The winner is...

Andrea Amy has won the three Mother Goose Time books!  Congratulations!  I've sent you an email so we can get those shipped out to you.

Stay tuned for another post about our fun last day with the Blast Off to Space theme!

Painting Neptune

Today was a fun day for the kiddos.  We studied Neptune and Saturn and they both loved the Neptune swirl painting project.  I adapted it a little to fit the materials I had so instead of using a box top, we cut the blue paper in half so it would fit in a  paper plate with a high lip and it worked great.  Each child chose two colors and then gently shook and rolled their balls around the plate to create some really fun designs.  The paint was a little thick so I might thin it with a little water next.  I'd also stick a piece of double-sided tape to the back of the paper because once it had a little paint on it, it started to buckle upwards, which made it a little tricky to get the ball all around.  I cut circles out of the paper once the paint had dried (I had to blot a little of it up that was still wet) and we glued them to the black paper.  The kids counted out the 14 moons of Neptune and each wanted to add one star to their picture.  What a great technique that could be used for lots of different projects (I'm thinking Easter egg pictures...)

Spinning like Saturn was also a fun activity for them.  We have tons of balls and plastic eggs so we had fun spinning them all to see which ones spun fastest and which ones spun the longest.  The winner was a large green jingle bell but the most fun was a large crocheted egg my grandmother made that would stand up on its end.


The Saturn wands were a fun project too and I see them being used with great enthusiasm along with our Dance N Beats routines.

Our last activity was the Space Play.  Since they are so little, I acted as narrator while they took turns putting the planet cutouts on the storytelling background that was included with the theme.  They had a lot of fun acting out the directions at the end of each planet section, especially getting big like Jupiter.





We were still missing one of our friends due to illness and hope to see her back with us on Monday when we learn about the galaxy (and make Galaxy Goo!) and rockets! 5..4..3..2..1..blast off!

It's All Ducky

I wanted to share a couple of games I came up with to keep Miss M entertained and practicing math and language skills.

We have a lot of these little rubber ducks, thanks to my friend Jocelyn who threw me a bath themed baby shower a couple years ago.  You can find them in a variety of themes and get a dozen for just a couple dollars on Oriental Trading Company.

First, we scoured all our toy bins looking for them, as they have been scattered across rooms and floors over time.  We counted how many we had (seven) and then she added the big pink "mama" duck so we had eight all together.  I had a piece of scrapbook paper that looks like water so I cut them a little pond and we set it up in the play area near our Little People barn (I love Little People toys) because she insisted that's where they lived.

Game One is basically using them as manipulatives in the song "Five Little Ducks" In case you don't know it, it goes:
"Five little ducks went out to play, over the hills and far  away.  Mother Duck said quack, quack, quack and four little ducks came waddling back" and so forth until Mama Duck says quack, quack, quack in a very authoritarian tone and they all come home again.  (In most versions, it ends with Papa Duck bringing them all back but I think they should listen to their Mama in the end and not leave it to Papa).  The pink duck sat in for Mama and Miss M counted five little ducks, leaving our extras on the pond.  Every time one less duck came home, she moved it from the line and back on the pond.  I sang the song a few times until she could do it herself.

Game Two I call Duck Hunt.  I found this little pair of binoculars that we had gotten as a freebie somewhere (but you could make some from toilet paper rolls or rolled paper).  I hid the ducks around the area and then she had to use the binoculars to find them.  She kept count of how many she had so I helped her figure out how many more she still needed to find.  The second time around I helped direct her to ducks using prepositions ("I see a duck on the shelf.  I see one under your bed.  I see one behind Henry Bear.")

Both games were pretty successful (in fact she's playing the first one on her own right now) and very easy.

Book Giveaway!!

Not only does Mother Goose Time create and ship fantastic monthly themed curriculum, they also produce wonderful books for use each month with these themes.  Even though I have only been doing this for a month, they sent me all the books to review and share a few of my favorites with you.  On top of that, they are letting me GIVE AWAY these favorites to one lucky winner!
See the end of this post to enter that contest.

