The ADVENTure
I love the idea of spreading out the message of Christmas throughout all of December. Christmas is a big thing in America, but typically the message you see is about presents and buying things. I have a different message for our kids. The message of Christ being born for them. So I decided to take the everyday sights and sounds of Christmas and find ways that we could use them to point back to the true meaning of Christmas. For our advent we use a Christmas tree. Ours is a small table top faux tree that goes in our nook. This is where we bring the elf into our Holiday Season too. Each day he brings a small item for their tree and a verse that is tied to various themes.
Here is an example of what my advent cards look like! They have a theme and a verse to tie our holiday traditions back to Jesus. I usually read the verse and then we talk about it before we do our activity, read our book or hang our new ornament, etc.
I'm challenging you to help your holidays be more than just a time of buying and giving presents, but to find ways to point your kids back to Jesus throughout all of your holiday traditions!
0 Comments
So one of my favorite "extra's" or "add-ons" that we get from Mother Goose Time is the Experience God Curriculum. If you have seen my other posts about homeschool, I like time saving... I like utilizing programs that are easy to follow! With me opening my own Child Care Home time saving and easy to follow lessons are going to be VERY important. We use the Experience God Pack as our daily Bible Study with my daughter. She loves the stories and activities! I LOVE that she is learning about God <3
Above is a picture of the entire Teacher's Pack laid out! It comes with several great tools whether you want to do a simple at-home Bible Study with your kids or whether you plan to do an entire Sunday School lesson! The pack includes: 1 Teacher's Guide, 4 Story Cards and 1 Bible Verse Poster.
Check out this video with more info!
There it is! So how do we do this at home? Usually I have the Teacher's Guide and Children's Pack right next to my Keirug in the kitchen. And each week I also prep the activities that we are going to do ahead of time. So if I need ABC cards I find some in my stock pile of alphabet cards and add them to the bag. This way right at breakfast I grab the bag and sit down!
We pray for our breakfast and for the lesson we are about to read, then I open up the Teacher's Guide and turn to the day we are at. We read the monthly Bible Verse from the verse poster and we talk about the question for the day. Example: "Where does our food come from". We brainstorm about the animals and plants that our food comes from. We work through the activity as we eat breakfast, or if it's a really interactive activity then I skip it and continue with the rest of the routine (we do the activity after we are finished eating). Next we move into the Explain portion of the lesson, example: "God created the Earth to grow lots of different kinds of food for us. The animals and plants that we talked about, He made ALL of them! That's why we pray and THANK HIM for our meals." Then we usually read the Bible Verse of the week. If we still haven't finished breakfast I put on our Truth Tunes CD (quietly) so we can listen to it while we finish up and talk. The art activities from the Child's Pack are included as part of the lessons in the Teacher's Guide so we usually do those after we have finished eating. I have everything we need ready to go and after we clear the table we continue talking about our lessons and do the activity. In the Teacher's Guide there are SIX days planned for you. But there are seven days in a week.... SO usually Sunday's we do our "Take Home" Sheets. First I read our story for the month using the Story Cards from the Teacher's Pack. Then we do the activity on the sheet. Usually these get brought with us to Church that morning where L-Bug plays with her activity or colors the page (if we haven't already cut it up) before the kids are released for Children's Church. It is nice to have something quite for her to do until then. Thanks for reading about one of our favorite activity packs! If you want to win a "God Cares About My Health" Child's Pack be sure to enter to win :)
I love the way Mother Goose Time creates a monthly theme that is used each week in our curriculum AND how the incorporate the theme into the additional pieces you can add on {like Dance-N-Beats & Experience God}. October's theme is in the Orchard and already this week we are just having a blast!
But having our favorite additions tie into that theme is even better because it gives us more opportunities to incorporate learning into our everyday lives and create connections outside of the school room. Not only is the theme In the Orchard fun, but it is chosen at the perfect time of the year because now is the season of fall festivals, pumpkin patches and apple picking! When it comes to tying in our Experience God addition we are still in the Orchard and they really have found the perfect way to incorporate the theme by talking about the fruits of the spirit.
Another thing that I love is how Mother Goose Time keeps the same layout and set up from month to month. When it's time for our Experience God craft and L-Bug opens her work box and sees this little book in there she knows we will be learning about God's word. That is because she remembers the layout and has made that connection! To see her light up and know what to expect is so fun and really gives her a little extra independence because she knows what area of the room will be working in and she is able to go get herself set up!
Again talking about the thought and timing that Mother Goose Time puts into their curriculum and set up I LOVE that the story we are reading is about a wolf in sheep's clothing! Most Americans celebrate Halloween and it's all about wearing a costume and dressing up. We have been talking about Halloween this past week and L-Bug is so excited that she will be Tinker Bell and Daddy is going to be Captain Hook! But she in our discussion for this activity we were able to make that connection with Halloween, dress up and pretend!
