At the beginning of this school year (late August early September) I started working with L-Bug on her hand writing and letter recognition. We had never really practiced any hand writing so I started by drawing doted lines and having her trace along them. WOW I am blown away by how quickly she mastered it! Now we are in the beginning of November and I can tell she is getting bored with his activity (which for the past two months has been a favorite)... she's getting bored because it's too easy for her now! So, that means it's time to find new ways to challenge her! I started off by adding a few extra steps to her Little Journal from Mother Goose Time this month. A simple way to challenge her yet mix up what she was doing. On the day we did our triangle page I had her pick an orange crayon to color inside of the triangle with. Next I told her to pick any colored pencil and while she did I drew dashed lines for her to trace. Then I asked her to pick a new color and draw me her own triangle! I gave her verbal directions on how to draw it and she was very pleased with how it came out :) When she was all done I made my own notes on the page so I could put it in the portfolio to look back on and see how much progress she has made in a few months! Unfortunately my camera got left behind at the house this week as we headed off on our family Thanksgiving vacation so I'm not able to share the rest of the images, BUT we practiced our letters lots of different ways the past three weeks :)
We used paint brushes, crayons, markers & pencils! I filled a ziplock bag with colored glue and had L-Bug practice writing her letters with her finger over the top of the bag. She LOVED that activity. We used dry erase boars a few times. One time I had L-Bug follow along as I did each step on my white board and then I had her attempt to do it without me showing her! We did writing in a few different sensory activities.... we used sand and our fingers, dirt and sticks, chalk on the sidewalk! I can't believe how different her attitude towards writing our letters has become just from me adding in a little more fun and mixing up her materials! WOW what an eye-opener!
Oh my, oh my... we have had quite the week! First L-Bug was sick and then I got hit with it :( well thank goodness I think we are past it. We did get some school done this week! I'm sad we didn't get more done because L-Bug is really loving this month's theme and the great lessons we are doing!
L-Bug really enjoyed our Car/Truck day. She got to do two fun crafts where we made one of each! Here is the car that she made. She wanted mommy to do the tires for her so instead of getting the corn ready to make this a "clean fuel burner" I did a little art time with her!
After we were done decorating our car L-Bug said it was time for our friends to take a trip. She said they were going to grammy's house because they wanted some cookies! Hehehe She asked me to help her put the friends in the car so they could all go on the trip.
I didn't get any pictures but we did a fun matching game later. You matched the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter. I was very excited that L-Bug was able to tell me four out of the ten or so letters I showed her! She knew A, B, K and O :) After we played the matching game I decided to do a little more reinforcement of the letters. Since they were laminated I had L-Bug use a erasable marker and trace all of the uppercase letters that she didn't know. As she traced we said the letter's name and the sound that it makes! She enjoyed tracing the letters inside of the race cars. After we finished that activity we moved right into journal since we were already at that station! She did the letter C,c in her Little Journal and then we did a few pages in her Little Passports Journal.
Once we finished that I showed her these paper trucks that I put together and we pretended to drive them around. We talked about addresses and how we have numbers on the outside of our house. We walked outside and looked at our address. I explained to L-Bug that those numbers are how the mailman knows to bring our packages here. Perfect for today because we actually got a package! I set up a game for her where she got to deliver packages to the difference houses! We had house W, T & C. The cards were labeled with one of the three letters on them!
I started out giving L-Bug one "package" at a time for her to take to the "house". After she had a couple of tries I mixed it up by doing two packages. Sometimes it was one package for one house and one package for another and sometimes it was two packages to the same house. She was so silly pretending to knock on the doors and saying "delivery" :) I love these fun little games that Mother Goose Time includes for us to do! She'd slip the package into the slot and come to me to get another.
After she had delivered all of the packages I had her go and pull each one out from the house and then turn them over to see what was in the packages! As we said the word we sounded out the letter sound at the beginning. For Letter T we said "tttt, ttt, tomato" or "tttt, ttt, tree"!
L-Bug did great work in her Little Journal today and had a blast doing her crafts and games!