As a former speech-language pathologist specializing in preschool/early elementary populations and a mother of two young children, these three books were my favorite.


Baby Animals Play and Learn
This book has beautiful photos of baby animals that made Littlest smile her megawatt smile with every page turn.  The simple text highlights an action verb and then asks a question of the reader regarding their ability to do the same thing.  The speech-language pathologist in me loves this book for it's rich but easily accessible language that is great for our little ones and my kids enjoyed attempting to copy the animals.  Miss M asked me to read it over and over, which is a great sign.



At The Pond
This book follows a similar format to the one of above, with gorgeous photographs and great enriching vocabulary.  It also includes a riddle and some clues about a mysterious pond resident that older preschoolers will like.  It's a really nice way to introduce a pond unit without getting too wordy, which I find happens a lot in children's books that are supposedly targeted to preschoolers.  Miss M gave her seal of approval, as well.

There Are Bugs!
This was a really fun rhyming book about all the different bugs that fill our world.  Miss M was fascinated by them (except the dung beetle, she thought that was gross :)






Now, if you'd love to win a copy of these books, just fill out this entry form and do one or all of the following for up to four entries in the giveaway:

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Jupiter and Uranus

Thanks to a spring cold that is making its rounds of the neighborhood, we didn't have our official group class today but Miss M and I had fun exploring Jupiter and Uranus with Littlest.  Attention span was also limited so rather than doing everything at once like we do on normal class days, we split them up over the course of the morning, which actually worked really well.  We started an activity and then she continued or expanded upon it on her own while I did household things or tended to Littlest.

By far the favorite activity today was the story set.  I laid out all the pieces and both girls had fun looking at them (and tasting them, in the case of the 9-month old--glad I laminated them first).  We talked about what the pieces were and I made up a little story about two astronaut friends getting together for a visit on Uranus on my homemade felt board (I realized quite soon that it is too small but thankfully I have a large Amazon box just waiting to be repurposed along with sheets and sheets of felt I bought two years ago for a still uncompleted and now forgotten project).  Then I gave them to Miss M, who helped them blast off around the room.

When I got back from putting Littlest down for her morning nap, we read a fun book I picked up this weekend at a used bookstore which happened to be perfect.  It's called "On the Moon" by Anna Milbourne and Benji Davies.  Miss M gathered pieces from the story set and used them to retell the book to me after we had gone through it twice.  Then she wanted to dress up as an astronaut with a "bubble head" but since the only thing we could find that fit her requirements was a plastic bag (quickly vetoed and put away), she settled for re-enacting "Ruby's Rainy Day" and splashing in puddles in the rain.

After lunch we talked about the moons of Jupiter and played the Balancing Moon Game, taking turns rolling the die and putting a moon of that color on the big piece.  Miss M noticed that there were sets of three sizes in each color and separated them out while Littlest tried her best to stack them as I talked about their color and the designs on them.  Miss M's favorites seem to be the little moons, which she lines up on their own every time we play with this toy.

Color Game

Littlest loves grabbing my Mother Goose Time materials that are glued to craft sticks and sticking them in her mouth.  She finds this immensely entertaining but I don't so I decided to come up with an alternative for her.  Both my girls love baby puffs so we have many empty cans around the house (they make great bowling pins or musical instruments when stuffed with objects that can rattle around when shaken).  I took the newest empty can that was conveniently sitting on my drainboard in the kitchen, cut a slit in the top (it's soft plastic so a pair of scissors worked just fine) and grabbed a handful of craft sticks I've had in my supplies since before Miss M was born.  I showed her how to drop the sticks through the slit and attempted to help her with hand-over-hand manipulation but neither of my girls has ever liked that and always prefer to do it on their own.  The slit proved to be too difficult for her so I just took the lid off and that was challenging enough.  She liked grabbing the handful of sticks and rustling them together before trying to shove the lot of them into the can.