Here are all of our Story Cards laid out before I read the story. I asked L-Bug to tell me what she sees happening and to make up her own version of the story! It's fun to hear her imagination going :) She knew right off the bat that the wolf was MEAN and that he was laughing meanly at the sheep... lol
As I read each story card I give L-Bug her little ones and she lines them up in her tray.
Of course her favorite part is when we do the craft!
I love this adorable Fruit of the Spirit craft we did! Every time L-Bug would glue down a new fruit I would say whatever was on that fruit- "Patient, L-Bug are you Patient?".
What better way to learn about nature than to learn about where it ALL began! I love how Mother Goose Time has paired the story of Creation perfectly with this month's Nature Detectives theme :) L-Bug has really enjoyed learning about how God created everything we see (including ourselves)! Check out this fun little video where L-Bug talks with me about the different things God created in the first six days.
Well now that we are in our new house I've really been wanting to put this garden themes to good use by getting started on our own yard. Unfortunately since our car is still on a boat crossing the ocean from Italy I haven't had a way to get stuff out there. But that didn't stop L-Bug and I from getting out into the backyard to pull some HORRIBLE dessert weeds. Although, we quite shortly after because we got pricked one too many times we talked about weeds and how they are bad for the garden. I explained that there is only so much room in the soil for plants to grow and if you have weeds then there isn't room for the other plants. Then L-Bug and I worked on a fun flower headband! We talked about sunflower seeds and even glued a few on our flower! Later in the week we moved onto our craft for this weeks Bible lesson. I've really enjoyed using the Experience God curriculum add-on. We read the second part of our parable where the farmer cast his seeds onto stone, but because they couldn't grow deep roots they did not live. L-Bug decorated her potting cup and then we headed outside! L-bug planted another seed and we talked about growing a sunflower like the headband we made earlier in the week. I had L-Bug pour the soil, poke a hole for the seed, cover it up so no birds could get to it and then we watered it! Here are our two flower pots we planted! I asked L-Bug if she knew what was going to grow and she said "YEAH! GRASS!" Poor girl and her wishful thinking... if you remember my first post from this month we did plant grass seeds while we were up visiting our family. Those are at Grammy's house (who has reported that we have sprouts!). L-Bug unfortunately won't have grass in our backyard here. I explained that the seeds we planted will grow sunflowers! I pulled out some side-walk chalk and we had some fun. We had fun this week learning about how plants grow and the different parts of plants!
Oh toddlers! It's so funny how they pick up on the littlest things and learn it, whether you meant for them to or not.... I have noticed more and more lately L-Bug mimics my husband and I. Lately she has been mimicking my "that's naughty face". We did this fun birdie "Popsicle" puppet craft for our Experience God lesson earlier this week and when I read L-Bug the part of the Bible Verse where the birds ate the farms seeds she made the face and says "no birdies! That's naughty!". I nearly fell over laughing it was so darn cute :) L-Bug has been working so hard to use her scissors the right way. This is the first time I have worked on the shape mats with L-Bug. I've always figured it was a little too advanced for her but this week I though, hey why not give it a try! I started with the easiest shape pattern and mixed in a few shapes that weren't on the mat to see how she worked though the thought process. I explained to her that we were going to do a "puzzle". She quickly went for the biggest and most easy to identify piece on the paper! I encouraged her and told her to line it up straight. L-Bug picked them up and went through them. If it went on the picture she put it down, if not she'd look and say "hmmm, nope" once she handed the piece to me the rest of the time she just moved it up to the top of the tray out of her way. She was having fun and wanted to "do gain mommy!" so I grabbed another shape mat that was just a little more difficult and swapped out some shapes to go with it. As she went through the pieces I would ask her what sames they were. She knows triangle, oval and circle... but since a triangle was the only one of those shapes that was on the mat she was trying to tell me that the orange squares were circles. So I drew a circle and a square and I asked her to point to the circle. When she did I said "ok now put your orange square on the square mommy drew". She did and I said, "see this one is a square and that one is a circle". After she finished up this flower I took the shape mat off and let her do her own thing with all of the different shapes! Last week L-Bug learned about seeds and planting them in the soil, so next we worked on learning about plants. Here we talked about the different parts of a plant. The seeds, roots, stem, leave and a flower. We used the plant picture and I showed L-Bug all the different plant parts. Then we did this craft (well mommy did most of it). Then I asked L-Bug "show me where the roots are", "show me where the leaves are", etc. Later we went on a walk and pulled up a whole dandelion (roots and all) and I showed L-Bug a live plant and we pointed out the roots, stem and flower!
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.
|
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