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!
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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 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!
Science is an important part of life, it's all around us! I love doing science with the kids because they get to ask questions, tell me their ideas and then test those ideas out. Without even knowing it they are building the foundations of the scientific process. In May we did A LOT of life science. We studied bees and butterflies. The kids spent nearly three weeks learning about our metamorphosis! They got to spend and entire month learning about how things grow. Our Mother Goose Time activities and discussions really helped the kiddos learn more about the basic needs and that plants, animals and even themselves have. We got to see little tiny caterpillars and talk about how they would grow. We discussed how we eat food and it helps us to get bigger and grow taller! They observed the caterpillars growing bigger too. The littles got to see the cocoons forming and a few of them even got to witness the butterflies emerging :) After our butterflies had emerged and had time to stretch their wings we talked about why we needed to let the butterflies free! We discussed places where the butterflies might like to live. We live in the desert, with very little flowers. The kids knew that the butterflies would need flowers for food so we talked about the community garden and how there were lots of plants and some flowers there. I set up a field trip with the garden and the kids couldn't wait! The kids also got to observe a little earth science during the release! Originally we were going to do our release on Monday, but it was raining and VERY windy. I asked the kiddos why today might not be a good day to let our butterflies out and they all said the rain would be too hard for them to fly in. They observed the weather on Wednesday and we decided that the nice sunny day would be perfect AND there wasn't too much wind that day. The kids were so excited to see the butterflies go free. While we were there the kiddos made a few observations: "we should let them out by the big flowers, so they have lots of food to eat", "there is a net above the garden that's nice and shady, will the flutters like that shade?", "there aren't birds in here so they might be safe and not eaten", "when the flowers get water the butterflies will be able to get a drink", and so many other cute little things were said!
The littles were all hard at work exploring the new environment for our butterflies and how all the things in the garden would work together to help our butterflies grow. Science is FUN! This week we had lots of new friends at Kiddie Korner! I had a full house multiple times throughout the week and we sure did have fun :) The kids got to watch this video of our caterpillars making their cocoons over the weekend. They were excited to see all of our friends tucked away and sleeping!
We also talked about the colorful wings we were already starting to see inside of the cocoons! Sure enough they came out that same day! The rest came out yesterday and a few of the kids were here to watch it. They were in awe of the emerging butterflies. We talked a little about how we got our caterpillars just a few short weeks ago and how quickly they grew, created their cocoons and turned into butterflies! It has been fun hearing the kids talk about their observations and explaining metamorphosis to them. The kids had a blast playing this Mother Goose Time game! I had an "-ug" butterfly and there were several caterpillars in the middle of the table. Each child got one letter, we used their letter to build a word "h" + "-ug" = HUG. We would all sound out the word. The kids had so much fun scrambling through the pile and finding their caterpillars after we built the word :) My little emerging readers! It has also been a hot week! We had a blast at the water park this week. The kids enjoyed running in the water and hanging out in the sunshine at the park :)
We had a pretty busy week!! Lots of new families came to interview throughout the week and I'm excited to announce that next week will have some new friendly faces at Kiddie Korner :)
With all the business we didn't get to do quite as many lessons as we would have liked, BUT the girls are loving our study on metamorphosis. We started our week talking about the lifecycle of a Butterfly. I really liked the layout of our Mother Goose Time daily topic posters for our discussion. We were able to use the posters from throughout the week with our Insect Lore Butterfly Lifecycle stages pieces!
I introduced the girls to our new friends! They were in awe of how tiny our little caterpillars were.
Check out this time lapse of our baby caterpillars!
One of the girls favorite activities this week was building their own caterpillar snack! We used cucumbers for the body, tomatoes for the head, pretzels for the feet and raisins for the eyes.
Here is a video of our not so little caterpillars! While the kids were observing the caterpillars on this day Little K said the caterpillars looked silly climbing upside down like that! I asked everyone what they thought the caterpillars were doing up there. The answers were pretty funny! "Trying to escape", "Running from each other"... etc. We talked about how full their tummies must be and how big they got, Then L-Bug said :O "Oh yay! Now they are going to sleep in their cocoons!!!" So awesome to see them excited about learning :)
Another activity the girls really enjoyed this week was making their own butterfly lifecycle plate. By the end of the week (when we did this lesson) they remembered all the stages of metamorphosis.
The last day of the week the kids got to see these guys working into their cocoons!