This kept her quite entertained until Miss M returned from her swimming party and decided that the game looked like fun and took it over.  So, I grabbed another empty puffs can (like I said, we have many), a few more sticks and some markers.  I colored one end with a marker and wrote the name of the color on the stick (for silver and gold, I used star stickers and I happened to have a yellow craft stick which worked better than my marker).

We have this simple book of colors (I made a stick for each color in the book) so I sat Littlest in my lap and she turned the pages while Miss M searched for the corresponding stick.  We talked about the beginning sound and letter name, as well as the pictures in the book and other things in the room that were the same color.  We made it through the book twice before they lost interest.  I think it is a fun little game we will keep around for a while.  I am going to make up a set of color cards that Miss M can mix up, turn over and then match to a stick so we don't always have to have the book and she can do this on her while I take care of other things.  You could do it with shapes, letters and numbers--draw or write the symbol on one end and write the word along the length of the stick.

It's Spring!

As I mentioned in my last post, Mother Goose Time also provides activity ideas for bonus days, like holidays and in the case of March 20, the first day of spring.

Miss M and I celebrated during Littlest's morning nap.  I wrote the letters S P R I N G on a cut up 4x6 notecard, laid them out and we talked about what it meant that it was now spring.  We had driven past a field full of new lambs just an hour before and had noticed how many of the trees in our area are blooming or getting their new leaves.  Miss M decided she wanted to make up her own game rather than play the suggested one in the materials, which was fine because I like her to use her imagination.  She decided to quiz Mommy, holding the card so I couldn't see it and then asking "What letter?" I would guess several letters I knew it wasn't and then guess the correct one (I used a permanent marker to write the letters and could see just enough through the back of the card to cheat a little ;).  She would tell me no or yes and when I gave the correct letter, she told me the sound.  We did this with all the letters in the word and then she laid them out again in the correct order to spell it.  It kept her occupied for ten minutes.

Next I read a cute book published by Scholastic called "It's Spring!", all about animals that tell each other one of the characteristics of spring until the birds wake the bears up.  It was a good segue into the second activity, which was discussing hibernation and then hiding photos of animals that hibernate around the room for her to find with her telescope and "wake up" (which she did loudly enough to wake up Littlest).  We talked about the characteristics of the animals and she learned some she hadn't known before  (like bat--I guess we need to get Stellaluna on our next library trip).

Since Littlest woke during the hibernation activity and it was close to lunch, I got them both set up in their highchairs and Miss M did a cute little finger painting activity that is outlined in the materials while I made food.  We later turned the fingerprints into bugs.  I had her use an art project she had started at the BYU Museum of Art Van Gogh to Play Dough group we had been to the day before since she had already made cute tissue paper flowers for the bugs to enjoy (and, while I love her art projects, I liked the idea of having one less piece of paper to display).  I showed her how to draw legs on one of the bugs (and we practiced counting to six), then she did one and decided to decorate the bottom of the page as well before she declared the masterpiece finished.

It was a fun way to usher in a new season.

Little Pluto

I had planned to combine Pluto and Venus today but the Pluto activities were so fun that we pretty much did just those.

We played Space Lotto, which the kids seemed to really enjoy.  They took turns choosing a card, identifying it and practicing the /s/ sound if there was one.  We also worked on same/different and looking at details (Does this card have one star? How many stars are in this box? Are they the same?).  It felt like I was doing a language lesson as a speech-language pathologist again.

Another favorite activity was the sphere sequencing activity.  We have this fun nesting ball toy from my nephew that was just perfect.  I scattered them around the room and then we ordered them from biggest to smallest, talked about which one would be Pluto and then practicing spinning them and saying the /s/ sound.

For their craft, they did the astronaut frames.  For the most part they scribbled and drew circles but developmentally that's just fine.  They still enjoyed it.