I started snapping pics today for my blog post thinking hmmm Monday... things are usually a little crazy on Monday's but let's try it! Well I'm glad I did because today was a day full of fun in L-Bug's eyes. She really enjoyed all of the activities we did today. I'm sad I didn't get them all on camera, but I did get quite a few that she enjoyed! Here is L-Bug enjoying our search the poster activity with our magnifying glasses! I loved how Mother Goose Time included some action steps on the back of the magnifying glasses along with the questions! After the second one L-Bug was giggling as she tried to roll her arms like a choo-choo train, she even came up with a few actions of her own that she wanted me to do! A few weeks ago I wrote a little post about "Fluff in Preschool" here is just one more example of why having fun and engaging activities is important when teaching little ones. I did a small experiment with L-Bug this week. Several times throughout different days I asked L-Bug to count for me. A majority of the time she either didn't want to or she just did it really fast and jumbled and you could barely understand it. BUT the times when I pulled out a fun activity for her to do while I asked her to count I got a much better response... She would focus, she would count slowly and the right way! When kids find something fun and engaging they are going to enjoy it more! For our counting card activity on this day I had L-Bug trace the #5 with her finger and then we counted how many triangles were on the page. Then I had her count out five planes and fill the spaces on the card with them. Once we did that we traced the #5 again and then we turned that card over. On the back were tickets and I had L-Bug count them. After she counted five tickets I asked her to show me where the number five was on the bottom of the card, NAILED IT! Before when we did this activity L-Bug wasn't getting the number right. I was brainstormed about a way that I could reinforce the number in her mind without having it in front of her to look at and "match". So we tried the finger tracing on this day and it worked out so well! We will see how it does next time too. I'm hoping that by tracing the number a few times it reinforces it in her mind! Another activity that L-Bug did on this day that she really enjoyed was color sorting! I had her find her trains that were mixed in with all of the packing noodles and put each of them in their own sections. Then I asked her to sort the noodles out by color! There were so many that I figured she would get bored before she finished them all, but she actually enjoyed this a lot! Every noodle was sorted ;) I was interested to see what would happen when L-Bug came across a packing noodle that was a different color then one of her trains! She decided that they should just go into a different section. L-Bug is really good at her foundation math! She can count to ten all on her own and we are working on getting to fifteen. She knows a majority of her colors (red, purple, orange, pink, black, brown, yellow, green, blue...) and she knows a good amount of her shapes too (though she often gets circle and oval mixed up and still calls a rectangle a square).
Today we had a BLAST doing our school lessons! L-Bug has been very excited to learn about TRANSPORTATION (our big word this month) and every day is a new excitement. Today we talked about road signs and maps and mommy had a little surprise for L-Bug (I'll share more later).
L-Bug knew all about stop lights and was excited to maker her own so we could play a game of Red light, Green light! She liked being the one to get to run with mommy controlling the light.
After she was done playing she practiced writing her name in her Little Journal and colored to cover. She asked me to draw her a boat and a plane because those are "the kinds of things she likes to ride on for traveling to see fiends". Today the giggle levels were high!
After that we played another game because she was just so excited and wiggly. This game was perfect for getting those wiggles out. I'm so happy that Mother Goose Time has consistently been sending these fun "action cubes"! We use them in the games and then often times I add them to my pile from the previous months and when L-Bug is in need of a wiggle break we pull out an action cube and we play a made-up game until she's gotten some energy out! In this game you can see we set up "cones" and I told L-Bug that when there is construction they put out big orange cones to warn the drivers to be careful. Then we played with our action cube and L-Bug had to use caution not to run over our cones! You can see a few of them just didn't make it :P
When I pulled out the construction sign I wanted to video so I could see how much L-Bug was really paying attention during the game while I was talking about the orange meaning caution and danger!
After we finished up our signs for the day I introduced some new friends to L-Bug! I told her she got a package in the mail and I let her open it up :)
​Her package came from Max and Mia our newest friends at Little Passports.
With this month being all about "ON THE GO" I decided we were going to try out Little Passports to enhance our geography lessons. Here is what came in our welcome kit!
There was a cute little post card and a note from Max and Mia telling L-Bug hi and that they couldn't wait to share their adventures with her. L-Bug LOVED the post card and knew exactly what it was (she sends three every month to friends and family all over the world). We talked about the plane on the post card and decided Max and Mia must be at the airport (perfect discussion for our lesson this month). I asked L-Bug where she thought they were going on their adventure and she said "Hmmm, maybe Washington! My dad was in Washington!" So true, I love this kids memory! Check out this video from last week when we talked about Daddy gone for work in Washington.
I told L-Bug maybe Max and Mia were going on an adventure in a different country! Then we pulled out this map that came in our suitcase from Little Passports :) We talked about some of the adventures we had and about some of the places her family and friends have gone. Then L-Bug told me about some of the places she wanted to go, like Australia because "that one is pretty and pink" :)
After we were done talking about the map we did the first page in our Little Passport Journal that came in the kit. L-Bug was very excited to look at the rest of the pages which were all filled with great activities and fun challenges like coloring by number and more! I told her we will work on more of the pages throughout the month. We took out the stickers that came in the suitcase and L-Bug decorated it. She was very happy with the end result and told me she couldn't wait for another one!
I think this Little Passports kit is going to be a great addition to our curriculum and I just know I can incorporate it perfectly with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! Each Month Mother Goose Time sends us three new global friends, I just have to come up with a great story line about how Max and Mia meet those new friends during their adventures!
