Looking over the pictures I took this past week during school time, it occurred to me how much my kids are learning while having fun. Part of our activity on Day 4 was literally a board game based on the day’s Fable, The Hare and the Tortoise.  A lot of this pictures speak for themselves, so I’m going to let my words be few for once!

 

Rare sighting of Fuzzy while the kids are awake. Normally she recluses to my bedroom until the kids’ naptime.

Our daily fable from the Storybook provided in this month’s Fable & Folktales box.

The rest of the story (spoiler alert)

The fun game with today’s activity. This time, the Lion & the Mouse from Day 1’s fable got to join in on the race.

Peterman was quite excited about the large cube die.

The suspense! Who will win?!

Also, a hidden benefit to this game is an opportunity for Natalie to learn how to lose well. We’ve had some trouble with her competitive nature already, which she gets from her Daddy, and so it’s nice to have some moments to practice this, in the safety of our own home, where I can easily address any bad attitudes or meltdowns without the complications of my embarrassment and disturbing others in the process. (Anyone else relate to this?!)

Day 4 included a journal activity (Each month they receive a new one. I love journaling with a passion, so I love this aspect!), so Natalie started designing her cover.

Natalie and Peterman

Day 4’s journal activities also included this fun tracing practice sheet.

Natalie started out tracing the Hare’s path, which she did really quickly because she wasn’t very interested at the moment. However, it was a great learning opportunity, as her work was pretty sloppy, to encourage her to go slowly with the Tortoise’s path. Afterwards, we compared her work and accuracy with the two paths, and discussed the importance of diligence and the quality of our work.

Peter, all the while, is exploring his journal and the fun magnifying glasses from Day 1 that correspond with this month’s theme poster.

He decided they needed a little embellishment.
Since Peter was happily playing independently for the moment, we took advantage and pulled out Natalie’s More Math book.
As you can see, they have such cute images that correspond with the fables that we have been reading this past week.

As we were discussing how to spell Harwood, Peter was obviously listening in, as he informed me that he had also written Harwood in his journal.

Obviously.

But on a serious note, I love that he is taking in our conversation and probably gleaning more than I will ever know.

So, back to the More Math books. I just love them! They are so cute, and I love how well they allow me to see her progress! For example, since Natalie has loved math for as long as I can remember, I tend to take for granted that she’s retaining certain skills revolving around numbers. However, as you can see below, we had a little mix-up as she started out the exercise. I wish I had gotten a picture before she scribbled them out, but her 9 & 3 had become a “P” & “E”.

Of course, these are really common mistakes as you are learning to write, but I was actually surprised because for so long she has interpreted most symbols as numbers more than letters, so it was interesting to see that changing a bit.

Peter was still having fun entertaining himself, so we continued on.

This is the More Literacy book for August. This specific activity was asking Natalie to identify the beginning letters for each of the words listed, also referring to the previous day’s Fable, the Grasshopper and the Ants.

Thinking through her options

Fiddle was a little confusing for her, as she thought it was supposed to be a violin.

Success!

The whole day really just felt like we were playing games instead of following a curriculum. I also love how it is teaching me to be more intentional in moments that are less structured to be intentional to still ask questions and find the learning opportunities in them.

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.

Over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of being part of a group that someone lovingly nicknamed #the500. This is the launch team that was assembled to promote Jen Hatmaker’s newest book, For The Love.

One of the awesome perks of being part of the team (and there have been SO MANY) was that we received early editions of the book. So I have gotten to read it early! YAY! And y’all, it is sooo good. I am so thankful for that – although I didn’t doubt it – because I wouldn’t steer you wrong. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t promote it. But that is NOT the case with this.

Sidenote: It has been so much fun to be a part of this amazing group of women and to see so many new relationships formed, just through FB over a book! Of course, I’m just a teensy bit of an introvert, so I have been on the observing outskirts of all of this fun-ness, but I have still gleaned a lot of encouragement, as well as an awesome picture of what real, authentic support and community can look like.  So neat to see what can happen when women stop competing and comparing to encourage and invest in others.

I’ll be writing more about the book next week when it is released (so go pre-order today so you can get it ASAP and not have it totally ruined for ya, because I predict, the internets are going to be bombarded with FTL quotes for the next few weeks, if not months). Cause this women are seriously devoted, and passionate, and that mixed together with a really great book, well, it’s just gonna be explosive.

Here are a sneak peak into some of the content of the book:

And to get a glimpse into the personality of the book a little bit better, check out this one as well:

Anyways, so that has been a really fun experience. And for someone that is rather Type-A and tends to take life a little too seriously, it’s been a really good influence on me. Jen’s personality and perspective has really helped me to grasp more of what I have sensed the Lord telling me over the past 3 years – to embrace where I am right now (this current season, not pre-occupied with the next step to the detriment of missing out on the one I am on), to enjoy the ride (the theme my cute bike on my mantle reminds me of daily), and appreciate the little things. And this has been such a timely message to carry me through coming home full-time to be with my two amazing and crazy kiddos, and then to start this homeschooling journey. I need to be able to be where I am – all in, 100%, to enjoy it (please!), and to see the hidden treasures in the mundane moments that I will miss if my eyes are fixed on the next couple of steps, or focused on the past and what I feel I may have missed out on.

