On Day 3, we talked a lot about the elements needed for plants to grow.

 

We pulled out some veggies, as suggested in the Teacher’s Guide for Mother Goose Time, and made our own little plants out of different veggies. The kids had fun, and as they placed their carrots down as roots, we talked about the role that roots play in providing food, water, and air to the plants. We also talked about the importance in being rooted in God so that we can get what we need for each day, to grow and thrive like the plants that are being fed as well.

Natalie took her creating one step further and created a veggie mommy.

Do you see the resemblance? (I guess I only have 1 leg?)

While Nat was created her own flower picture out of construction paper (and apparently doesn’t mind working in a messy workspace like her mama),

Peter & I spent some time talking about Sunshine (yellow) & Rain (blue),
putting our weather in the sky picture.

We also practiced counting the weather pieces.

We followed this with another Little Goose activity for sorting colors,

putting the same color paper on the appropriate weather pieces.

This was really great for me to see Peter improving on his color sorting.
We have wondered for a bit if he was possibly colorblind, as he was struggling to identify colors correctly.
But I’m seeing some good progress in this and am excited for him!

“Peter, was that fun?” “Mmm, hmm.”

After this, while Nat was wrapping up her flower picture, we created a plant picture of our own.

Peter was snacking on cheerios at the time, while helping me paste and repeating after me the names of the parts of the plants.
He decided that the sun needed some cheerios, so I gave him some artistic freedom. And his picture obviously represented that plants need sunlight (and cheerios) to grow.

Natalie chose rain to show how plants grow.
And Peter’s sun cheerios inspired Nat to add ‘seeds’ to her plant picture. It is so neat to see how each of them are already benefiting from working alongside each other instead working with each child individually at different times of the day.

Next, we moved into the living room for a fun game.

Natalie pretended to be a plant and she could take a step for each number I called out. If she started near the sun, she was a plant that needed water. If she didn’t get to the water for that turn, she would pretend to shrivel up. Opposite for the rain side – moving towards the sun, and if she didn’t make it, she would pretend to be swimming in the water.

She made it to the rain and is drinking up the rain!

She made it to the sun and is flourishing in the light.

Then the kiddos has some free play with the blocks for a bit.

Peter and I practiced our letters while Natalie made a plant out of the blocks.

This was her original plant.

This was her version after I suggested color-coding the parts of the plant.
(On her own accord, she even added the orange to signify the seeds in the flower. I was impressed. It is SO fun to see her creative side come out!)

This was the final version when we decided to add roots.

We then headed back into the kitchen for some water fun. They each had their own tray and some various-sized containers to play around. The teacher’s guide suggested talking about the different sizes and asking which ones they thought could hold the most water, least, etc.

We also discussed how, just like plants, God created our bodies to need water every day.

The 6 cups represented the amount recommended for a toddler daily. I honestly can’t imagine Natalie drinking this much water every day,
but it has encouraged us to shoot for about three 8-oz cups at a day to start, including myself.

Then we added a little bit of color to the water for fun.

This is Natalie, pretending she is a plant with her roots in the water, growing.

This is Peter, thinking Natalie is hilarious.

This is the drinking Peter plant.

Silliness. And a little scary.

And I was really excited to see how these little cans fit right into our lesson.

These were a gift from my mom for the kiddos a while back, and so we took the time today to get them started.

We talked about the differences between the seeds, too. I personally have loved seeing the diversity in all the seeds, and being reminded of how creative God is. Natalie told me today that He is quite “original.”

We put the flower cans outside, along with some great plants that Natalie and I bought on the side of the road this past weekend.
A local high school was selling them through their FFA group,
and I thought it would be fun to grow them with the kiddos.
So far they’ve helped me water them each day, so we’re also talking about taking responsibility for what we have.

Whew – and this was only before lunch!

I’m learning very quickly that I’m going to have to be a little bit more selective with the activities we choose each day instead of trying to accomplish all that is provided in the daily packets.

Four days in and we’ve really enjoying it!

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

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.