The Kids were excited to come back to class this week and see our caterpillars in their cocoons! I had gotten a video over the weekend of one little guy hard at work making his cocoon :) Seeing this process was a first for all of my littles! It was interesting to hear all of their different opinions on how the cocoons looked.... gross, bumpy, sticky and hard were a few of the descriptions I got!
The kids FAVORITE activity this week was our Mother Goose Time butterfly art project! These beautiful butterflies got to hang in our class all week :) The kids loved seeing their work hanging in our room.
They ended up turning into kites because the kids saw it was windy outside and they wanted to make their butterflies fly! They spun, ran, danced and jumped all over the yard with their butterflies flapping in the wind behind them :) Though they weren't real kites, many of the kids said it was the first time they flew a kite! How fun that they got to create these ones AND fly them :P
The more kids I have at one time the more I realize how difficult it is to capture kodak moments! Helping and teaching the little ones AND trying to snap pictures with my phone is more difficult than I thought!! LOL This month I started working more with our concept cards and vocabulary cards. The kids have learned nearly all of them! Even though they many not be writing and spelling (like you would typically do with vocab words) they are expanding and growing their language base.
Another "win" this week, was during lunch! I have a few picky eaters... and when I can get them to try one bite of everything on their plate, I count it as a win! :) One day for lunch we had a tasty shrimp cob-style salad. The kids not only tried bites of everything on their plates, they found a few new foods they actually thought were tasty!!!
They were all so excited to get their "happy dino, try-bite stickers" too :D
A new first for me... learning how to occupy a 14month old during nap time ;) Peanut came by for a short visit during nap and she was not a tired girl!!! My older ones were sleeping so we had some fun playing with foam letters: touching, chewing and throwing were all involved! We also read some books, after peanut was done reading with me she enjoyed pulling them all of the shelf too! I think this age of exploration as well as learning about cause & effect is one of my favorites :)
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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!
One thing that has been really important lately is getting organized! I have SO many great resources from our Mother Goose Time curriculum every month and so many of the pieces can be used and played with again and again! One thing my daughter loves are the board game sand participation stories, they have been in ziplock bags, boxes, sacked up on a shelf.... etc. Finally I found an easy way to keep them sorted and stored! Folders and page protectors :) I used an Expo Marker on the outside of the folders to write what types of materials where in the folder as well as what months the materials came from (this makes it easier for me to find a specific theme if I want to). The expo marker doesn't wipe right off, BUT it will come off with water and a paper towel! Inside of the folders I used clear page protectors to slip all of the materials into. Some of the pages have "You'll Need" notes. This is a quick reminder that some of the pieces we will need to do the activity or game aren't in the folder and are somewhere else in our school room. Those were typically materials that we used all the time in our school room (foam shapes, tangrams, etc) OR they were bulky items that wouldn't fit (frog flippers, little dinosaurs, dice, etc). Check out the vide to see more!
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 :) April's curriculum is all about Food & Fitness! So I'm really excited to get my kiddos moving with the some music <3 I love the monthly CD that comes with our Mother Goose Time curriculum, the songs are fun, easy to learn and educational. My little one loves to listen to the CD and we have "boggie" or "wiggle" time where we shake it all about before Circle Time! We also use the music during Circle Time for different things like calendar, weather, etc. We have collected just over 12 of these themed CDs now and I went through them all and found the instrumental tracks and a few songs with words that were very general and created a playlist! It's fun to play while the kids are doing art or free time. On top of the monthly music CD I like to order the Dance-N-Beats Activity! This fun add on is a DVD filled with several dance videos that kids can easily follow along to or make up their own moves! The DVD helps get kids moving and active. Watching the dance leader on the screen teaches kids develop their fine and gross motor skills and learn the different ways their bodies can move :) Here is a fun example video to check out! What are some of your little ones favorite songs to move to?!
