Sahara Desert

We learned about the Sahara desert this week.  We started off by exploring our world map and identifying all the continents, then I showed them where Africa was and told them we would be learning about a desert there called the Sahara.

We read the story from our day bag and the girls insisted on making their own boat when it talked about the men taking a boat to Africa.  They walked and ran around as the story indicated, acting out the journey of the main characters.  They did this unprompted by me, which was fun to see.  It was a good reminder to me not be overly structured and allow them to move around during lessons to see what they come up with on their own.  More often that not, they are actually listening to me and are inspired in their next activities, not simply getting bored and wandering off.

I hung the theme poster on the wall in the kitchen so they could see it as we made our canteens, then they took off to pretend they were trekking across the desert for a while.

I brought them back to the table after a little while to play a game I modified from the teacher guide.  In the guide, it recommended having them blow sand off the first letter of their name but since they are a little more advanced than that, I used all the letters they had in common in their names and they pretended to be sandstorms, blowing salt off the letters and identifying them.  It helped that during breakfast I let my girls watch an episode of Diego where he is in the desert in Egypt; it introduced the concept of sandstorms, needing water and ways to protect themselves in the desert, such as wearing long clothes that cover their skin.

The older girls ended the school day playing the oasis game and practicing basics addition and subtraction.  Littlest had decided to leave the group at this point to have some alone time in the play kitchen before snack.  During snack, I found a YouTube video of animals that live in the desert, which they seemed to enjoy and was a good way to close our activities.  I know some parents have some really strong opinions about screen time but I have found that in controlled situations, it is a real benefit in our family.


Our next class is going to be on the Great Pyramid, which sounds like a lot of fun to me.

The Routine of Things

Every month we get emailed a focus topic for the month to keep in mind as we do our preschool lessons.  This month the topic is Routines and I got a little excited.  Routine and schedule is something I have struggled with in the past but when Miss M came along, I quickly learned how much easier life can be if you have a routine.

I have been doing a lot of reading on homeschooling lately and finally learned the difference between a routine and a schedule.  A routine means you do the same things in the same order, a schedule is when you assign specific times and durations to those activities.  Schedules are harder for me, especially with little children who can't tell time and don't really care that I've allotted only 15 minutes for play dough.  Routines are a much better way for us organize our days because they leave room to be flexible when necessary but are still predictable enough that the girls know what is coming next.  When I worked with children in special education preschools, this predictability was very important; it gave them a sense of safety and control over their environment and helped promote more positive behaviors.  I have definitely noticed that with my girls; they can handle a day or two when we are quite off our routine but after a little while I notice they start having more tantrums and fight with each other more frequently.  As much as possible, we try to keep the same basic routines even when we are on vacation (breakfast/getting dressed, nap time and bedtime).

I thought I'd share our daily routine and how I help them transition from activity to activity throughout the day.

Morning Routine
Thanks to Daniel Tiger, we have a little song we sing to help us get going in the mornings.
1.  Clothes On:  I usually pick Miss M's pants but give her a choice of tops that are weather appropriate (and go with the pants...).
2.  Eat Breakfast:  I generally give them a choice between two menus; they are both in the unpredictably picky toddler stage and I find it less frustrating if I give them some control so they actually eat what I give them rather than have them reject what I have prepared because all of sudden it is "yucky".
3.  Brush Teeth:  This is Littlest's favorite part of our morning routine.  I use Tom's of Maine toothpaste so it doesn't matter if they swallow it.  We do fluoride tablets in the evening.
4.  Put On [Slippers]:  The song has you putting on shoes but we don't wear shoes in the house so we substitute slippers, especially since my kitchen floor is slick and cold.
5.  And Off to School!:  For us, this means getting our chairs set up in the living room and waiting for our friend to join us for circle time.

