So, I will admit.... I feel like I have seriously slacked this time around. This was one of the first sensory activities I have really set up for B-Mouse to do! Just another reminder of why I decided to start this tot-school journey again. I love that the Mother Goose Time curriculum has started incorporating STEAM Stations! We had activities similar to this before, but I love that they mindfully incorporate activities that lead the kids to learn about the world around them in a hands on way.
Before realizing that the shapes were hiding in the grains B-Mouse needed to taste test all of the grains. She spit out the oats and the rice, but was digging all around for the cheerios! And of course the shapes had to be tasted too.... It is very important to note that these manipulatives are meant for older children. If you are planning to do tot-school I highly suggest you keep a close eye on your little one while they are playing with any of the pieces. They are a choking hazard. Grain Discovery was a hit! It was fun to have some sensory time with B-Mouse. Here are some more fun snippets from the week! Coloring pages and the letter A. These card were meant to be turned into a booklet, but I know B-Mouse will pull them apart immediately.
If we can manage to keep the cards intact I am going to get a laminate roll and use them as matching cards. All of the letter A cards can get put in a pile :)
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,,I was so excited when that little yellow school bus showed up on the front porch! L-Bug was so excited to dig into the box with me and start exploring all the materials. She was checking out the Getting Started guide and spotted an old friend. She said, "mom isn't this KK?"
We worked together on setting up our school area. It's fun to add a little character back into our school routine! Mother Goose has a bright sunny window to hang out in along with our alphabet grass, weather sign and number tree. L-Bug helped me cut all the grass and put it up.
We had one last addition to our school space and I had to snap a picture of it. Many of you may remember my DIY interactive magnet board from my FCC home. Well, we don't have as large of a space as we once did so I found this great magnetic board to put up! AND I am so in love with these amazing story time pieces. They are so cute and very sturdy! I know they will be a hit with B-Mouse.
I got a lot of great responses from my post with the "rotation stations" that I thought I'd share another example that included sensory, science, critical thinking and exploration! During our section in biology during our Science Fair theme we learned about living and non-living things. I loved the daily topic poster! The kids knew the difference between the living bear and the non-living bear and it made it easy for the kids to answer questions like "Does this one... breath, sleep, eat, grow or change... etc". For this rotation station set up I had five stations that the kids used. This first station was the one I helped with the most! It required me to ask the kids questions and help them critically think about whether an object was living or non-living. The child would choose a picture from the pile and then we would start with the questions. "Does it move all by itself?" "Does it grow and change?" "Does it breathe?" "Does it need food and water to survive?" After asking the child a question they would choose the YES or NO tag and put it in the column under the question. After all of the questions the children would determine if the object was living or not? The kids had fun picking a photo from the pile and then deciding if it was alive or not!
During our Science Fair theme we got this awesome book from Mother Goose Time, Ingenuity. I am a huge fan of the books that we receive each month and I LOVE that they always integrate so well into our theme. The illustrations are fun and the stories are easy for the kids to comprehend! A lot of the books from Mother Goose Time have different learning levels! From simple to read lines to in depth ideas and concepts to discuss with the children. The book Ingenuity, takes our young learners through many scientific principles. The book teaches them about many of the great minds who established laws of science as well many other great scientific achievements. Here are a few pages about Isaac Newton. The kids enjoy the illustrations because they are fun and inviting! Alfred Nobel I really like when stories have interactive capabilities. For instance this page has a section where you are asked to find the matching pairs of rhyming words. These engage the kids more in the story. Albert Einstein I wanted to note something that I really enjoyed about this story. The authors started each scientist's story out at a point in their lives when they were children. I feel like this helps kids to relate to the scientist and see that they started as kids too and grew into great scientists. Thomas Edison Another favorite aspect of mine in this book... the quotes! There are quotes through the book from each of the scientist discussed. Rachel Carson You can see shortened the sections our "notes bout this book" were referring to. The bolder text are the shortened version of the book that you can read for younger groups. Did I mention I love the illustrations! Too cute <3 I love this "call to action" on the last page! The last three sentences encourage the kids and remind them that they if they put their minds to something they can do great things. What do you think?! I'm so thankful Mother Goose Time sends us a new book every month! The kids love them and I enjoy incorporating them into our lessons.
I'm so excited to announce that I'll be hosting a giveaways sponsored by Mother Goose Time! Welcome to a Manipulatives Monday Giveaway :) You can find ways to enter the giveaway near the bottom of this post AND check out some other bloggers participating in the giveaway as well.
Manipulatives are a VERY important part of our daily activities. We use them for so many different activities: counting, identifying color, shape, size, playing with them in games, pattern making, art, fine motor skills and SO MUCH MORE!
Here is a fun way that we incorporated manipulatives that I've collected from past months into our Science Activity last week! The two type of stacking toys you see here are both from past Mother Goose Time curriculum boxes. I added them to our molecule building activity, along with some play dough and pipe cleaners....
Here the kiddos selected the molecule cards as a template for building. Then they chose which tools they wanted to use. They had fun exploring the different items available and pretending they were creating new molecules! We talked about the colors, shapes and counted as we built.
