Fall is here! I am so so happy about this. It has allowed this past week’s gloomy and rainy weather to be a little bit more bearable, knowing that fall has arrived with all things good: sweaters, hot beverages always, smores, scarves, fires, brightly colored leaves. I could go on and on.

As I mentioned here, October’s theme for our Mother Goose Time curriculum is “In The Orchard” and holds some of the treasures of fall: Trees, leaves, fall fruits, and we’re even studying some fun little critters and their behaviors during the fall. And this has lined up beautifully with the Kindergarten curriculum that we chose for Natalie this year, My Father’s World, with Unit 3 being L is for Leaf. I love it when the Lord’s timing is so evident. He doesn’t have to sync things like this up for us, but it makes things so much more full and is a little bit easier for me, and for this I am thankful.

So I thought I would show you our MGT Week 1’s activities at a glance, and all the fun materials that come in our little school bus box each month.  But first, let me show you my new circle time board!

I’m so excited that I have this ready for October’s fun! Little Peter was crying, literally, for Circle Time the other morning, and seeing as how he had demolished our previous board while I was on vacation last week, it was actually not an option. So he was so excited when he woke up this past week to see the board. He asked if it was from Target. 🙂 Can you tell where Mommy likes to shop?

As you can see, there is room for the monthly theme poster at the bottom of the middle section, so that will be changing monthly, as well as obviously the calendar. The other features will be fairly permanent, rotating out the weather, shape, number, and letters each month as well.

These are our new friendly bees that will help us learn a character trait each month. September introduced Respectful and this month we will be talking about Honesty.

Here are our Letter cards we get each month (the larger being our flag letters that we can later string up in our office for an alphabet banner, the smaller ones with pictures on the back to help associate letter with cooresponding words with the same beginning letter, and then also our white manipulative letters that we have fun tracing and just as a learning tool), and then our number tree, getting new leaves and numbers to hang each month.

Okay, on to Week 1!

Day 1: Seed

All of this was in the individually packaged Day 1 bag. Have I mentioned how much their organization makes me happy?! So, as you can see, you can get a pretty good idea of what you’ll be doing just by pulling out your materials for the day, before even opening the Teacher’s Guide.

Day 1 always includes the nametag, and I’m going to start using this as a benchmark to compare how their writing is developing from month to month.

This is a glimpse at the Teacher’s Guide for Day 1, with the instructions for each activity, identifying what supplies have been provided and what you may need to gather.

And then we’ll be counting seeds, which were included in this month’s Music and Manipulatives bag.

Day 2: Roots!
Our first month with Mother Goose Time was themed “Growing Gardens” and we talked a lot about the structure of a plant (seed, root, bud, leaf, etc.), so this will be a fun review to see what information Natalie and Peter can recall from May.

Here are some friendly bee badges that will help remind us to choose honesty.

Here are our monthly magnifying glasses so that we can find fun objects on our monthly theme calendar on our Circle Board.

Eep! I love these little journals and how we have activities woven throughout the month to incorporate the journals. They are such cute keepsakes for us after we complete the month.

Day 3: Trunk

We’ll be reading about George Washington,

(excerpt from the Teacher’s Guide)

as well as looking at the rings in a tree trunk and using some of our pattern pieces that came in our Music and Manipulative bag.

Our little rings are provided to place on our trunk picture.

We’ll be making at least a bird and an apple with our pieces on Day 3. But knowing Natalie, she will have some other creations to add to the mix.

And then this activity looks the most fun!  The activity includes this cute little video that will introduce the kiddos (and myself) to an ermine (which I just learned is a northern weasel).

Look at that fun little baggie of supplies!

The kiddos will make their own little ermines.

Day 4: Branch

We’ll be decorating our own little branch pictures, and I imagine we’ll go out and find our own branches to decorate with pompoms or other materials.

Day 5: Leaves

Look at this fun activity based on the Hungry Catepillar book by Eric Carle!

And then we will do a treasure hunt with leaves, uncovering other goodies, as well as our apples.

That’s the week at a glance – minimal prep time means maximizing my time and energy to have with the kids. Such a blessing!

 

 

 

As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.

When it comes to “box day,” which for those of you not in the homeschool arena or are new to it is the exciting day when your new curriculum comes in. For some, that’s once a year if you’re ordering all-inclusive, holistic curriculum. For those of us in the Mother Goose Time community, this exciting day comes once a month! Yep, you heard me right. It’s like a mini-Christmas morning experience built into the second half of each month.

And of course, the first thing we pull out is the “Music and Manipulatives” bag.

This shiny little thing that comes with new toys each month, as well as the monthly-themed music CD that corresponds with our daily lessons. We’ve started compiling quite the supply of manipulatives since starting Mother Goose Time last May, and they come in handy on many occasions when we’re needing something fun on a rainy day. Actually, I’ve been really surprised with how much these materials have become a permanent part of our toy/play routine, with their home now in a 4-drawer rolling cart in the corner of our kitchen (where most of our school day happens).

So of course, when we needed something to help occupy the kiddos while I grabbed a shower before dinner, the manipulatives was a fun go-to with new toys for this month!

This month’s bag came with the “In the Orchard” CD, which we will explore more tomorrow as we start out our week. We also have seeds, some fun new translucent pattern blocks (these different types of pattern blocks are always a winner), some fun new fruit beads that you can thread onto a shoestring, and some pie tins. My curiosity is definitely peaked as to what some of these will be used for this month.

Peterman, our little tower builder, went right at stacking the new beads. The fruit beads won his attention.

We’ll see if he starts to incorporate the shoe string, or if they are now just building materials for him.

Looking forward to exploring these pieces more in the next few weeks!

As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.

The hubs and I just got back from a week-long, kid-free vacation to find October’s box had arrived while we were gone. Wahoo! I’ve been really looking forward to October’s In The Orchard theme for a while now, so I’m pretty pumped (plus a week of cruising has definitely helped to allow me to return a little bit more rejuvenated). I love, love, love fall (seriously, I feel like a different person in the fall). I love trees of all kinds, but definitely displaying the brightly colored leaves of fall. AND I have so fallen in love with being at home with my kiddos and having the privilege of teaching them that I’m just about to burst at the seams. The Lord definitely knows how to go above and beyond our expectations every time.

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,  to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” – Ephesians 3:20-21

I could share pictures of all of this month’s materials, because they’re just so cute, but I will refrain to focus on this new element that has started this new school year through the Mother Goose Time monthly boxes. The norm is to have separate daily bags, as I’ve mentioned before, as well as to have teacher’s materials also in it’s own wrapping to keep it separated and organized. But starting this fall, they’ve also started setting apart the circle time display elements that are new each month, so you can more easily identify and decorate your board in time to start the next month’s theme. I LOVE THIS! My heart appreciates and enjoys organization so much, and this has just taken things to a new level.

AND I love the example picture of the tri-fold circle time board display to give you an idea of how you may wish to display the materials.

This is the cover for the circle time bag for October, giving you an idea of what is included as well as how you may want to display the pieces.

A little bit of a closer picture of the board display example

And October’s theme poster is just so stinking adorable. I imagine we’ll be seeking out some different types of apples to sample this month!

More October “In the Orchard” fun to come! You’ll be hearing from me soon!

As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.