School Routine
1.  Circle Time:  Lately I have been playing the Circle Time song from the CD to get the girls to come sit down since they generally get pretty excited and start running around when our friend comes.  Then we talk about the weather, do calendar time, introduce or review our concept of the day and sing the daily song from the song cards.  When we sing the song, it is a cue for them that we will be moving to a new activity when it is over.  Great, built-in transition.
2.  Art Activity:  I like to do the art projects near the beginning of the time in case it is something that requires drying time.
3.  Active Game:  After sitting for a few minutes, we do the most active, movement oriented activity in the manual next to get the wiggles out.
4.  Other Activities:  We do 1-2 more of the activities in the most appropriate setting (living room rug or sitting at their table in the kitchen) given the instructions.
5.  Free play:  I let them have free rein for a few minutes in the play area while I prepare snack.
6.  Snack time:  They love snack and I will often find a program on YouTube that goes along with our subject of the day.
7.  Say Goodbye:  Our friend comes for an hour and then we say goodbye until next time.  It's not elaborate but I do like make sure Miss M acknowledges that she is leaving.

After school is over, they have free time for an hour.  I will often leave out some of the favorite games of the month for them to use on their own, they will color, play with play dough or just play with their toys.  I use this time to clean up after class and work on household chores.  Then we have lunch and they go down for naps from 1:30-4.  When they wake up we will Skype with our out-of-state family a couple times a week or I sit and play with them for 30-45 minutes.  Then it is time for free play while I work on dinner.  After dinner, it's time for the bedtime routine.

Bedtime Routine
1.  Wash Up:  This could mean a bath or just a general wipe down.  It's very dry here and they don't get that dirty most of the time so we keep baths down to 2-3 times a week or as needed.
2.  Story Time:  We read a few books together as a family every night while the girls drink their nighttime milk (they are both on the skinny side and I like to send them to sleep full).
3.  Brush Teeth:  Pretty self-explanatory.  I let them do it on their own for a minute and then they know it's my turn and have gotten quite good about laying down and letting me brush.
4.  Prayers:  We say prayers together every night, give hugs and kisses and one parent takes a girl in their individual room.  Miss M has wanted to look at books for 10-15 minutes in her bed and Littlest still enjoys being cuddled in her chair with a book or two on her own.
5.  Bedtime:  Lights out, hopefully by 8 so my husband and I have a little time on together before collapsing into bed and starting all over again.

Transitions
For activities that don't have a natural transition built in to them, I use verbal cues that start more general and then get more specific as we get closer to the actual transition.  For example, if we are at the library and I want to prepare them for the transition of leaving, it would look like this:

"Ok, we have about ten minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."
I know they don't have a clear idea of how long ten minutes is but it lets them know that this activity will end at some point so we can do something else.

"You have five more minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."
I like to do a midway warning to remind them and I try to use the same wording so they don't have to process a different message and determine if it meant the same thing as what I told them at first.

"You have three more minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."  At this point I also start helping them put away toys they got out and are not actively using.

"I'm setting my phone, when it beeps it is time to go home and get ready for lunch."  I will give this warning 1-2 minutes before I want to leave.  Using my phone alarm has been very effective.  As soon as Miss M hears it, she will generally end her activity without argument (I'd say 8 out of 10 times).  Littlest is getting better at this as well; it also helps that she tends to copy what Miss M is doing so she follows her cues.

To sum up, I like to set an expectation at the beginning of the activity, give a midway warning and then an imminent warning accompanied by setting my phone alarm, which acts as the actual signal that the activity is over.  Sometimes I will use a cue from Daniel Tiger during the imminent warning--"Choose one more thing to do, and then it's time to go."  This also works pretty well, especially for Miss M.

We do school Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes on Thursday or Friday.  I tend to run errands on Tuesdays so we skip the school routine and usually get back in time for some free play before lunch.  It isn't perfect but for the most part it works and makes my life much easier.

Cookies!

The theme for the day was cookies and it provided lots of fun learning experiences as well as a yummy snack.  The focus topic this month is math and there were lots of different ways of incorporating it in this lesson.

We had circle time and practiced counting the days of the month and predicting what that next picture in our calendar pattern would be the next day.  After that, I pulled out Miss M's wooden Melissa and Doug cookie set (it's actually a mixture of two sets that she got for her birthday) and we used it to sing and count along to the song of the day, a reboot of "One Potato, Two Potato".  Miss M actually made up her own version of this song using the cookies a week or so ago.

