Why We Use Mother Goose Time

We just finished up our fifth month using Mother Goose Time, which is a complete preschool curriculum.  And when I say complete, I mean complete.  Each month comes with a music CD, book, manipulatives, craft materials, science experiments, snack ideas, detailed lesson plans, and so much more.  My girls have been loving the activities and can't wait to "do school" everyday.  I love the ease of this program. There is a gathering list supplied every month so once you get household items together like paints, magazines, etc. all you have to do is open your day bag and you're ready to go.  Instead of trying to find ideas from pinterest and then spending time running around gathering the needed materials, I have time to spend with my girls.  I also like that when a craft needs googly eyes the number I need are provided.  I don't have to waste money buying bags of craft supplies just for one piece, and I don't have to worry about where to store all the leftovers.  Mother Goose Time comes up with things I wouldn't normally have thought of or tried and frequently it's these simple ideas that my girls love the most, like taping solar system orbits on the floor for them to follow or putting bubble mix in a pan for them to make bubbles with. 

playing in the orbits

I love watching my girls learn and grow.  With all the open ended questions Mother Goose Time asks it's easy to gauge how much they're learning and the fun lessons make it so much easier for them to retain the information.  The monthly box for August even came with a baseline assessment so you can actually measure your child's progress throughout the year. 

Colors In The Air

The girls have been loving this months Mother Goose Time theme of nature detectives.  Today we got to read the book of the month, Get Close to Nature!  This was a great book with beautiful photos.  There would be a close of picture where the girls got to guess what it was, and then on the next page there was a full image with information.

After we were done reading the book we took magnifying glasses and magnifying containers outside to look at nature close up.  The girls looked at flowers, trees, rocks, and even a toad.

checking out a toad

After they were done looking at everything they were interested in, we headed to the porch and the girls made their own Get Close to Nature! books.

 The girls also drew pictures and rainbows with sidewalk chalk and the used a spray bottle to wash them away.  Elli loved spraying the pictures and making them disappear.

easy way to entertain a toddler

The girls were also supposed to do a color by number picture, but there was also a color by number in the more math and reading workbooks for today, so I decided to skip it.  Instead the girls made rainbow pictures using bingo markers.

An InLinkz Link-up

Floating In The Air

Week two of the nature detectives theme from Mother Goose Time is mystery in the air. The topic for the first day was floating in the air and the girls had so much fun with it that it wound up taking us 2 days.  The girls did a  feather float test by dropping feathers over the edge of the porch and seeing which feather took the longest to fall.  Addie predicted that the bigger feathers would fall slower.  They also experimented with ways to keep the feathers in the air longer.

trying to keep the feather in the air

After they finished playing with feathers we mixed dish soap with water and they made bubbles and watched them float. 

Bubbles are always fun

We talked about different things people can use to float in the air.  The girls tried jumping off step stools and seeing how long they could stay in the air.   They did this for a very long time, until they were worn out from jumping.  After that they made their own hot-air balloons and took little toys on rides around our house.

trying to fly

decorating

the finished balloons

On our second day we talked about clouds.  The girls lay on a blanket and tried to catch paper clouds that were thrown over them.  They had a lot of fun with this.

 We talked about how germs can float through the air when people sneeze and cough.  The girls drew germs on Kleenex and practiced washing their hands.  We also read a book about germs and the immune system.

Elli did a balloon patterning activity from the little goose book while Addie worked on her math and reading workbooks.

They still wanted to do more after they finished all the activities so I traced balloons using the cutout from the hot-air balloon activity and they decorated them with the cutouts from the little goose activity.

An InLinkz Link-up

Writing With Trees

We've spent the week learning about trees.  Today's theme was writing with trees.  We went on a walk and did rubbings of different trees and rocks.  The girls also tried making marks on their papers with rocks, sticks, and other items.

While going on a walk to do the bark rubbings, we also collected an assortment of sticks.  We took them back to the porch and the girls picked alphabet sticks from the nature detective kit and tried to create the letters with the sticks.

 We went inside and talked about different fruits that grow on trees.  The girls each got a bingo tree and covered the letters with markers.  Addie picked letters and if they were on her tree she got to pick the corresponding orange.  Elli had fun covering and uncovering the letters.  She also played with the alphabet sticks in her kinetic sand. 

 

 We finished up the lesson by talking about playing in trees.  The girls drew their own pictures and made up a story about a tree.  They also used ink pads to make fingerprint leaves and added rubber stamp animals to their trees.

Addie's tree would have a slide coming out of it leading to a pool.

 We finished up tree week by reading 2 books about trees.

An InLinkz Link-up

Painting With Trees

The girls both love painting so they were thrilled to have a whole day devoted to painting with trees.  We started off going on a walk and collecting nature items.  Then the girls used the different items to paint.

After they were done painting with sticks, flowers, and leaves they made their own tree pictures.  We talked about the different colors you can see in a tree.  Then they took turns spinning the color spinner and painting leaves on their trees in the corresponding colors.

The best part about taking lessons outside is when an inch worm shows up

The girls favorite activity of the day was taping off tree shapes with leaves on paper and then using the provided pompom and clothespin to stamp them.  Once they were dry they got to pull the tape off and see the outlines left behind.

We also talked about shadows and looked at the shadows different objects create.  The girls were supposed to paint tree shadows, but decided they wanted to try and trace their heads instead.

An InLinkz Link-up

Counting in Trees

The girls had so much fun with today's Mother Goose Time lesson, counting in trees.  The day bag today contained a My Nature Collection book for each of the girls.  There were 7 items written in the book, which the girls collected on a hike.  Then they glued the items they found in their books and wrote about them. 

We talked about how you can count the rings in a tree to determine its age.  We found some stumps and counted the rings and then guessed how old trees in our yard were based on how wide the trunk was.

Then the girls each drew their own stump with the same amount of rings as their age.  We put them at the bottom of a paper tree and then made up different directions, like count the rings on your tree and do that many jumping jacks.

spinning in circles on their stumps

We talked about how things like leaves, acorns and fruit can fall out of trees.  The girls made paper pine-cones and practiced throwing them into different sized bowls.

With Elli I used an activity from the little goose supplement.  I set out the numbered mystery bags from the nature detective kit.  She picked 5 stuffed animals and fed them the corresponding number of food from their respective bags. 

There was also an adding tree activity in today's lesson bag.  Addie thought this was so fun she asked if she could do it again tomorrow.  She would roll two dice and use acorn pieces to count and find the answer.  While Addie was working on adding, Elli was matching acorn colors to tree stumps from the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel game that we have.

making math fun

 Addie finished up with her more math and reading workbooks and we read Picture a Tree

An InLinkz Link-up