Sometimes a simple game like this one perfect to use for observing the things a child knows (like colors), the things they notice (like the little details of a face) and the things they wonder about. These cute little elephant cut outs came in our Mother Goose Time curriculum this week and I decided to let L-Bug lead the activity so I could do some simple observations. The first thing L-Bug noticed was that some of these elephants were asleep (far right row)! As she shuffled through more she decided that some of the elephants were happy (middle row). When it came to the elephants in the far left row she wasn't quite sure what to make of their expression. So she asked me! I asked if they looked mad, no.... do they look sad, no.... what about surprised, YES! Then I told L-Bug we should line up all of the surprised elephants and after that she started lining the others up in their own rows too! Without even realizing it she had just sorted these elephants by their facial emotions. After she finished lining them all up I asked her how else could we sort these elephants. She was quite sure so I said "Well do you have one yellow one? Yeah, how about another one? I bet all of the elephants have one special match here!" So she sorted them all into piles by their color and she knew all the colors! Next I shuffled up all of the elephants and turned them upside down. I didn't say anything I wanted to see what L-Bug would decide to do with them. Would she get bored and walk away? Would she turn them all over and continue playing how she was before? No! On her own she started playing a matching game! We've only done this type of game a few times recently, but knowing now that each elephant had a matching color gave her the idea that she could play a game and find their matches!
Again simple activities like this can be used to give your child some room and see what they know, what they remember and even wha they learn on their own! I decided that this week I was going to talk a little about our Circle Time routine. L-Bug has really come such a long way and I realized that the more we practice our routine every morning the better she gets at 1) paying attention, 2) interacting & 3) learning and remembering the different steps of our circle time routine! Instead of just taking pictures I decided we would do a video mashup of the different activities and steps in our routine! All of our circle time materials are in the top drawer of our daily work box shelves. We have our "stay put pieces": glue stick, calendar dates, weather pictures and magnifying glass that always stay in the drawer. Then at the end of our school day I set up the next days drawer by adding the day of the week stick, the "today is" cloud and our daily topic poster. Usually L-Bug starts her morning off by coming in and having a little free play while I review my teacher's guide. When I am ready to start circle time, I start our Circle Time playlist on my computer. The first song is the Mother Goose Time theme song and it's Lily's cue to clean up. I challenge her to get all her toys cleaned quick before the song is over then she runs to our circle time rug! The next song is the Circle Time song and L-Bug loves the part where she gets to: jump, jump, turn around and then sit down, at the end of the song the most! Before we start on our Circle Time work box I like to play a game with Lily using these different cubes we keep getting over the different months. For instance I used the animal cube and the item cube and we roll then Lily moves like that animal to get to that item in the room, example: Hop like a Bunny to the Blocks! We do this a few times to help get all those wiggles out before we sit down and do the rest of our routine! L-Bug pulls out her Circle Time drawer and we get started! We start with calendar. I like to ask her if she remembers what yesterday was. More and more lately she remembers! After she tells me what yesterday was I hand her the "today is" cloud and she puts it on our Circle Time board. Then we sing the next song on our playlist, the days of the week song. After we sing she grabs her glue stick and the calendar date and puts it up. I like to have her say the full date: Today is Friday, September 18th. A few times throughout the month we play the months of the year song and every time they say the month we are in L-Bug JUMPS!
Next comes weather! We grab our day stick for our weather cups and go look out the window. First we talk about the sky and I ask L-Bug what she sees. It's either cloudy or blue! If it's cloudy we look at the ground or the air to see if it's dry or wet (dry means it's just cloudy, wet means it's either rainy or snowy). If it's blue then we look at the trees and the flag we can see in the backyard to see if they are still or waving (still means it's just sunny, waving means it's windy). She has really gotten good at telling me the weather that sometime I don't have to go through that whole process with her. She sees the rain and yells it out! LOL Once she has determined the weather she grabs her weather picture and puts it on the calendar, then she takes her day stick and puts it in the correct weather cup. This may seem like a lot, BUT I like having TODAYs weather on the calendar and at the end of the week on Friday's we look at the "weather pattern" to see what kind of weather we have had throughout the week! We also talk about how it FEELS outside just because it's sunny doesn't mean it's hot... and I want her to be able to understand that. The next step is our Daily Topic poster and L-Bug hangs it on our Circle Time board, then she takes her magnifying glass and tells me what she sees on the poster. The we start talk about the daily topic, we also talk about what we have learned this past week and throughout the month. I like to pick L-Bugs brain to see what she remembers! Finally we do a small activity with our "concept