I brought out the shape manipulatives and they really had a good time with these.  We used the pattern cards in the last to see if they could duplicate the designs.  This was actually a little more difficult than I expected, so I think I will make up a few more examples and have them practice some more.  We tried a little tracing and I realized that I needed to teach them how to hold the shape with one hand use the pencil with the other.  This took a little more coordination than they have at the moment but they tried and that counts.  Mostly they wanted to stack the shapes into tall towers so we counted them and did a little sorting by color and shape.  Next time I think we will talk about how many sides they have and how they are the same and different.

We tried the cookie craft but they were not interesting in making matching pairs or even putting very many of them on the plate.  They liked adding the sticky dots and making designs with them but this activity was over pretty quickly.

I happened to have  a few unfrosted sugar cookies left over from a neighbor activity so I mixed up some quick powder sugar glaze while they decorated their paper cookies.  I gave them each a little container with the white frosting and turned it into a little lesson on color mixing.  Miss M wanted orange and Littlest's favorite color seems to be purple so we added food coloring and they got to mix to discover the new color before frosting their cookie and having snack.  This was a popular activity.  :)

At the end I brought out the play dough I made last week and we had fun adding nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to it so it really smelled like Christmas.  All three had a great time strengthening their hands by patting out the dough and improving their fine motor with the beads.  They played for fifteen minutes, cutting out their own play dough cookies and decorating them, plus my kitchen smelled nice when they were done.

I was disappointed that my printer wasn't communicating well with my computer so we couldn't do the cookie jar activity with the online printable but I am hoping to do it another time.  It is meant for a handwriting activity but since my kids are still a little young for writing, I've got an idea to make it a shape matching game.  Print two copies, one on card stock if you can, and color them (you could have the kids color them if you wanted).  Laminate and tape a ziplock bag onto the back of the card stock jar.  Cut out the shapes from the other one and put them in the bag.  The children take turns pulling a "cookie" out of the jar and matching it to the front.  Another variation would be to print 3-5 copies of the jar.  Color the master jar and one other jar exactly the same and then color the other shapes differently from these (so the master circle is blue, there is another blue circle, a yellow one and a red one in the bag).  This way you can work on same/different (these are both circles but this one is green and the other is blue) and sorting (let's put all the green shapes together).  I hope that makes sense.

An InLinkz Link-up

Moving with Mother Goose Time

I'll admit it, I'm a homebody.  Especially when the weather is too hot or cold or if I'm not feeling well.  That's hard with kids because I feel the need to give them the opportunity to be out and about and moving around so I push myself to do things like go to story time at the library, play at the park or go to one of the various child-friendly museums in the area.  However, there are times when we just need to stay home and I have to find ways to keep the active.

My girls are natural movers so just letting them run from toy to toy in our play area takes care of a lot of that but sometimes we need ideas.  It's one of the reasons I adore the Dance N Beats DVDs from Mother Goose Time.  They are fun, my girls like the music and I find them to be a pretty good work out for me, too.  It's easy to pop in a disc while I get lunch or dinner together and they are ready for a rest after that and go down to sleep pretty easily (double bonus).

The curriculum itself has a lot of opportunities for kids to move around.  A lot of the Circle Time songs involve hand or whole body movement.  We sang about airplanes this week and did the described movements from the Teacher's Guide and then Miss M made up a verse and ran around the living room for about five minutes doing her own variations on the movements.  I loved the linguistic creativity and exercise she gave herself with just a little prompt from what we did first.

Writing in shaving cream activity
from our recent MGT lesson.  She
didn't love the feel of this but other
kids really like it.

I also want to help foster fine motor skills in my girls.  I've recently read an article indicating that children are entering kindergarten with lower fine motor skills, which hampers their development of handwriting skills.  A doctoral dissertation I perused indicated that there is a correlation between poor handwriting skills (the ability to form letters legibly and quickly) and poor writing skills (the ability to communicate effectively in written form).  We have an epidemic of poor writers in our country (just check out Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site inhabited by the current "young" generation if you don't believe me).