At the end of class the kiddos were a little wound up so we turned on the Dance N Beats video and they danced to "Little Pluto" and "Spinning Earth".

Mother Goose Time is so awesome that they also provide materials for "bonus" days during the month.  This month they sent ideas for St. Patrick's Day and for the first day of spring (this Saturday).  I just love how I am provided will all this great little ways to interact with my littles because I confess that I've been guilty of just getting out the iPad when my brain was tired and I couldn't think of anything to keep her entertained.  This way I get to interact with her as much as I want but she's also able to do a lot of the things on her own after I get her started.  At the end of the day, I'm feeling pretty good about my mom time.

St. Patrick's Day

I'm not usually a big celebrator of St. Patrick's Day (I had to scrounge for green clothes for everyone) but I thought it would be fun to do a little craft with Miss M that also worked on fine motor skills.

After scouring Pinterest for a few minutes, I cobbled together this rainbow pasta necklace craft from a few different sites.  Miss M had fun holding the bags for me and we counting 15 penne pasta noodles into each one, then added 3/4 teaspoon of vinegar and 5 drops of food coloring to each bag.  I sealed the bags and let Miss M and Littlest moosh them up until the pasta was well covered.  Then I dumped them onto a piece of parchment paper and spread them out so they could dry.  It took about an hour until they were ready to use.

I used a baby weight/sport weight yarn for stringing because it's a little thinner than your typical crocheting yarn.  I taped one end down on the counter to keep the pasta from falling off (I would have had to tie about 20 knots to get one big enough to keep them on), then tightly wrapped tape around two inches of the other end to make a "needle" that she could just slide through the pasta and pull out the other side.

It took a little practice and help from me on the first one (we also practiced patterning on this one) but she did the second one completely on her own (I even let her put the colors on in whatever order she wanted, which is hard for me since I like symmetry) and we did the third one together (she was getting bored by that time).  Then she wore them for the next hour as she danced, zoomed and played before nap.

Littlest liked shaking the necklaces and the vinegar coating on them made her decide to keep them out of her mouth, which I appreciated.

Mercury and Mars

We had another fun day with our Mother Goose Time program.  Before her friends arrived, Miss M and I warmed up for the day with some Dance N Beats routines.  I really love the Red Dust routine, it's a great upper body stretch and I feel good after doing it.  Miss M is getting the choreography down pretty well, too, and always asks to do it again.

We used our telescopes from last week to look for the letters /r/ and /s/, the number 7 and star shapes. We used the spinner and moon manipulative to practice counting and seeing if they could figure out the best way to arrange the small moons on the big one to help it balance.  This was a popular game.


For fine motor and writing skills, we made Mercury wands with hot and cold sides that can be used to play a version of "Red light, green light" and we worked on our journals.  Due to their ages, I modified this activity a bit.  We pointed out the R's at the bottom of the page but didn't push them to trace (they tried for a second but decided coloring was easier).  We did try to work on drawing circles, looking for /r/ in the word Mercury and completing a sentence through dictation ("Mercury is hot. Mercury is cold at night").

We worked on more counting as we used blocks to build a tall mountain like those found on Mars.  We managed to get up to 50 before it became too unstable to continue.  We also used this as an opportunity to talk about tall and short as each child built their own section and added it to the main mountain.

While the kiddos ate their snack, I read this month's book "Up in Space."  It was included in the curriculum box and is a fun rhyming book that works on counting while giving simple facts about each planet (with a nod to Pluto).

We didn't have time to do the UFO craft as a group so Miss M did it by herself while I tended to Littlest (who napped through the whole class, making me one happy mama since she pretty much has not napped at all since Friday).  I put the glue around the edges and she decided what gems and sparkles she wanted and where to put them.

I am really happy with how today turned out and excited for Wednesday.

