Getting Ready for Kindergarten

Mother Goose Time is an amazing monthly curriculum by itself.  If you're looking to get a little extra work in for kids going into kindergarten, then I highly recommend adding on the more math and literacy workbooks.  They provide extra writing and math practice.  Each set works on the same letter, numbers, shapes and colors that the main curriculum focus on.  

The literacy workbooks provide more practice on writing letters, rhyming, beginning word sounds, letter matching, true and false questions, etc.

The math books have number identification, counting, dot to dots, puzzles, patterning, measuring, etc.

Elli enjoys workbook type activities, so she really likes these.  Even if your child doesn't like worksheets these books have games and puzzles throughout so they get to learn while having fun.

World Market

For the second week of Mother Goose Time's around the world theme we learned about items found in a world market:  drums, masks, lanterns, rugs, and kites.  Each day we made a new item for the world market.

They painted paper plates to make kites.

They decorated burlap pieces with markers and sewed in their own designs. 

The kids worked on writing the letter K in their my little journals,

and got further practice with the letter using a monthly coloring page.

Drums

During this months around the world study with Mother Goose Time we spent a day learning about drums.  

During circle time we go over the weather, day of the week, date, figure out the calendar pattern, say the pledge, and review letters, numbers, shapes and colors.  

Since we were learning about drums today I brought out the instrument for the kids to play.  We practiced playing quietly and loud.

The kids decorated and made their own drums to play.  

Every month comes with a new I Can Read book.  These are easy readers designed to help preschoolers recognize sight words.  They use the sight word pointers to find the matching words in their books.

Every month also comes with patterning cards and the kids work on patterning throughout the month in a variety of ways.

Preschool World Study

This months Mother Goose Time theme is it's a small world.  This month the kids are learning about packing and traveling for a trip, the world, world markets, natural wonders, etc.  This is a great theme to help with global awareness.  We've been looking at maps and using the globe to talk about different places.  We look at where we live on the map, and talk about how much bigger, and how many more people there are out there.  

One of the items included this month were pictures of different places, like the great wall of China and the Matterhorn.  The kids worked in pairs to try and put the pictures together.

They made their own cameras, complete with their own wonders of the world photographs.  The kids loved these and through out the day they would pull them out and pretend to take pictures.  

No study of the world is complete without making a world.  The kids used shaving cream mixed with blue and green paint to make their own swirl worlds.

The letter G was introduced this months.  The kids rolled balls dipped in paint over their alphabet coloring page.  We only have a few more months to go and then our alphabet books will be complete.

We got a new monthly theme poster, and the kids got to use the look and find glasses to look for different items.  They always love getting the new glasses and poster.

A great way to travel is by plane.  The kids decorated popsicle sticks and used tape to create their own airplanes.  

Some people travel by boat.  The kids spent quite a while playing in the water table.  

They used shape pieces, one of this months manipulatives, to create different modes of transportation.

The kids started working on their my little journals.  We work on these all month long.  They use them for letter, number, shape and color review.

They played a matching game.

We spent some time talking about and looking at different types of money.  The kids worked on sorting out coins and also did rubbings of them.

They made their own wallets out of paper bags, complete with mother goose bucks.

We talked about emotions and what masks are used for.  In a market you might find masks to buy.  The kids got to make their own.