I don't want my girls to end up in that population if I can help it so in addition to building language skills, we work with a lot of (supervised) Lego play, blocks, stickers, beads and coloring with varying thicknesses of pencils, crayons and markers in order to build those hand and lower arm muscles.  JoAnn's has seasonal $1 crafts that come with their own little marker set that my girls love (and they come off my little Ikea table with just a diaper wipe).  The crafts included in our Mother Goose Time curriculum are specifically created to support this goal and we always make a point to do them even if that's the only activity we get to that day.   One of my girls' favorite activities is to thread beads onto pipe cleaners (it's easier for them to handle the pipe cleaner, which stays straight, rather than a string that needs more support so they can concentrate on one skill at a time).  I bought a bag of glow in the dark beads for $1.50 and a pack of pipe cleaners for $1 at my least favorite global chain store that I sometimes go to out of the sheer need for convenience but would rather not name.  We use them all the time.  When they are done, the beads go back in the bag and we reuse the pipe cleaners as well.

Please don't misread this and think I'm trying to be super mom.  Probably the biggest lesson I learned from my dad growing up was to find balance in life.  Real life is not well reflected on Pinterest or Facebook.  We definitely do our share of TV watching and iPad playing so Mommy has a chance to get housework done faster than it gets undone.  Miss M has one hairstyle because I don't have the time to research more or the energy to pin her down to create them.  My goal as a mother is to help my children develop into well rounded individuals physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and I'm thankful for the ideas and resources I have found to help me do that

.

An InLinkz Link-up

Apples and Cherries

I'll admit it, this was a tough day at preschool for me.  I have been under the weather and the girls have been a little on the cranky side.  Miss M insisted on wearing her super hero fairy princess costume for circle time, which is not a big deal in general but it was distracting for her.  I decided not to push her to take it off or to even sit at circle time because I knew she'd push back and I was not in a mental frame to respond appropriately.  Littlest enjoyed getting the opportunity to help with the calendar and weather icons (normally under the jurisdiction of the older girls).  She still likes to try and rip everything possible off my display board so I spent a few minutes after school with my hot glue gun making that a much harder process for the future.

We learned "Way Up High in the Apple Tree" and the associated body movements, which all three really liked so we sang it half a dozen times.  They also loved loved loved the Johnny Appleseed book we got in our materials this month.  I liked that there was a predictable pattern to the story, making it easy for them to tell it with me after a few pages.


The Johnny Appleseed puppet was a huge success.  I really liked this craft because it was a great blend of punch and paste (the pieces all came pre-punched so I didn't have to cut them out) and creative space.  The girls were able to draw Johnny's facial features and color his shirt however they wanted to but the other pieces were done for them so it didn't take forever to finish and everything was recognizable as a particular piece of clothing.  If I'd been more with it, this would have been a great craft to help teach some following directions/language skills.  As it was, I had barely finished helping them tape their puppets to the craft stick when the two oldest began a great conversation using very appropriate social language and even making up their own song.  It made this speech therapist's heart smile.  Puppets are a great way to help kids develop conversational skills as well as teach vocabulary.  I can see a Pinterest search for easy puppet crafts in my future.

Miss M took off on her own for a bit so Littlest and our friend worked on patterning.  Littlest just likes to line things up right now and point to them while I name them.  When Miss M rejoined us, we worked on the cherry tree craft (I traced their arms, rather than paint them because I was not in a mood to chase anyone down to clean them up before paint got everywhere).  We had a yummy snack of popcorn and apple slices while we watched Disney's "Johnny Appleseed" cartoon on YouTube.  This was followed by "The Ugly Duckling", giving me just enough time to clean up in peace.

It was a bit of a tiring day for me but I always feel like I've done something worthwhile with the girls when we do a lesson or two, even if the rest of the day isn't spent quite so productively.

Professionalism at Home

This month, we as Mother Goose Time bloggers, have been asked to think about professionalism in regards to how it applies to us personally.  Being a homeschool mom, I have a slightly different take on it than a childcare provider or preschool teacher using this curriculum.  For me, I bring professionalism into our home preschool in two ways:  being prepared and understanding the learning process at different age levels.

Being prepared is huge and it can be difficult at times.  It is tempting to just fly by the seat of my pants during lessons, opening the lesson book up to a page and just picking something.  However, I find when I take the time to read through the activities and gather my materials ahead of time, everything goes so much more smoothly.  Miss M is 2.5 and Littlest just turned 1; neither has a very long attention span at this point so if I want to keep their attention, I have to be prepared.  If I look down to read about the activity or go digging through the closet for the materials, they are off on their own adventures and bringing them back to school can be a fight.  That is not what I want for them or myself; I want them to want to engage in the activities so I need to have my stuff together ahead of time.