Stargazing Aliens

We had another great class today.  We did the Astronomer and Earth units and the kids had a blast.  We made decorated telescopes and then looked around the room for stars (each child was supposed to look for a certain number but they were having too much fun finding all of them to stop).  We also looked for yellow stars only since we introduced that color in circle time.

We talked about how the earth spins and one rotation is a day and one orbit around the sun is a year.  They really enjoyed orbiting the cutest sun ever (Littlest liked being in the middle of everything) and we even tried having them spin while they did it but everyone (including the mommas) got dizzy pretty fast.

The alien headbands were a fun craft that Miss M decided made good headwear for dinnertime too.  We counted out the eyes and then headed back to the living room for some patterning with our foam stars.  We tried a few patterns but the ABAB pattern seems to be about the right level for them right now.

Have I said lately how much I love this program?  The activities are so much fun and even just having the display materials up on the wall invites so much investigation and incidental learning.  Miss M loves to count the days on the calendar over and over again and the world map provides lots of opportunities to learn the names of  animals and places and geographical terms.  Littlest has found a great fine and gross motor skill center in it, as well; she loves taking out the letter flowers and pulling them off their stems or pulling herself up to her knees in order to get a good grasp on the theme poster so she can take it down

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The Sun and Moon

I am choosing to combine days since we only meet twice a week so today we learned about the sun and the moon.  At calendar time, we introduced the letter S, looked for it on our materials for the day and practiced saying it.  We also introduced the number 7 and practiced counting the moons in the super fun Balancing Moon manipulative set that came with our curriculum.

The kids had fun making the moon rocks (everyone choose to make a large rock instead of multiple small ones) and eating their moon snacks.  I chose to use Ritz crackers, peanut butter and raisins instead of the rice cakes, cream cheese and bananas because I know Miss M would maybe eat one bite of a rice cake and that would be it.  We talked about how the raisins made the crackers bumpy like the moon.

We also started our journals today, what a fun little book that will be to send home at the end of the month.  These kiddos are just turned 3, almost 3 and barely 2 so we are not working on actual letter formation but the coloring and scribbling they do in their books is a great precursor to writing.  I still pointed out the letter S at the bottom of their page as they drew swirly circles in red, orange, yellow and pink.

I just love this program!  There are so many fun activities and they can be modified very easily to fit the needs and interests of the kids in the moment.  For example, the Moon Grab activity turned out to be a little hard for them so instead of rolling them onto the card and counting up to 7, we rolled the dice and had them find moons that matched the same colors.  You could easily have them count all the moons in that color to get more math in.  At this point in the morning, they were all more interested in building with them, which was fine.  We pointed out the different sizes and let them play as they wished.

I am excited for Wednesday, when we do Astronomy and the planet Earth together.

Day One

We had our first group class on the 4th and while it was a little crazy, it was a lot of fun.  Next week should be easier now that I am using poster putty instead of the tape that kept falling down and everything is in a more permanent spot.

Miss M had her two good friends and mom join us.  We had calendar time and introduced the topic of stars.  Everyone liked getting take turns putting numbers or weather pictures up.  We spent some time looking at the theme poster and naming what we saw there.

The art project was a big hit, too (especially the glitter part).  I wrote their initials on the star and they traced with the glue, which seemed to work well for their age group.

While our star wands were drying, we talked about star sizes and colors, then they used flashlights to locate stars taped around the room and we sorted them by color while describing if they were small, medium or large (thanks to LeapFrog Shapeville Park, this was a concept all three already knew and could sing the little jingle).  We also counted them and found that the blue star group was the smallest group.

Due to technical difficulties, I wasn't able to use any of the music during this class but hopefully that will get sorted out this weekend.  I think it will help with rounding them up for circle and has a transition between activities.

All in all, I think it went well and I am excited to do it again on Monday.

Day Two

I know what you're thinking, what happened to Day 1?  My sweet husband took photos for me since it was my first day with the little learners and I wasn't sure I could coordinate talking and picture taking but we have not had a chance to get those off his phone so I will start with what I did alone with Miss M today and catch you up on the very fun but kind of crazy first day we had yesterday when I get the photos.