It has been a fun and exciting week! We finally jumped into our Food & Fitness theme Mother Goose Time curriculum box! L-Bug was so excited to welcome a friend to our preschool class. Miss L joined us just in time to learn about food groups! I also had to give a shout out to an awesome 99 cent store find! These munchkin placemats! I had been looking all over for plates, placemats... SOMETHING for us to use at meal time and I hadn't been able to find anything! I was going to just make a copy of the Mother Goose Time Healthy Plate game and laminate them as placemats, but on a quick trip into the 99 cent store I found these awesome flexible, plastic placemats. And they work PERFECT! The girls were so excited that on day one they got to get messy with grains! We talked about the different things we use grains to make and the girls talked about how the different grains felt in their hands. Rice, quinoa, flour, oats, noodles and bread were some of the ones they got to feel. On day two the girls learned about vegetables! We talked about why it is important to wash our fruits and vegetables. The girls knew that fruits and veggies grew as plants in the dirt and outside. So they knew that they were dirty when the farmers pick them. L-Bug said they weren't dirty in the store anymore! I explained that the farmers washed them, but sometimes they didn't get all of the dirt off so before we cooked it or ate it we should clean it really good! Later in the day the girls went on a vegetable hunt around the room. And then they practiced their counting skills! Miss L is such a great counter, I observed her skills and she was able to count all the way to twenty! For a three year old I think that is pretty good :) For snack I asked the girls where their vegetables were and they both showed me their bell peppers! On day three the girls learned about fruit. We worked on a strawberry project and the girls got to practice their cutting skills using scissors. On day four we learned about dairy! The girls watched a video about how farmers milk cows. The girls seemed to really enjoy watching the video and as the farmer milked the cow and they practiced by rubbing the cows belly. After the video we went outside and practiced by using a rubber glove and water. The girls thought it was so interesting the way the water squirted through the small hole in the "utter". I explained when a cow is full of milk and the farmer milks it that is how the milk comes out. On the last day the girls learned about protein! We talked about how protein is an important food because it helps to build strong muscles. I explained that protein comes from things like meat: chicken, beef, turkey and fist! I also explained to the girls that some protein comes from other things like beans :) Then we got to do a fun project! The girls took a single bean and a cotton ball soaked in water and placed them into a bag. I taped the bags in the sunniest window in our school room so the girls can watch and see what kind of changes happen. Each day the girls take a look and poke around the cotton balls. They cal it watering the beans! This week we started to see some interesting changes! It has been such a fun week and I feel like I have learned many new things! The girls have learned so much about a healthy plate and about the different food groups. I've learned so much about observing the kids and assessing the skills that they have. Before I just had L-Bug and because she was my daughter I knew many of the skills that she had and I watched new ones develop over time. But with Miss L, I only just met her and I as her teacher it's my job to get to know her and to assess the skills she has to that I can learn how to guide and teach her!
My last week of training is finally here! I'm hoping to get my inspections finished up so I can open my in-home preschool sometime in March :) Luckily for me L-Bug still has some school projects I can do easily with her in the short amount of time I have after classes and before dinner/ night routine. Thank you Mother Goose Time for making life easy for me in the busy moments! One of her favorites from this week was an art and science combo project about beetles. Here you can see L-Bug checking out this beetle poster with several kids of beetles on it. We observed the poster and she described the things she saw on the beetles! We talked about their antennas, legs, wings, colors, eyes, pinchers, etc. We picked out our favorite battles and tried to color ones like them. L-Bug's favorite beetle was the colorful one in the middle! Her observations were that it had colorful stripes, so she tried to recreate it and she did a great job. Later we took the beetles to daddy for him to put in his locker at work and L-Bug told him what she learned about beetles. She told him that beetles smell with their antennas and they use their wings to fly! It's incredible what children can learn from an easy 30 minute lesson!
This week our lessons have been all about trees! We started with a seed and learned about roots, trunks {inside and out}, branches, leaves {and other things that grow on branches}!
I had a little fun here with L-Bug because anytime painting is involved she gets a little excited. So before letting her dig in and grab her art smock I had her observe what she saw in our work box and then tell me what she thought we were going to be doing! She was able to name everything in the box... but she though we were going to eat the seeds :)
She had a lot of fun painting her apple, but I think she had even more fun playing with one of our Mother Goose Time manipulatives seeds! She had fun "decorating" her name with seeds and kept telling me those were her letters for her name.
Then we did some seed exploration and we sorted the seeds and looked at them with the magnifying glass. We put our senses to good use with these food safe items and we used our eyes, ears, noses and months to explore them! How do the seeds look different from each other? How do the seeds smell? What do the seeds sound like when you drop them into the pan? How do they taste?
L-Bug was so excited to pull her Little Journal out of her work box! She now LOVES tracing her name and is eager to get into the pages of her journal to trace and color!
On the day we talked about the tree trunk, bark and the inside rings of a tree we built our own "forest" with our Melissa and Doug blocks! L-Bug LOVES stacking blocks so this was perfect. We used our imaginations and mad up a "hatchet" to chop at our trees with as we read through a story about Honest George chopping down his father's cherry tree.
The Melissa and Doug blocks came in our September Citrus Lane Subscription box along with several other fun toys! See the post about it here. But while we were taking down our "forest" I realized this would be a great way to move into the rings of a tree! As we stacked the nesting blocks together I realized they were in a sense making rings inside of each other the way a tree has rings inside.
So we talked a little about rings on the inside of a tree and counted the rings of the blocks and then moved onto our next activity about the rings inside of a tree!
We had a busy week and we combined our branches and leaves day. One of our discussion questions was "What do branches hold?" I was very surprised at L-Bug's outside the box thinking when she started saying things like, "birdies nests, squirrels, kids", etc! After she told me all of those great things I asked "What GROWS on branches?"! And we talked about leaves and fruit and pine cones lol.
Here is her fingerprint painting <3
There were so many other fun activities we did this week it's so hard to choose which to write about. But I do want to share two of our books from Story Time this week! We haven't gotten to our new Mother Goose Time book for this months theme, but I pulled out an MGT book from past lessons "Timber!" to go along with the story we read about Honest George chopping down the cherry tree! We have read this a few times in the past couple of months and now L-Bug knows when to holler TIMBER!
The other book L-Bug really enjoyed was "Trees and Forests". We didn't read the words and honestly I don't agree with most of the beginning text anyway, but there are amazing illustrations of the cycle of trees in this book! It was fun to unfold flaps and see bugs crawling through the roots! Or to open up the side and see the a seed grow into an oak! And there was even a page with different textures of bark on it to feel and rub :)
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"...
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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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