I find that reading through the lesson book the night before generally works pretty well, although ideally I'd like to be about a week ahead so I can purchase any materials I don't already have at home (this isn't very common since most of the materials are either provided or quite common).  During breakfast I gather all the materials we will need for my chosen activities and prep our circle time area.  After the girls are done with breakfast, they play while I clean up the kitchen (I can't concentrate with dirty trays and dishes sitting on the counter) and I make sure I give them several warnings that we will be having school when I'm done.  If they are in the middle of an imaginary scene when I finish, I let them play through it and then find that they willingly come into the living room for school.

Understanding child development and the learning process helps me know how much to present, what to expect of them and when I should back off and just let them play.  A lot of this information I learned in my undergraduate and graduate studies in speech language pathology and while working in the schools.  My husband and I took a child development/parenting class when I was expecting Miss and I try to read up on current studies.  A lot of it comes from Baby Center and similar sites right now because that's all the time I have but keeping current and following best practices reduces frustration on everyone's part.  I am working my way through "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise and it has been quite helpful.  I'm not going to expect either girl to sit for ten minutes in a chair and practice copying the alphabet.  I can expect them to practice scribbling for a few minutes (maybe longer if I have lots of different supplies to choose from) and maybe work on circles and lines briefly, the precursors to writing.

Above all, I try to stay sensitive to their moods and their needs as really little children.  I know they will learn to read one day but they will never get to be little children again.  The main goal is to build a strong relationship with them, let them play and explore and present information that they may or may not absorb in that moment but will some day.

Here are some pictures from school this past Tuesday.  I let Miss M dictate the length of each activity based on her interest in it and it went really, really well.  Much better than when I decide we are ready to move to another activity.

This "washing" activity was very popular with both girls.  I took our dry erase crayons (if you want to get some, back to school sales are the best time to do that and they are starting now/soon) and wrote numbers on a page protector, then named a number and Miss M got to "wash" it off.  Littlest showed interest in it so I did the same for her but actually wrote her name on a piece of laminated paper.  She had a more difficult time cleaning it off (she wasn't push hard enough) and soon decided shredded the tissue was more fun so Miss M took over and named all the letters as she wiped them off.  I think this could be a fun and easy road trip activity.

Next we did a little sorting activity.  They were supposed to use the ladle to fish out a shape and then we'd talk about what it was.  That lasted two turns before they dumped everything on the carpet so instead of pushing the "rules" of the game, we adapted.  I picked a shape and then Miss M found all the shapes that were the same and the three of us put them in my slipper (it was handy and Littlest loves to put items into things).  Then we counted how many we had and started with a new shape.  They were both very engaged in the activity for over five minutes, until we finished sorting them all.

We also read the "I Wash" book that came with our materials.  I got through it one time before it was taken away so Miss M could read it "all herself", which was fine with me.

Lastly, we did a little mixing experiment with milk, food coloring and dish soap.  Unfortunately all of my food coloring was dried up except blue (a lesson in not being as prepared as I should have been) but Miss M didn't seem to mind.  She got too excited both times and would just stick the q-tip with dish soap right in the blue instead of in the middle the bowl like you were "supposed to" but we still had a fun time watching the dye scatter through the milk.  She loved mixing it thoroughly but I had to put a stop to it when it became a hand printing session on the table and floor.

So that's what being a "professional" homeschool mom looks like to me.

The Benefit of Theme Based Learning

Just because she's cute.  She enjoyed eating
cupcakes for Littlest's birthday.

I think it's obvious that I am a fan of Mother Goose Time.  A big reason is because of the theme-based monthly units.  It's great for me because as I plan library and "field" trips or extension activities, I can do it all at once and be done for the month rather than planning something new for each week/day.  I also think it makes it easier for the children to absorb new information when it is placed in a context that has become familiar, rather than adding a new theme daily or weekly on top of the academic skills they are trying to learn.  This is especially helpful when working with children who may have language or academic delays.  Teaching the background theme information at the beginning and then using it to house the new skills you are introducing is easier for them than having to constantly learn all new background information and skills on a daily/weekly basis, which can lead to frustration and fatigue.