Since I am just doing the group class twice a week and there are so many fun topics and activities in this month's theme, I decided to keep doing this with Miss M on the days her friends are not here but we are going to do some of them out of order (I plan to give the craft project and ideas to the other kiddos to do at home on their days off).  We will also be combining days because we only have six more class days in March (we are going on vacation in a week).  We will be doing Days 2 and 3 on Monday.  Today we did Day 5: Clouds.

To be honest, Miss M was not in much of a mood to do school after we finished the calendar, although Littlest was completely absorbed in studying the theme poster before she noticed the number line was back up and proceeded to tear it down again.  At that point I decided they both needed to let out some energy so we popped in the Dance N Beats DVD and all got some exercise.  I compare it to Zumba for kids and the rhythmically challenged (that would be me).  I loved that I could actually follow the simple dance moves.  Miss M watched each dance a couple of times before joining in and Littlest loved when I moved her arms and legs for her to the beat (as much as I can keep a beat) or just held her while I "danced".  It was a fun little break.

After I put Littlest down for her morning nap (cheers that she still takes two naps a day!), Miss M and I tried some more school.  I showed her pictures in the book "Clouds" by Anne Rockwell and the art materials for the day.  She was instantly attracted to the googly eyes and all she wanted to do was play with them.  I wanted her to do a little more academic activity so we compromised and I modified the Cloud Letters activity a bit to include gluing.  She will do almost anything if she gets to glue.  Since she is only two, we are working on "writing" just her first initial right now.  I wrote a big M on an index card, we traced it with glue and then she stuck some small pompoms I had on it to make a "cloud letter" that we can display on the refrigerator.  We also brought some math into the activity by counting how many pompoms it took to cover the letter M and comparing their size to the bigger cottonballs.

I also modified the Pet Cloud art project in order to keep her working with me a little longer.  We counted cottonballs, pulled them into circles, squares and rectangles and then squiggled glue onto a paper plate and counted how many cottonballs we need to cover all the glue.  We added the googly eyes (and some spilled glitter that was still on the table from yesterday's art project) and that was it.  She took the rest of the googly eyes and was playing on her table while I wrote down some notes for the other kiddos.  When I turned back around, she had separated them into two equal lines so we talked about how they had the same number, then pushed one into a different line and talked about more and less briefly (very briefly because she wanted to play, not talk).  From there it evolved into a fun little fine motor game of table hockey.  She had fun trying to flick the eye from her side of the table to mine using one finger, four fingers, her right and left hands and the side of her finger and tip of her finger.

Even though she wasn't as in to it today as yesterday (I am pretty sure she woke up early and played in her crib for a couple hours this morning so she was tired), we still had a satisfying twenty minutes of "school" using our fun MGT activities.

Beyond Math--MGT Focus Topic

We (the Mother Goose Time bloggers) have been asked to take note on how math can be and is incorporated into day to day learning.  Math is actually a much wider subject than most people think.  It includes measuring, identifying patterns, sorting by characteristics like size and color, shapes, number concepts like one to one correspondence, etc...When I worked as a speech language pathologist, I worked on a lot of these exact same things with my students with language impairments so I am used to identifying moments throughout the day when I can do some incidental teaching outside "class time".

One of my favorite ways to do this is with cooking.  Miss M loves to help me "do baker stuff" as she says.  When she sees me pulling out the KitchenAid, she runs over to the pantry for her little apron and tries to pull a chair over to the counter so she can help.  I talk to her about how much we need of each ingredient, we discuss the size of the measuring cups and spoons in relation to the others and I will purposely use smaller ones so we have to count more scoops (ex. I will use a 1/4 cup instead of the 1 cup measure for 2 cups of flour).  We talk about the colors and textures of the ingredients, smell them (carefully in the case of spices--no one wants a nose full of cinnamon), count how many cookies or loaves of pumpkin bread we are baking and talk about how long it will take for them to be done.  We also talk about the shapes of the containers and how some spoons are long and others are short, then decide which one would be better for mixing or scooping.

