One morning this week, we decided to do some pattern play with our tangram shapes that we have received in an earlier month’s package of Mother Goose Time curriculum, making abstract Christmas trees while trying to stick with patterns. It wasn’t super complicated, but it was fun to see how the kids were innovative with their creations. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of Peter’s, since I was more hands-on with him, but here are two of Natalie’s.

Although I don’t have to be sneaky with math with you, as she LOVES pretty much all things math so far, it’s nice to know that I have bring in some math lessons to our play in the future, if Peter turns out to be less than receptive about it. And I have lost count of the times that we have pulled out these shapes at the kitchen table, either for lessons or just for play as I’m preparing dinner. It’s great to know that they’re learning through play!

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.

This week have been hit hard with the fall sickies. It started with Peter and spread pretty quickly the rest of us, with the exception of Natalie. Somehow she managed to come through the week unscathed (amazing gummy vitamins for the win!).  So we’ve had a pretty low-key week when it comes to pretty much everything.

I did, however, pull out our Thanksgiving bag from the November’s Mother Goose Time On The Go box so we could at least take advantage of some of the fun activities before Thanksgiving! So here is a fun slideshow of the kiddos decorating their Thankful Turkey. Peter was having a little trouble figuring out which direction his tape needed to be facing, so I captured a sweet moment of Natalie stepping in to help on her own accord.

 

I especially like their bows at the end.

And we enjoyed reading November’s book, A Ride for Duck! Such a cute little rhyming story about Duck and some unlikely friends.

 

Have a great Thanksgiving!

 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.

I’ve mentioned before how impressed I am with Mother Goose Time, the preschool curriculum that we started this past June. It’s been a huge blessing for us as we’ve started to incorporate Peter into more of our structured homeschool day, and allowed for him to be right there with us as we’ve been doing crafts, lessons, and activities.

I wanted to give you a closer glimpse at how well this curriculum equips parents and teachers to make the most out of the curriculum, as well as adapt it to individual settings (homeschool, preschool, etc.).

All of these links below are located in the Member Resources section of the main website, easily accessible even before your curriculum box is at your front door, for those of us that like to know what is coming and get a heads start on planning. (*Note: surprisingly I don’t fall into that category a lot. I appreciate that it is there, in case I decide to do some pre-planning, but have found that the curriculum is so user-friendly that I often can just take 5 minutes before we’re at the table with the kids to look over that day’s lesson and then get going.)

First, here is the super cute Theme Web that comes in poster form each month.

 

 

Each month I also receive a printed copy of the Activity Calendar. This is bird’s eye view of what we’ll be doing each day, and all the details of the activities listed you’ll find in the Teacher’s Guide. This is great when you’ve done some pre-planning early enough that you may not remember things right off the top of your mind.

 

The Gathering List is a great companion to the Activity Calendar, letting you know what supplies (if any) that were not supplied that you’ll want to make sure you have readily available for each day’s lesson. This is SO great and really allows me as a teacher to focus on the lesson, not what supplies I need to make sure I’m compiling a list of.

 

 

A little bit more detailed version of the Activity Calendar is the Activity Grid. This you’ll find in the Planning Journal that comes in each month’s box, giving you a more involved look at that week and then on the following pages some blanks to write notes or add reminders of additional resources I may want to include. When I first go started, I used the Planning Journal as a quick place to jot down notes so that I would remember what I wanted to blog about, as well as what I wanted to remember to tell my husband. The Planning Journal is a great little resource.

 

And Mother Goose Time also provides a Suggested Book List each month to help you reinforce the topics you’ll explore (as seen on the Theme Web above). This is great when a topic really seems to interest your child and gives you some direction on where to pull more information from.

 

And this I love! I love being able to, at a glance, see all the fun projects that we’ll be making each month. This is also really great for rainy days or days when you’re kids are just so restless. I can easily reference this overview and then pull out that day’s bag of supplies and the Teacher’s Guide, and we’re all set. Most of the materials are already provided, besides basic items that you more than likely already have around your home or classroom.

 

And as I mentioned above, this curriculum has been so great and has really allowed us to transition into Peter joining our daily lessons so well. A huge resource we’ve used is the Little Goose Time book, a teacher’s guide version for littles (geared at ages 12 months – 2 years). If you click on this link, you’ll see a preview of 1 week of lessons. This resource has really taught me a lot about adapting activities to each child’s level, but it has already surprised me to see how much Peter could accomplish that I wouldn’t have tried with him without the lesson plan. So fun!

 

And I’ll leave you with a fun little image. The little train that my little Peterman is holding is from the Manipulatives bag that came with November’s materials. They went perfectly with some letters that I recently pulled out of a workbook and laminated, resembling little roads for him to drive down and practice the way you write each letter. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of all the manipulates that came with this month’s curriculum, as that is usually teh first thing we tear into after receiving our new materials.

Each month we get some fun new ‘toys’ that the kids pull out almost every day to play with around our table. I love that we are building a little collection of manipulatives that we can use for math, building, and play.

This is really just a snapshot at some of the great resources that Mother Goose Time provides. We’ve really enjoyed it and definitely recommend it to anyone desiring to teach their littles at home or teacher’s in a preschool setting. They have done so much of hte planning and preparation for you that it frees you to to build relationships with the children and to help them learn, which is really what this is all about.

 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.