Additionally, the themes are universal enough that children will encounter them in everyday life, giving them background knowledge they can apply and expand on their own.  This month's theme, ABC House, is a particularly good example since everyone lives somewhere and most children have experience with the various rooms and activities that are done in them.  Miss M saw a book about space in a store recently, remembered our theme from March and talked about how she saw stars and planets on the cover.  Then she started singing "Red, Red Dust" and doing her favorite dance from the DVD.

Themes are also a fun way to practice a variety of skills at one time.  For example, when we made the paper bag houses on Monday, Miss M was able to practice identifying colors when she selected which paper to use, naming shapes (the doors and windows), practicing prepositions (bottom and top), fine motor (coloring and cutting) and language skills as we talked about the house we lived in and all the rooms we use.  We could also relate it back to information previously presented in lessons about houses/places we live.

I highly recommend using themes to teach children, especially young ones whose language skills are developing at a rapid rate.  I like the month-long format employed by Mother Goose Time but would recommend a minimum of two weeks so they have time to learn the background information.  Pinterest has a lot of fabulous ideas that you can put together yourself, or you can save yourself the time and effort and give MGT a try. ;)

Garden Art

I am really enjoying our gardening theme this month and all the fun activities that have been provided  for us.

We have been able to do a lot of fun art projects this week.  I love art as a means of teaching concepts and engaging children in learning.  When I worked as a speech language pathologist, I found the children were more willing to work when they got to do something fun, such as an art project.  Art is also a great way to teach language and math concepts such as size and color, ordinals (like first, second, last) and reinforce vocabulary.  You can also work on narrative skills as you have a child tell you (or another family member) how they created their masterpiece, what they did first, what materials they used and why they them.  You can use art to retell a story you have read (just search Pinterest for art projects related to children's books) or to reinforce concepts you have taught, like we have been doing with our Mother Goose Time projects.

For Mother's Day, they included a Bonus Day lesson plan that had the materials (minus paint) for an adorable art project that I know I will be keeping for years to come.  We talked about how plants have stems, looked at some of the plants in my yard and then made this cute handprint art.  They counted out flowers for each finger and glued them on.  There is also a cute little poem included so in one project we covered math, literacy and science.

We talked more about stems and how they help move water through the plant as we did a little science project using celery stalks and colored water.  We then used cut up pieces of celery to stamp paint onto flower coloring pages as an extension of the lesson.

The other fun art project we completed this week was making these super cute sunflower headbands.  We talked about leaves, counted petals on flowers outside, talked again about seeds and how baby plants sprout from them (this was reinforced with a bean sprout experiment that is still in process on my windowsill) and had the kiddos count out sunflower seeds and arrange them however they wanted to on the flower cut out.  When it comes to art, I try really hard to let Miss M do the majority of it herself (at least as far as design--she still needs help with the construction) so she gets the experience and confidence to do things herself without the emphasis on having it look "perfect", hence the clump of seeds with no particular pattern.

Art is so much fun to do with toddlers and preschoolers, I love the conversation it stimulates and having tangible evidence of time we get to spend together.

Teaching through Music

Both of my girls love love love music (in fact, as I write this Miss M is in her crib singing "Hey Diddle Diddle" instead of napping).  I'll never forget taking Miss M to the library to see Santa at 12 months old and watching her rock out to the music from the Zumba class.  Actually, the first time I really felt her move a lot when I was pregnant was when I went to see "Rock of Ages" (she has good taste in music, too).  Littlest has developed a cute little foot tap and head bob whenever she hears a song she likes.  They both adore the Dance N Beats DVDs, as I've shared in previous posts.  Miss M will ask for her dance class several times as week and it's a great way to get her wiggles out when the weather isn't conducive to playing outside.

Music is a great way to teach academic and social concepts as well as rhythm and coordination.  Miss M has great memory and will sing whole songs to us.  We love "Daniel Tiger" in our house and the little song snippets that they use to teach various social skills.  Miss M isn't potty trained yet but she will sing the whole potty song to you, listing the appropriate steps.  We also use the "Use your words" and "When You're Feeling Frustrated" tunes a lot and they really do help her calm down and let us know what she needs so we can avoid or short circuit many tantrums.

