guide my finger along the bottom of each word as I say it. Sometimes Lily will repeat me, other times she just watches. Either way I'm happy that this time she is focusing on the words of the story. Finally the third time too I give L-Bug the book and I tell her it's her turn to read it to me. Again the fact that these are so simple is perfect for littler learners like L-Bug. She hears the simple and repetitive words that I say when I read it to her and she says those same words as she turns the pages. It's not always in the right order. Sometimes it's "Boy is mad" instead of "He is mad" BUT at least she is practicing and looking at those words as she reads. This was one of the best work boxes L-Bug opened up this week! She opens the drawer and sees the recipe card inside and says "We're gonna make cookies Mommy!" She always thinks these cards mean we are going to cook something :) She was still excited when I told her it was Science time! Before we start I like to have L-Bug take a look at the card and I ask her what she thinks we are going to make. She thought this was going to be play dough which is a really great observation if you look at the picture! She likes to help me read the recipe card so we can find all of the ingredients we need and then following each step on the card to create something. I get all of the ingredients together and then I read her the directions one step at a time. I loved once we were done L-Bug told me all about the texture: squishy, soft, "kind of gross"...
L-Bug is all about dancing lately! She has never really gotten too into the Dance-N-Beats DVD but lately when she opens up her work box drawer and sees the DVD she get's so excited! She noticed right away this month that there is a new dance leader and of course she made mommy figure out what her name was (L-Bug really likes to know everyone's names). So I got on the Mother Goose Time Facebook Page and found out her name is Kristi and I also found this video link with one of the songs to share with you guys! Grab your kiddos and see how they like to move! Do they follow along or make up their own moves?! I like to do our Dance-N-Beats before lunch. L-Bug finds it in her work box drawer (hopefully I'll be able to set up a post on that soon!) and we head downstairs. I put it on the TV and let her go! Sometimes she follows along with the leader the best she can and other times she likes to wiggle and move all on her own to the music. I take this time to go get her lunch ready and once I'm done I'll usually come back in and do a few dance moves with her! L-Bug is very observational and loves to see all the different colorful backgrounds that her "new friend" Mrs. Kristi dances in! She also loves the fun clothes! She asked me if next time she dances she could wear her fairy wings so she could fly and dance! I love how her imagination comes up with such awesome fun ideas! I've noticed she follows along a lot better ever since she started her gymnastics class :) While I like that doing Dance-N-Beats helps to get the wiggles out, what L-Bug doesn't realize is that this is a part of school and learning too! She's learning all kinds of new ways to move her body. There are times the leader will do a new move and L-Bug tries to figure out how to do it. If she can't she usually asks me "how she does that mommy?" and I'll attempt to show her how to do it. It's awesome to see her exploring the different ways her body can move and healthy for her to exercise!
It's been a busy week! We had family visiting so school got put on the back burner until the left, but L-Bug was READY to get to it! She is really LOVING the daily theme posters for this week. She just sits and looks at all the kids and describes what they are doing or how they feel and basically tells me a story all about it :) This week L-Bug has done a lot of tracing practice check out this video of L-Bug working hard to practice writing her name! I got this idea from another blogger I drew the dash marks on a name tag and then used laminating paper to adhere it to the table. Then L-Bug uses a dry erase marker to practice her tracing. She has really started to like this activity :) We talked about how we use our names to introduce our-selves to new people too. After she does a little practice on the erasable name tag she gets out her pencil and works in her little journal! I like having her start on the erasable name tag first because it's a good way to remind her tracing is slow and takes patience. For the new letter pages she did the lines all on her own and then mommy helped guide her while tracing the first few {F f} letters, then I let her do the last few on her own! L-Bug could not get enough of these Friend Puppets and her Tree Hand craft from this week! She has literally played with the friend puppets extensively EVERY DAY since we have made them. She was so excited to put clothes on these friends. She told me "But what about their pants mommy!?" I explained if we put pants on them it would be hard for us to carry them and hold them. For our tree hand project we talked about how we can use our hands to be friendly to someone (like waving or shaking there hand). We also talked about how everyone has different hands: some are big, others are little, there are lots of different skin colors, some people have short nails and others have long nails (or pretty painted nails L-Bug pointed out). Then we talked about the lines we saw on our hands and fingers and I explained that everyone has special lines called finger prints that were different from everyone else! Manipulatives were a big hit this week too! She built lots of castles with the tangrams. One day we used the tangrams to find parts of our body that were shaped similar: rectangle=fingers, belly button=circle, diamond=ear, triangle=nose, etc... L-Bug had me lay on the floor as she put different shapes on my face for eyes, nose and mouth. She liked to sort her buses in color piles... and she even parked them all in rows! We talked about the different ways people say hello and met some "Global Friends"! L-Bug was excited to tell me all about the boys and girls in the pictures and we talked about how they were similar or different than ourselves. She repeated the different ways (and languages) other children say hello. We even added our own Spanish, German and Italian in there and talked about our own global friends living in Italy, Germany, Hawaii and Australia. On another day we talked about all of the different places you can meet your friends are! L-Bug named: school, church, "Illi's house", play group and the park. Then we played a fun game with our school buses where I rolled the die for L-Bug and she would run a school bus to that card! She was excited running all over doing this game, at first she was searching each card trying to find the right one, but after she went to them she remembered where they were the next time around. Once we were all done running the buses around we pulled each card over to the center, lined up the buses and counted how many buses went to each stop. I asked L-Bug which place had the most buses and she told me "the Library!". We did a little "personal preference" and I asked L-Bug where her favorite place was to go and play with friends. She said the park :) We talked about different feelings and how we know when someone is mad or sad, etc. Then L-Bug described all of the faces (except she though surprised was happy) and then she mimicked them. We talked about different things that change our emotions and how we can act when someone else is mad, scared or sad. I'm really excited to delve into next week because we are going to talk more about the different emotions and L-Bug is starting to go through that "2 year old phase" where she start to get pouty, irritated or just bursts into tears for no apparent reason. Your probably thinking "Yeah... why are you excited then?", I'm excited because I hope that learning more about her own feelings will help L-Bug to verbally explain how she feels and what is making her feel that way. She's pretty vocal as it is, but lately her emotions have taken the front seat and her use of words is in the fifth row of the passenger van...
|
Check Out My Teachers Pay Teachers Store for my Digital Products!Categories
All
Disclaimer: I am an affiliate blogger. In some cases I will make a commission from external links leading to purchases. Thank you for your support to my blog! Your purchases help this mama stay at home with the kiddos and continue doing what we love.
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!
Archives
December 2023
|
Everyday 365 Life