Some kiddos tried combining the different materials to see if they would fit together.
I love the bright colors of these stacking shapes. The size is perfect for little hands to manipulate, turn and push together! The shapes are great to use for sorting into categories as well.
Since we read about Alfred Nobel in our story book last week the kids were excited to receive Nobel Prizes today for their incredible molecule structures! :) Check out MissC showing me her excited face for winning a prize! She's been prating that one!!
The stacking blocks also have wonderful bright colors! What I like most about these is that there are multiple holes which means many different options for building! Here L-Bug was experimenting with turning the peg so that she could shape her molecule like the one she saw in our daily topic poster!
The size is perfect for working on those fine motor skills!
Of course the play dough was also a favorite! Who doesn't love rolling squishy play dough into balls! We cut some of the pipe cleaners into pieces so they could use them to build their molecules.
These molecule cards were actually a part of a Mother Goose Time matching game. I love it when I can get more use out of materials! The kids really liked following the cards to count the molecules and try to build one that matched!
This is just a tiny snippet of how easy it is to take manipulatives and use them as part of the learning process! Ever since I started using Mother Goose Time curriculum two years ago our collection has grown so much. The kids love it when we pull out the manipulatives bins :)
How cool is it that Mother Goose Time is sponsoring this giveaway so each blogger can have one winner randomly selected! Please note for entries into the giveaway hosted on my blog are only available to those who are in the United States. Thank you!
I'm excited to finally pull this Mother Goose Time box out and get into some science with the kiddos! I was hanging onto it until summer because I wanted to be able to do it with my daughter too, but she is now home during my tot-school so she participates in our activities. Here is what's in the Science Lab box we will be using for February! This is the Teacher's Tool bag, which includes: Theme Poster, Teacher's Guide and Planning Journal, CD, Skills List and Gathering List, and my personal favorite: MANIPULATIVES (beakers, nut and bolt set and beads). Circle Time tools include: Circle Time Songs, Calendar and Number Cards. I still haven't decided how to utilize the calendar since we use my large wall pocket calendar.... Any ideas?! Please leave a comment! If you have seen the Mother Goose Time curriculum before you know each of the 20 days are separated into handy "day bags" this makes it very easy to know what materials go with which day. Here is Day 1: Properties of Matter Day 2: States of Matter Day 3: Mixtures Day 4: Reactions Day 5: Molecules I hope by now you've caught on that each day bag has it's own topic! Just about all the materials are included in each day bag (aside from a few materials that are in your gathering list. For instance: glue, paint, crayons, tape, etc). In the Teacher's Journal there will be a note if your supposed to set aside any of the materials for an activity at a later date. I personally love materials like these from Day 7: Light. Shapes, Letter and Number cards are items that I laminate and once we have finished using them for the activity I either have them up somewhere in the room for the children to use again and again OR I tuck them away in my filing system to use later! You'll notice there is minimal prep work for the month since everything is already pre bagged into days and the activities already have instructions in the Teacher's Guide. Really all I have to do to prep is review the Teacher's Guide and choose which actives we will be doing. I also go through each day bag to find materials that need to be cut out ahead of time or laminated. That way I can get everything done in one sitting and have the entire month ready to go! Work sheets like this connect-the-dot one from Day 11 and the rainbow color-by-number sheet from day 7 I like to make a copy of and keep it in my filing system. That way when we are going on a long trip, a doctors appointment or just need a quick activity for my daughter I can pull it out, make a copy and bring it along as needed. Whenever I can I like to find ways incorporate our lessons into the kiddos lives. Finding things that they can connect with outside of the school room really help to enforce what they are learning. For example my kids are all from military families. Many of them have daddies that are paratroopers. Times like this I will send a special note to the parents asking if anyone's parent was/is a paratrooper if they could send me a picture I would love to add it to our discussion for that day. So there it is! An entire month of Mother Goose Time materials to help me guide and teach my tot-school class! I am very excited to see how the kids like these activities and too hear all their different answers to the "What We Know" and "What We Wonder" prompts each week!
Though it may not seem like a large age difference the capabilities of children 18 months old versus 2 years old versus three years old can be VERY different! So I love activities that are easy to incorporate in my multi-age classroom. A great example an activity like this is our recent caterpillar building exercise! A simple project that really required noting more than a pipe cleaner and beads was able to captivate and challenge all the kiddos! At one level the kids are working on fine motor skills, stringing those beads onto that pipe cleaner. At another level encouraging those that can to say the bead colors as they string them on, and even helping those little learners who haven't mastered their colors yet. Yet another level, having the older range count their beads once they have finished stringing them on was one way I kept their attention while some of the younger ones were able to get caught up finishing getting all their beads on. Then we had all the friends line their caterpillars up from shortest to longest. This gave me several opportunities! 1) I was able to work with the children on positional phrases "underneath", "on top" and "next to". 2) It gave me the chance to watch some of the older kids assist the younger ones and I was able to use this time to remind the older ones about using kind words versus bossy words. Hearing these instructions don't just help the older ones I'm guiding but it helps all the children learn those important social skills.