That is just one way I bring math into our day.  She isn't ready to sit down and do addition or subtraction just yet but if I give her four cookies after lunch (don't worry, they're the little mini ones) and she eats one, we can talk about how many she has left.  When she wants stuffed animals in her bed, we talk about how the little ones will be easier to sleep with than her big bear that takes up half the crib.  A few weeks ago while we were at a restaurant I noticed her trying to bend her straw into a triangle and rectangle so I helped her to do it and we talked about what shapes she saw at the table.  She also has these blocks that she loves to use to build castles.  Sometimes she'll try and use the pillars on their sides or put something on top of the cone so we talk about their shapes and how some of them are flat and can stack and some aren't.  All it takes is a little awareness and you will be seeing math all over your house and life.

Getting Organized

I am counting down until my first official Mother Goose Time class with Miss M and her friends (it's on Wednesday).  I have been busily going through the teacher manual, organizing the materials and finding a spot for our circle time activities.

I have a confession; when I worked in the schools, I loved the beginning of the school year because it meant trying out new organizational methods, creating forms and most importantly, laminating.  There is something so magical about the smooth feel of a laminated piece of paper.  That is why I asked for one this Christmas, before I even knew about Mother Goose Time.  My husband wisely purchased it off my Amazon list and I broke it out for the first time on Saturday.  I laminated everything that could possibly and reasonably be laminated from that little box with a school bus on it.  I even laminated the items that will only be used for this month (and my obsession proved useful when Littlest tore half the circle time decor down in less than two seconds and Miss M insisted on moving around the date cards half a dozen times).

So, my first piece of advice would be to laminate those parts of the welcome kit and monthly box that you know will receive lots of child attention.  I had to have a few of the pieces (like the calendar, map and theme poster) done at our local UPS store but it was not expensive and these are things that will be used over and over again for quite awhile.  If you plan on doing several months/full year of curriculum, I would recommend investing in a laminator.  Mine is Scotch brand and only about $30.

   

After laminating, I assembled the number line, birdhouse and weather and sight word baskets. I couldn't figure out how to laminate those and have the pocket still work but they are printed on nice card stock with a glossy/semi-laminate finish and should hold up pretty well as long as the kiddos don't maul them too much.

If I had my dream house, there would be a gorgeous, Pinterest-worthy preschool room with room for a circle time rug, investigation stations, art center, snack table from Pottery Barn Kid, the whole she-bang.  I don't so for now the circle time area is in a corner of my living room and pretty much everything else will take place at a hand-me-down Little Tikes table in the kitchen and that's just fine.

Right now I am experimenting with a binder and page protectors to house the remaining teacher tool and welcome kit materials as well as the teacher guide and planning journal (which are conveniently sized to slide right into a page protector).  I may go to more of a file box system in the future (I see it working more easily for storing leftover daily materials) but for now I had a couple empty binders and we will see how they work.  The materials for each lesson are still in their bags, in the shipping box, which works perfectly.

I've spent a couple hours looking through the teacher handbook and attempting to work up the courage to write in the planning journal.  I don't like writing in pencil but hate when I make a mistake in pen in something that's so pristine and new.  I will probably end up using sticky notes, to be completely honest.

Miss M got interested in what I was doing as I set up the calendar area so we went ahead and had a little tiny circle time.  I made (and laminated) three extra tabs that say TODAY, YESTERDAY and TOMORROW to put over the corresponding days so we can work on that concept as well as date and month.  She had a lot of fun with the weather icons and moved the cloud around several times before she was happy with it.

That's it for getting organized.  Mother Goose Time makes it really easy with their guides and pamphlets.  I can't wait to dive into the lessons on Wednesday, so stay tuned.