intro" or "concept review". Each day we either introduce a new shape, color, number, letter, country friend, friendly bee, etc or we review one we have already learned! After we finish up we put all of our "stay put pieces" back into the drawer and slide it back into the work box shelf. Then L-Bug grabs the next drawer and we get started with lessons for the day! This week has been full of some great lessons! L-Bug has been identifying emotions, talking about friends and how we can build better friendships and SO much more. I pulled out this science card from a different month because of how much L-Bug loved it. We gave each color an emotion and talked about how these emotions can sometimes mix! We've learned several new letters this week! L-Bug is starting to enjoy letter and writing time MORE! I'm so excited to see her face light up when I tell her it's time to practice her writing. Every time we learn a new letter we sing our ABCs and we follow along in our number grass that is on our Circle Time board. These tracing activities really have become one of her favorite things to do! We played a fun game for our concept review of #2. Our Mother Goose Time curriculum came with these fun heart stampers and Lily was SO excited about them. We played a little game where Lily put two stamps on her paper and then we did an action like: run and grab two blocks, do two somersaults, clap your hands two times, jump twice, etc. We did this until we had twenty hearts on our page and then we counted up all the hearts. We talked a lot more about emotions this week and did some fun projects with them. Here are L-Bugs favorites from this week: her sad puppy and her hide-n-seek surprise clown! The clown was a blast! L-Bug loves playing hide-n-seek so after we finished the craft we played and whoever was hiding had to shake the clown and yell surprise when they got found. It was really, really fun! I was so proud of L-Bug because when it was her turn to count she made it all the way to eight! Here is a fun little video of L-Bug identifying the different emotions on the action cube from this week. L-Bug is all about dancing lately! She has never really gotten too into the Dance-N-Beats DVD but lately when she opens up her work box drawer and sees the DVD she get's so excited! She noticed right away this month that there is a new dance leader and of course she made mommy figure out what her name was (L-Bug really likes to know everyone's names). So I got on the Mother Goose Time Facebook Page and found out her name is Kristi and I also found this video link with one of the songs to share with you guys! Grab your kiddos and see how they like to move! Do they follow along or make up their own moves?! I like to do our Dance-N-Beats before lunch. L-Bug finds it in her work box drawer (hopefully I'll be able to set up a post on that soon!) and we head downstairs. I put it on the TV and let her go! Sometimes she follows along with the leader the best she can and other times she likes to wiggle and move all on her own to the music. I take this time to go get her lunch ready and once I'm done I'll usually come back in and do a few dance moves with her! L-Bug is very observational and loves to see all the different colorful backgrounds that her "new friend" Mrs. Kristi dances in! She also loves the fun clothes! She asked me if next time she dances she could wear her fairy wings so she could fly and dance! I love how her imagination comes up with such awesome fun ideas! I've noticed she follows along a lot better ever since she started her gymnastics class :) While I like that doing Dance-N-Beats helps to get the wiggles out, what L-Bug doesn't realize is that this is a part of school and learning too! She's learning all kinds of new ways to move her body. There are times the leader will do a new move and L-Bug tries to figure out how to do it. If she can't she usually asks me "how she does that mommy?" and I'll attempt to show her how to do it. It's awesome to see her exploring the different ways her body can move and healthy for her to exercise!
This week has been a blast playing with mud and dirt! Unfortunately most of those outside activities I didn't bring the camera along for because I broke it during the water week :( SO, until that gets fixed and I learn to be more careful I'm sticking with the less complicated activities to take pictures for! Haha We talked a lot about dirt this week! We talked about the things that birdies find in the dirt to eat: worms, bugs & seeds were a few things L-Bug named. Then we took some colorful feathers and practiced our counting and grouping! Even though L-Bug can't do these on her own we do the simpler math cards together! She loved counting them out and telling me the different colors :) We used our theme poster to find all kinds of things you can do in the dirt! You can dig (like the picture L-Bug found). You can write in the dirt using different things like your fingers (that was a fun and messy day!) and sticks. We also talked about the different animals that live underground in holes and burrows. We made a mouse friend and met some ants! And L-Bug learned about a new animal-- watch this video where we searched the animals on the poster and found a Hedgehog! Here is her creating a Hedgehog she named Penny. This is the first time L-Bug has practiced patterns! She did really well matching up the cards in the pile to the pattern on the board. We've finished up our Nature Detectives theme and it was a great month packed full of all kinds of awesome things to learn about! Now we are gearing up for August ~ Folktales & Fables! I'm really excited to delve into this lesson AND to do a Baseline Assessment for L-Bug so we can set goals for our 2015/16 school year :D
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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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