Scheduling Mother Goose Time

Mother Goose Time makes scheduling preschool easy.  Each monthly box contains 4 lesson plan books, one for each week of the month.  You just open the lesson plan and the daily bag to go with it.  The daily lesson plan has ideas for circle time, a craft, suggested book to read, games, investigation stations, literacy and math work, etc.  You just follow the suggested activities for the day.

We always start  the day with free play while waiting for everyone to arrive.  Then we begin with circle time.  The kids help figure out the weather, day of the week, and date.  We also work on counting and figuring out the calendar pattern.  The kids stand to say the pledge of allegiance and then we have a time where every child gets a chance to share a short comment or story with the class.  After that I read a related book for the days topic.  We will also discuss either letters, numbers, shapes or colors and sometimes play games to go with it.

 After circle time we move onto the days craft.  I like to do these early in case it's something that needs time to dry before going home.  This past week the kids designed their own puzzles and made get well cards.  After everyone is done we have a snack.

After snack we will do games or activities like patterning, building with shapes, playing would you rather, etc.

I like to work with the kids one on one in their my little journals.  While I am working with one child the others are doing small group work with things like puzzles, books, letter books, sand table and blocks.  

Once we are done with the mornings lesson we head outside to play.  Once it gets colder the kids get to go sledding and play in the snow.  On days where it is rainy or way too cold they get free play inside or else we go into an empty room next door where we can build obstacle courses and play games that require lots of space to run.

Feelings

This month with Mother Goose Time we have been learning about friends and feelings.  

The kids used the I Can Read books to find sight words.  These books are a good start to beginning reading skills.  They help with word recognition and have repetitive sounds.  

We also worked on letter recognition.  The kids loved using a fly swatter to smack the letter they were supposed to be searching for.  

Every month introduces 3 new letters.  The kids get to make their own letter book to take home.  

We also spend all month working in the my little journals.  There are pages to practice writing letters, numbers, drawing shapes, colors, etc.

The kids made their own mirrors and practiced making faces in them.

We looked at art by Picasso, and the kids used shapes to make their own abstract art.  

Each monthly box from Mother Goose Time comes with 2 books.  One of which introduces a character trait, this months was kindness, using forest animals.  The kids got their own rabbit puppet and made their own picture and story after listening to the book.

Using the parachute is always a hit.  We talked about being excited and bounced balls off it, hid under it, etc.  

We also played a letter match game where you had to avoid finding the surprised face.  

And we've used this months tanagram pieces quite a bit.  The kids have use them for patterning, making faces, designing shapes, etc.

Discovering Happiness

Every morning we start with circle time using our yearly display from Mother Goose Time.  The kids figure out the weather, day of the week and date.  They also work on counting up to the date and figuring out the pattern piece for the following day.  

During circle time the kids all get a chance to share one thought or story with the class.  Then I read a book related to what we are doing.  Today's was My Many Colored Days, and we were talking about happiness.  This is a great book that lets the kids get up and act out different feelings associated with animals.  

The letter H was introduced today and the kids made letter H horses.  

The kids got a chance to do small group work to complete different emotion puzzles.  

A New Year With Mother Goose Time

We just started a new school year and will be using Mother Goose Time as our main curriculum this year.  For the month of September we are learning about friends and feelings and also just getting used to class rules and routines.  

On our first day the kids made friendship puppets with googly eyes and feather hair.

They practiced writing or tracing their names on their monthly name tags.  They get new ones every month, and at the end of the year I give them all back so see how their writing has progressed.  

This week the kids worked together to draw a classroom map where they could add and decorate their own houses.  

Every monthly box from Mother Goose Time comes with a new theme poster.  The kids used the look and find glasses to find the different faces and complete the tasks on the back of them.  

We made apple trees by tracing hand prints on paper and then adding paint and apple stickers.  

One of the letters we're working on this month is F.  The kids created their own letter F books and practiced tracing the letter F.  We will do more work with this letter throughout the month.

 We finished up the week by making friendship headbands and learned about being kind.