Recently Mother Goose Time hosted a photo contest featuring our newest process based art projects. I have LOVED these fun art projects that are all about letting the kiddos use their imagination and create something unique to them! This week my kiddos created snowflakes with just a few simple materials and a whole lot of giggles, exploring and imagination. The Invitation to create came with coffee filters, glitter, and pipettes. I just added some water and paint, paperplates to keep the mess up. After they were dry we added ribbons so they could be hung on a Christmas tree or in the window. The kids were brainstorming all the different places our snowflakes could go. We foled the coffee filters a few times and then cut pieces out of them to make fun snow flake patterns! The kids have all been working hard on their cutting skills and I was very excited to see how many of them were able to use their fine motor skill to make small cuts. While everyone was working on their cutting we brainstormed about how the other materials could be used. We had watery-paint, glitter and pipettes. After the cutting was done and we all admired the pretty designs the kids busted into the materials and explored ways to use them. One reason I LOVE this open ended, process based art is because the kids get to explore and learn. There isn't a desired end goal to follow or an exact model to try and replicate. Just and idea/theme, tools and their imaginations! KK realized pretty quick that the glitter wasn't going to stick on it's own, our visitor realized after squeezing a little to hard that too much paint made it soggy and L-Bug figured out that if she picked up her wet coffee fliter the paint dripped down the sides of it. Check out more Invitation To Create Projects by Mother Goose time by using the #invitationtocreatephotocontest on Facebook, Twitter on Instagram! And post your photo's for a chance to win a month of Mother Goose Time curriculum! From the Mother Goose Time Facebook Page: "There's still time to enter the #InvitationToCreatePhotoContest! The competition is stiff - one post already has 140 likes! Here's how it works: find your favorite picture demonstrating the creative problem solving and deep learning of process-based preschool art. Share to either Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #InvitationToCreatePhotoContest. IMPORTANT: remember to make your post "public" so we can find it and tally your likes! P.S. We're absolutely loving all of the creativity so far."
This month Mother Goose Time accidentally shipped me an extra month's worth of curriculum! So I chatted with the my Blog coordinator and she said because shipping it back would be pricey I can do a local blog giveaway instead! So I'm going to share with you all of the awesome materials that come in the curriculum kit and do a drawing Sunday evening for one lucky winner :) To be entered please head over to https://www.facebook.com/KiddieKornerKare/?fref=ts and hit like! Then comment below with what you like the most about the curriculum. The kit contains enough materials for six kids to paricpate! For those who are new to the way the Mother Goose Time curriculum is set up let me give you a quick run down! The entire month comes packaged in a giant box. Each month we receieve a different thematic study. Under that theme each week is narrowed down into it's own category. Finally each day has a specific topic related to the week's category! One of my favorite things about the curriculum is how easy everything is to use. Each day is seperated into it's own bag. To prep all you need to do is open the bag, review the teachers guide and gather any of the additional suggested items listed in the guide. Sometimes there is some items that need to be pre-cut, or prepped, but it never takes me more than a few hours to prepare the ENTIRE month :) It's super simple to follow. Our December theme is Winter in the Woods! The first bags to grab and check out are the Teacher Tool Bag, the Circle Time Bag and for December the Santa's Workshop Bag. These bags contain the Teachers Guide, Planning Journal, Calendar, etc. Here is all the goodies hiding inside the Teacher's Tool bag and the Circle Time bag. Each month we focus on a new set of letters, numbers, a shape and a character trait. So you'll see the pieces for those below. The kit also comes with a custom CD full of fun kids music based on the theme. There are also two manipulatives in the kit (counting bears-left and stacking blocks-right). These toys are used throughout the month in the different activities. And again in the middle you see some hands on letter cookie cutters and a shape stamp! So fun :) So many awesome materials and activites come in the curriculum. Here is a snap chot of the different art projects for the whole month. Another fun thing to mention is the Santa's Workshop included in this months box! It includes invitations, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Story with story telling pieces, a Snack idea, Santa Spoon Puppets, Santa's Beard Game and a Reindeer Training Game. Lots of fun to do with your little's as a group OR to use during an open house and invite the parents to participate. Winning the curriculum will not only mean that you receive the box of curriculum but a code to get access to the website for the month where you can download any additional resources for December that you would like!
This "puzzle" has been used so many times through out this month! The kids seriously love it :) It is a picture of all the different community helpers and they are all missing their hats and pants. When the kiddos first saw this we could barely get through me explaining how to do the puzzle because all the kids were laughing and giggling that no one had pants on! But after they moved past that they were excited to go on a letter hunt with me to find each worker's letter match! It was KK who noticed the letter first in the doctors hand. Then everyone was excited to search for the doctors pants with the letter 'D'. This simple activity is not only building letter recognition but it's helping these younger two's work on their fine-motor skills! And of course it's fun :) I always love the bright colors and images from our Mother Goose Time curriculum materials!
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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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