We are a little behind this month because we have lots of new changes coming up. Mommy is getting ready to start a new semester in January to finally finish her Early Childhood Education Degree! So we've been busy, busy running errands and doing meetings. L-Bug is so excited to get back to school this week and boy did she love seeing this new Mother Goose Time monthly theme hanging in her school room today! I can't wait to talk all about transportation with her. She has been on just about every one we are going to discuss so it will be fun to see what she already remembers and to pull out some photos of her on them! Let's GO!!! Recently I read a negative post about the curriculum we use for our Pre-School lessons.... the gist of the post said that the Mother Goose Time curriculum is just a bunch of fluff with no real educational value. I was actually taken aback that someone who has ever used or seen this curriculum in action could come to that conclusion! I wish I had been able to save the post or at least remember where I found it because after reading it the first thing that came to mind was one of my favorite movies and a certain educator who didn't like "fluff" in her school..... Yup dear Miss Trunchbull from the classic movie Matilda! :) This pic was perfect for getting my point across because as you see in the "school rules" listed on the wall behind Trunchbull No Laughing, No Playing and No FUN are all included ;) I couldn't find a clip anywhere but I had originally wanted to use the scene from the movie where the kids are scrambling around the classroom putting away all the fun and pretty and fun things because the Trunchbull is COMING!!! Sorry but my humor got the best of me for a minute.... anyway, moving on! I get it, school isn't all fun and games. But please tell me what pre-schooler or student for that matter is going to enjoy doing their lessons if there is no fun?! I love that Mother Goose Time makes each lesson fun for my daughter to do and quick and easy for me to prep for! Sure, I guess I could create my own curriculum that is similar. I could go to the store and find all of the materials needed to do the lessons and I could even add my own fun... but honestly, I just don't have the time for that! What I get each month is well worth the money each kit costs. I don't have to spend any time trying to determine which store has the best deals for the materials I need. There is no long nights spent cutting, sorting and prepping materials for ONE DAY worth of lessons. I don't have to add an extra hour to my shopping trip because I'm running all over three stores trying to find different tools and supplies for the lessons and I don't have to buy a bag of 300 googely eyes when I only needed four! All of the leg work is done and I can focus on teaching my daughter a love for learning :) I am always blown away by the amount of thought that goes into months theme, the weekly topics and the daily lessons! The quality of the manipulatives, books, music, dance dvds, crafts and so many other projects is beyond anything that I could come up with on my own! But just for the sake of the argument lets say that pretty colors, fun activities and cute little manipulatives aren't needed... Aside from all that here is what I get in my box EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. Mother Goose Time includes a collection of teacher tools inside each thematic kit that will help you plan and facilitate discovery-based projects and activities. We will help you transform your room into a place of wonder and investigation." Mother Goose Time curriculum comes in one big box each month. An entire month of lessons (4 weeks/20 days & many times an additional day or two of Holiday or Seasonal lessons) comes in this beautiful yellow bus box! If you open the Teacher Tool Bag you'll find the foundation under the "fluff". On of my favorite things about Mother Goose Time curriculum is the monthly themes. Thematic Learning with the monthly curriculum themes: Thematic investigations allow children to play, explore and learn about different concepts in their expanding lives. Themes allow children to organize new information and create a growing mental schema. Each theme creatively integrates colors, shapes, numbers and letters of the month. Plus, each month features a different music genre in our exclusive integrated music program." The reason that this is one of my favorite things is because I SEE it in action everyday with my daughter. I love that she remembers things we learned and is able to integrate them into our everyday life. Walking through the grocery store L-Bug tells the lady near us who is putting apples in her cart that her apples came from a tree. Then she lets her know that there are seeds in those apples, and that they grow into new trees if you plant them.... The common response "How old is she?!" But it's a testament to this amazing curriculum is! Here is Novembers Monthly Theme web. You see that our month has a general or umbrella theme for November its "On the Go!". From there our weeks are broken down into a little more specific categories: Down the Road, On Land, Public Transportation and Transportation in the Air and Water. Then if you take a look at each of the weeks you see each day is given a topic that ties into the weeks category. The lessons are then created around the topic for each day. "Ok so the curriculum has cute themes every month, so what?" Ok so some might not find the themes as intriguing or as important to learning as I do. You want to know what your child is going to be learning other than the fact that you can plant a seed and grow an apple tree. Well we will get to the skills in a minute, but on top of learning about things that apply to real everyday life there are "basic concepts" integrated into every month. They are introduced and reviewed several times throughout the moth! The basic concepts include: letters, numbers, shapes, color, pattern, sight words, friendship traits and countries. These are all and more of the basic principles that are taught in preschools around the country. The next thing I wanted to mention is the Developmental Skills Continuum. This is a great tool to find your child's bench mark (where they are at NOW) and to track their learning over a period of time! Our research-based skill continuum clearly explains learning benchmarks