The first week of Mother Goose Time has been lots of fun! And I’m also quite exhausted from trying to take advantage of ALL the really fun, hands-on activities that were suggested this week.

I wish I had some pictures of show you some of our Circle Time experiences, but I’ve been enjoying it so much with the kids that I haven’t forgotten to have my camera out. The kids LOVE this time, and I was surprised to see Peter’s excitement in dancing around during the opening song each day. His little dance – so sweet!

Monday (Day 2), we focused on Seeds.

Day 2’s packet came with some fun shape manipulatives that were very similiar to some others the kids were given for Christmas, so we had enough for them to share without a mutiny on my hands! They spent a good bit of time playing on their own, which was fun to watch their little minds working.

Peter collected the orange squares,

and ‘planted’ the shapes in the egg carton,

and even decided his shoe would be a good container as well.

Natalie used her creativity to free-design a dog,

create a flower,

and then decided her flower needed a stem & leaves.

I really think they could have stayed with the shapes longer, but there were so many more fun things to move on to.
And even now, as the kids are seeing me post these pictures, they are wanting to go back and play.

We moved on to planting our shapes in our own sand gardens in the backyard. We hadn’t really discussed gardens before, so I printed out a few pictures so that the kids could see that each type of seed is planted in the same row, and that there can be different designs in a garden as well.

We talked about order and also labeling what we have planted so that we’ll know what we are producing.

(I can see so many biblical principles in these lessons and look forward to building on them over the next few weeks. One being that our God is a God of order. We have discussed how in Genesis 1 that God created each plant to produce its own type of seed, so that we can know that apples will always produce apples. In the same way, God was the same yesterday,  is the same today, and will be the same tomorrow. We can rely on Him. This is just one of the exciting ways that we can build off these lessons.)

I had made little flags ahead of time (toothpicks & slivers of post-it notes) to label our rows for each sand garden –

Natalie’s flags had the names of the shapes,

and Peterman’s had the names of colors.

Peter is still learning to sort by color, so we decided to work on one color at a time.

After we were done, I asked Natalie would she thought her shape garden would grow. She said that her blue diamonds would produce blueberries (as she explained because they are blue). I asked her if she thought they would be diamond-shaped, and she said, “No, of course not. Blueberries aren’t diamond-shaped.” So, there you go. She is an interesting mix of imagination and reason.

When then came inside to play with some real seeds.

 

 I tried to encourage Peter to sort the seeds by type, but he found that the more efficient way to get the seeds from the plate into the egg carton was to dump them. I guess he’s not really interested in the order of things quite yet. 🙂

(I am also learning that I’m having to be so ‘hands-on’ with Peter that I’m failing to get pictures of Natalie. I will definitely be working on that in the future.)

Next, we created our garden pictures.

Peterman isn’t much of a color-er, so I opted to cut some stems and leaves for him to maybe just draw a flower.
He wasn’t very interested in the idea, so we decided to glue some beans for the flowers instead.

Natalie drew her self-portrait in her own flower garden.

As I was looking on Pinterest earlier this week to try to find some activities that would reinforce what we are learning with our Experiencing God devos this month (see my previous post about this month’s focus on The Parable of the Sower), I ran across this really cute idea. Since we already had the beans for this lesson, it was an easy addition to our day. And a great reminder to ask the Lord to transform our hearts into good soil, so that His truth can take root and produce fruit in our lives (Psalm 51:10,   Ephesians 3:16-19, Colossians 3:16).

This was a suggested Little Goose activity for Peter while Natalie drew her garden picture ahead.

In the middle of all of this, I saw Peter just sitting in his chair, kicking his feet. And I realized that he was so grown up. My baby was not a baby anymore. I am so thankful that I get to spend this time with them each day. It’s speeding by and I can hardly catch my breath for a moment to take it in.

 

After a VERY full morning, we moved on to lunch.

We decided to explore some real seeds as we ate.


To wrap this all up, I wanted to give you a sneak peak into the mess behind the scenes.

Our kitchen counter now doubles as my work space, seeing as our home doesn’t offer a designated school room currently.

Maybe I will find a better system after I have a few days or week under my belt, but I was a pretty hot mess flipping between the teacher’s guide & Little Goose guide today, trying to take notes and pictures.  It’s a work in progress, but we’re learning and growing, and I’m embracing the imperfection even in this.

We survived. (the end)

I kid. It was actually pretty fun!

If you had told me two years ago that I would be (1) homeschooling (2) with both kids, and (3) that the first day would involve sand and dirt in my house, I would have either cried, laughed hysterically in disbelief, curled up in my bed and gone back to sleep, or all of the above.

It may not seen huge to you, but this was a picture of the Lord’s progress in me, for me.

But let me start at the beginning of the day, because I adore structure and stories that have a chronological order.

We started out our day – May 1, 2015 – with the Experiencing God portion from Mother Goose Time. The theme this month is “God is Wise” and focuses on the Parable of the Sower in Luke 8. Jordan helped me create the display so we could keep everything together as we focus on the Parable of the Sower all month.

Surprisingly the kids stayed somewhat quiet and still while Daddy read the story, and then Peterman examined all the picture cards.

 

 

 

We also played one of the cute activity games they suggest where you throw balls into a bucket, and talk about how are hearts need to be open to God’s truth (like the bucket) so that it can be planted in our hearts.
After Daddy left for work, we had our circle time in the office. This is my fun little board that is going to help us learn some of our daily basics (date, day of the week, weather, letters/numbers of the month). Peter is constantly drawn to the letter flaps, which is great since he is still learning to identify letters.

 

The Octopus is currently his favorite.

 

Then we transitioned into the kitchen to start Day 1: Soil (What can we find in the soil?) I had decided to go with some sand and dirt bins to give the kids a hands-on approach, and to faciltiate some of the activities the Little Goose planner had for Peter (Little Goose helps kids from 18-30 months until they are able to join in on the main Mother Goose Time activities).

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The sand and dirt bins were the biggest hit. They actually had so much fun that they asked to play with them outside after we finished the daily work, and then again that evening after dinner.

 

The kids also enjoyed ‘exploring the garden’ with their magnifying glasses.

 

(This is our monthly board, which has our Experiencing God display on the back)

 

 

Overall, the day was a success (success being defined as we accomplished the daily tasks, only had one little angry outburst, and the kids had A LOT of fun, which I think goes hand in hand with learning).

 

So I’ll leave you with this fun image. I’m pretty sure my child would live in this bin if he fit and we allowed him to stay there. I’m guessing Peter will like the beach.