Next week we will be leaving on a family vacation and I have been planning plane activities and some stuff to bring for L-Bug to do in our room so she isn't bored or always watching TV. I am super excited with the way these actives came out and how simple everything was to put together. It took me probably 30mins to gather all the stuff and put them in the bags! I ended up with seven activity bags but they can all be use multiple times and some have more than one game or activity. I used quite a few different bag types to fit the different materials. The left bag is a draw string bag. I needed a larger bag for this activity because of the size of the mail carrier. This is a simple lacing art activity from Mother Goose Time! Then it turns into a game Bug can play to deliver mail to all of our family and friends cruising with us. On the right I used a random bag I already had. Our vacation week we are working on reading -at words. So I included a Mother Goose Time "I Can Read" book and the Your Baby Can Read flash cards. We have been using these flash cards with our basic reading words and L-Bug has been doing GREAT!
I decided to throw in this fun travel kit I got at Costco. She used it on our last plane ride and it was easy and fun for her to play with. There are dry erase cards(numbers and letters), a work book, coloring pages, flash cards, etc.. It fold ups pretty tight and is easy to carry. Above are all seven bags packed with their activities! Everything fit nicely inside a regular size school bag and I had room in the front zipper pocket to slip L-Bugs Innotab and games into. I used another pencil pouch for all the game so they weren't just loose in there and added extra batteries too. I was inspired by this micro-training video that Mother Goose Time did a while ago! When I was watching it I immediately thought of our upcoming trip and the two long plan rides we were going to be on! Not to mention those times when we will be in our cruise stateroom getting ready for dinner or something and L-Bug will need something to do.
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Our Mother Goose Time theme for January is The Safari! We have so much to learn about the safari and so far L-Bug has LOVED all of the fun games we have gotten to play :) For the first few days we learned about travel and how you would get to and get around the safari as well as some things you would need while you were in the safari! As you probably saw from a few posts ago we talked about passports and how they are an important part of travel! We also talked about packing our bags for a trip. We played a fun game using our packing list and our Little Passports suit case. L-Bug packed for our trip! Later in the week we talked about how we would get around while we were at the safari. I talked to L-Bug about the big animals that would be there (elephants, rhinos, giraffes) and the dangerous ones (lions, cheetahs, etc) and we talked about how we would need a vehicle that was strong and safe. L-Bug looked at the safari vehicle on her posters and she told me all the things she saw: the open roof, tires, the cars on the front, the windows, the lights.... and we talked about how all of these things would be helpful while watching animals in the safari. L-Bug had so much fun making these crafts this week! She got to make a safari hat to wear and binoculars so that she could see animals that were far off. We played a game in our school room where L-Bug looked through the binoculars to find animals that she could see all around. We also used the binoculars to look at birds outside of the school room window! Now that we've got our passports, packed our bags and gathered our safari hat and binoculars we're ready to learn where the safari is and about the animals you will find in the safari!
Yikes it has been WAY too long! We took a holiday vacation that got a little extended.... we did a little school here and there where we could fit it in, but traveling to see family and mama starting her new job at the church nursery got us a little off schedule. BUT we are ready to get back to school :) L-Bug was beyond excited when I told her that I had new school all set up and ready to go.
We started off talking about what a New Year means! We looked at L-Bug's 2015 Calendar she made in January last year. It had her foot print, height and weight. So we talked about how she grows a little bit every single day but we don't really realize it because the changes are so small. We weighed her and measured how tall she was and compared it to last year! Then we made a foot print to see how much bigger her feet have gotten :) She was so excited to see!!
Once we were done with the 2015 calendar I showed her the new 2016 calendar and told her this time we were going to do our handprint! She also got to write her name this time (which she definitely couldn't do last year). We sang the months of the year song and L-Bug danced around the room, I think she was really excited to hear our Mother Goose Time CD for Circle Time!
She knew right away what was coming next and grabbed her calendar to sit down for the days of the week! Over the past few weeks we haven't done circle time with school because most of our school was on the go in the car. Last month L-Bug really started singing along with songs, but she hadn't really ever done it before so I was so shocked when she started singing almost the entire Days of the Week song! We put our calendar day up and did our weather :)
January's theme is all about the Safari, but I was VERY excited that Mother Goose Time started Day 1 off with Travel and Passports :) Not only was I able to bust out the Passport we did last year with them but it gave the perfect way to add in our Little Passports Curriculum for this month!
Here is L-Bug using her magnifying glass as she went through the Mother Goose Time passport we made last year. She was pretty little then so most of our MGT lessons were modified with the Little Goose Supplement or I did some simplifying on my own! I really liked doing this one because I got pictures from our travels and from our families travels and I was able to do the Mother Goose Time lesson of the places with pictures of people L-Bug knew! It was fun for her to look through it this year.
Next we took our new passports for this year and our Continent Cube. We rolled the cube and found that continent in our passport. L-Bug found the matching color crayon and colored her continent the same color as the one on the cube! She did have a little big of a hard time with the continents that had lots of smaller island around them because they looked similar to other ones in her book, but it was a good way to get her to really focus on the cube and the pictures in her book!
We also stamped the continents she has been to! She liked that :)
We used the continent cube again to find all of the continents on our map! She liked talking about the animals she saw on each of the continents and then informed me that she wants them all as her pets.... I asked her where we would put a lion and she said he could sleep in the garage!
I like asking L-Bug questions that make her think and challenge her a little bit, it tests her knowledge now and makes her focus on a specific thing when thinking about new possibilities! SO while we were still standing at the map I reminded her that each of those colored shapes we were pointing to were CONTINENTS and then I asked her what all of the blue stuff in the middle was. I shouldn't be, but I was pretty surprised when she told me it was the ocean! So then I asked her if she knew how we could get from one continent, like South America, to another, like Africa (as I pointed to them).
She didn't know. So I had her pull out our world globe ball and I had three of our Mother Goose Time manipulative ready to go! I had a bus, train and plane out (I sure wish we had a boat, but we didn't). I asked L-Bug if we could take a bus from South America to Africa... "sure" she said with a grin! Then I started driving the bus across South America and stopped at the ocean. I said "Uhoh... can a bus drive on the water in the ocean?" "Oh! No, no, no..." she said as she laughed. So then I grabbed another pieces and said "Ok how about the train? Can we take that to Africa?" She looked at the globe and then the train and said "No trains can't go in the ocean too." I smiled and said "You are right! What about the plane? What does a plane do?" She jumped up and said "Yeah planes fly, it can fly over the ocean!" I was so excited to see her so excited when that light bulb came on!
I asked her to fly us there and she picked up the plane and flew it over the ocean to Africa!
pretended it was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome since she has seen that one) and an Egyptian Pyramid! We set them up and used our Mother Goose Time manipulatives (buses, planes and trains) to go from one monument to the next.
It was a busy and full day but I was happy to see that our much needed vacation didn't mess L-Bug up at all. She was happy to jump back into school and I don't think she forgot anything! :)
Happy New Year Y'all!
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!
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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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