for children birth through age eight. Use the Developmental Skills Continuum chart to understand where your child is developmentally in his learning journey of the 33 skills." Each Mother Goose Time activity includes a handful of skills your children will work on as the go through each lesson from beginning to end "to offer children rich multidisciplinary learning opportunities". Each day has 4+ lessons for you to do with your children so that each day includes a good deal of skill sets that will be practiced and your children can grow them! Here is my November chart that shows what skills are used on each day throughout the month. Another great tool provided in the teacher tool bag is the planning guide. I love this page because it helps me glance at what skills are the "primary" skill in each lesson so that when I am doing my observations for L-Bug's portfolio (my way of tracking her learning and growth) I can easily mark which days and lessons to grab my note book for! Mother Goose Time uniquely weaves 33 research-based skills through monthly activities and discovery projects. As children participate in Mother Goose Time, they are naturally exposed to skills which support their on-going social-emotional, physical, language and cognitive development. These skills, when combined with a nurturing environment, intentional teaching practices, and meaningful relationships support a child’s school readiness." One other little addition I love that Mother Goose Time does to go above and beyond is just another step of planning! Here is their layout for 20 days worth of Investigation Stations! A great way for your preschooler to work on gross and fine motor skills as well as explore their senses. They give you ideas that tie into the monthly theme and even what area would be best to set it up in. Want to see how Mother Goose Time curriculum lines up with your State standards and Head Start Indicators? Well they have it all ready for you to check out here! Don't just take my word for it, check out all of these other reviews that show there are others just as in love with the curriculum as I am!
Who remembers their ABCs? Who remembers PEMDAS (please, excuse, my dear, aunty, sally)? Who remembers the song with all 50 states in alphabetical order? Who remembers "conjunction junction what's your function"? Yeah those were good times and I bet you smiled a little thinking about at least one of them! One last question for you... who remembers the lesson you learned about all of the different types of clouds, what they are called and how they were formed? Hmmm... maybe I could have done with a little "fluff" on that lesson, no pun intended ;) Now excuse me... I have to go find a very important movie that I can't wait to watch! This week L-Bug has really gotten into counting! I love hearing her little voice as she counts slowly and really thinks through each number. She is all they way up to 12 on her own now :) The nice thing about Homeschool is you can gear your lessons towards whatever your child is most interested in that day or week! We still did lots of reading, writing, art and so much more... but it was fun to expand the different math games and make them a little more challenging for L-Bug since she was really enjoying counting! The first lesson I want to share I named Hungry Orchard Friends. This week we had been talking about different visitors in the Orchard and how they like to eat the fruit that grows on the trees! I laid out our number card and found some paper dishes from a previous lesson. I drew some of the different bugs we had talked about earlier in the week on the dishes and then I had L-Bug help me stack some fruit inside each dish. I made sure they were varied in numbers.... Then I had L-bug choose a bug friend and count how many fruits they had eaten from our Orchard! As she counted she placed the fruits from the dish onto the counting card. Once the dish was empty I would ask if that bug friend had eaten MORE or LESS than four fruits. This was a little bit harder for her to grasp at first but I helped her look at the counting card and see if it was full or if there was more room. If it was full then she knew there was more than four and if there was still room then she knew it was less. Another great lesson I was able to expand on was our Fruit Stand game! It was a little bit more difficult, but L-Bug was REALLY into playing it with me and we did the activity several times! I started by setting up all of our fruit beads in separate piles. Then I took the matching fruit pictures and I chose a "price" for each fruit. If there were three picture cards next to the stack then that fruit was $3, if there were two picture cards next to the stance then that fruit was $2, etc... L-Bug went "shopping" and chose which fruits and how many of each she wanted. Once she had a few in her basket we would count out the money she would pay for each fruit. For instance the grapes were $2 each. So she would take out one grape and set it aside then count out $2, then she would take out another grape set it aside and count out another $2. We did this until the basket was empty! Even though I had to remind her how much each fruit cost she had fun "shopping" and then sitting down and counting out her money to pay! After we finished counting out all of the money for each type of fruit I would lay out that stack of money and pile up the fruit with it. Once we were all done shopping and paying (a few different times) I had L-Bug count out how many pieces of fruit were in each pile and then count all of the money in that pile. So she would see that 2 bananas = 8 dollars :)
One thing I really loved about this activity was the effect it had later. We went to the grocery store and before we left L-Bug asked if she could have some money from her Piggy bank for a treat. So I went ahead and got out a few dollars, which she wanted to carry in her little coin purse. When we were done shopping and I was paying she told me she wanted to pay the cashier for her treat. I helped her count out her coins as the cashier rang all of our stuff up and L-Bug proudly handed her the money for her lollipop! It's fun seeing kids learn and make connections in our everyday life! |
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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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