All this to say, I could write about tons of moments where I have seen these little jewels packed into my mornings, sitting around the coffee table with preschool supplies strewn everywhere, coffee mug in close proximity, and two little bright-eyed kids, usually with some sort of sticky remnants from breakfast on their fingers. So today I will share a few from a day earlier this week.

We started out the morning like this.

Little prince came waltzing into my bedroom at 6:00AM with his hat on (this is before Jesus got up, I believe, because it is an ungodly hour. Haha…get it….okay, will carry on). He beckons me into the kitchen to feed him, as he is ravenous from a night of sleep, and collects his penguin backpack along the way. So yes, so cute. But so early. Before coffee early. Whew. And so the day continues.

My daughter, Natalie (5 yrs old), who I lovingly refer to as The Sweetness, LOVES numbers. For as long as I can remember, everything has been numbers. We were afraid at one point that she would never learn the alphabet, which she referred to as numbers, and to this day she prefers zero to an “o.” She just does. I don’t get it. But that’s okay. That is one of the many differences between this girl and me, and for that I am grateful. Lord knows we don’t both need to dread math work.

So the other morning, we were doing part of our Mother Goose Time daily work, focusing on the Fable about the Grasshopper and the Ants.

Short Summary: The Grasshopper plays around all summer while the ants are diligently collecting and storing food for the winter. Come the end of summer, the grasshopper has to ask the ants for food because he has been too busy playing his fiddle to work. The ants are kind and share, but encourage the grasshopper to prepare in advance next time.

So part of our daily activity was to help our grasshopper & ant collect (or eat) their corn. The daily materials came with cute little pictures of ants and grasshoppers, as well as number cards they could flip over and then add the appropriate number of corn kernels to their friend.

We started out with the basic exercise with both, trying to encourage Peter to identify the number by himself once it was flipped over, and then I helped him add that number of kernels to his plate.

Peter decided he wanted to feed the grasshopper. The ants were ‘ew, gross.’ (I’m guessing/hoping he will grow out of the ‘thinking bugs are gross’ phase, more for his own sake, since Natalie is the one that kills the spiders around our house these days. Otherwise I am anticipating a lot of teasing.)

Natalie was able to do this independently. Then to give her a little bit more of a challenge, I would give her two numbers to add together to come up with the appropriate amount of corn.

 

 

A little bit later, after we had finished our daily agenda, we went back to our table to free play with some of our fun manipulatives we’ve collected over the past 3 months of Mother Goose Time. I had also recently picked up a little pack of Leapfrog Addition and Subtraction cards at the Dollar Spot at Target for such occasions as this, to pull out and have a little fun with.  Natalie snagged them and started creating her own equations.

She stuck with adding +0 and + 1 to her equations for a bit, and then I challenged her with coming up with some of my own.

Waiting to see if she got it correct.

She did really well, and as you can see, she loves it. I mean the girl gets excited about math. It’s truly adorable how nerdy she is. I look forward to seeing how this passion develops and God’s purposes for this talent.

And I’ll just leave you with little adorable thing. Can’t be within a ten-foot radius of a paint without getting it on his face.

 

 

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 realized this month that I’ve never posted the wonderful elements I get each month with each new theme-based Mother Goose time curriculum box.

This month’s theme is Fables & Folktales. Each month comes with a flow-chart to show you the daily topics, grouped by weeks, that you’ll be discussing. I love that this helps cast a vision for where we will be headed for the upcoming month.

Don’t you just love this month’s super cute flow-chart?!

Monthly Theme Poster

We make a monthly theme display on a poster board each month so that we can pull it out with us during our daily lessons, as a visual reminder of what we’re discussing and for some good review opportunities throughout the month.

Our first day, we discussed the Lion and the Mouse story.  And you can see a sneak peek at this month’s teaching manual, that walks you through all the different activities for the day, starting with circle time and then diving into the daily activities based around the Daily Topic.

Each month’s curriculum comes with a book. Yes, a book! (Let all the book lovers rejoice!) This month’s is Aesop’s Fables, which will walk us through the stories for each daily topic.

Don’t you just love the illustrations?!

It’s so fun to be able to add these books to our personal library!

So far, each month’s first day has come with these cute little magnifying glasses. Each glass asks a question and directs the child to find an object that is located on the monthly theme poster. Being a visual learner myself, I love that this curriculum offers such cute visuals that the kids can interact with, from the monthly poster and topic chart to the book.

Here are my kiddos exploring the monthly chart.

Peter couldn’t decide if he wanted to find the turtle or ants first.

Peter found the ants!

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.