The rhythm of music and the rhyme of the words makes it fun and easy for children to learn not only the song but the concepts behind the words.  We've been singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to Miss M since she was littler than Littlest and she has known these body parts for a very long time (and face parts) as a result, giving her an awareness of her body and an understanding of how she is like us (since we all have the same body parts).  Later we used it as an opportunity to compare and contrast her body to our cats, another important language skill.  She also knows several alphabet songs (thanks to Little Baby Bum on YouTube) and will always stop on C, J and M to tell us which member of the family's name starts with that letter.  She can count to 20 because of music as well and is learning about rhyming words, which will be very helpful later when we start working on phonics more directly.

For Circle Time, Mother Goose Time has taken familiar nursery rhyme tunes and re-written words to them that help teach a concept for each unit.  I like that the tunes are familiar because 1. it makes it easy for her to learn something when she's only learning different words and not words and music and 2. it shows her that she can play with words herself.  She made up new words for "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" last week and it was fabulous (at least, I thought so).

So far, Miss M's favorite Mother Goose Time Circle Time songs are "Big, Big, Big Blue Whale" from last month (she likes to do it in the bathtub) and "Roots Bring Food to Plants".  Both of them include actions and I think that is why they appeal a little more to her than other songs.  She is very physical and likes to move (as attested by the fact that I can't get her to sit for more than 10 seconds most of the time during class).  If your child likes to move, I'd recommend teaching him or her finger plays or whole movement songs.  YouTube is a great resource for this (although make sure you preview the songs first, I've had a few close calls...).

This is preschool, not prep school.  I want my girls to develop a love of learning, not just be able to recite lists of facts back to me at an early age so I can impress my friends on Facebook.  I am also exploring the possibility of homeschooling for future grades so it is important that I learn the ways that help my children learn best.  Music has shown to be an early and effective favorite so it is one we will continue to use, with our Mother Goose Time materials and many others available to us on the internet and through the library.

What are some of your favorite musical collections for preschool age children?

Bunnies and Eggs

Today we used the Mother Goose Time Bonus Days lesson for some Easter fun.   My parents and nephew are in town for the week and got to participate with us.  I loved the little craft where we made Easter bunnies with their handprints.  Miss M loves anything that involves in paint, although it took a little practice to figure out how to hold her fingers to get the ears right.  First, we measured their ears and compared them to each other and a few objects to see what ones were bigger, smaller or the same.  We also talked about how rabbits have really long ears (we could have talked about how they use their ears to stay cool but I didn't think their attention span would allow that).  I added a little yarn cutting activity to help her practice her scissor skills and we used pompoms for the noses instead of drawing them, which gives a  fun 3-D effect.  Overall her cousin and she had a fun time putting these together.  I'll add a photo tomorrow of the finished product.

Next we talked about eggs, which leads into our Focus Topic for the month--science!  We aren't talking about atoms or electron microscopes, just how we help our kiddos learn about the world around (and inside) them.  The easiest way to do this with children in this age-group is by putting out those things they see in their everyday lives, as opposed to setting up complicated and unconnected experiments.

For this activity I took an uncooked egg and one I had hardboiled for egg coloring and we observed their similarities and differences.  Miss M noticed that they were both white and her cousin commented that one of them was sort of speckled.  They were both proclaimed to be smooth but one was warm (having only recently been hardboiled) and the other cold (coming straight from the refrigerator).  We spun them both and noticed that the cold one did not spin very long before rocking to a stop.  We talked about how the it was uncooked and so the insides were still liquid and slowed it down.  My dad helped them crack it into a bowl so we could see how it sloshed around.  He mixed it up and then we popped it into the microwave for one minute after predicting whether or not it would still be liquid when it was done cooking.  Presto chango, it became a solid!  They poked at it and smelled it and voila, we have science.



I used the introduction of eggs to segue into egg coloring, yet another easy and fun science experiment.*  I showed them the water and the vinegar, which they smelled.  I boiled the water and as it steamed in front of them we talked about how water can be a gas, liquid and a solid (they enjoyed playing with an ice cube for a minute).  Obviously, we didn't go into a lot of detail because they are five and two but just the introduction of these concepts associated with actual experience will stick with them until they are prepared to learn in more depth.

We counted drops of food coloring, talked about the colors of the rainbow and how we can make other colors by mixing two together (we did purple).  They each colored on one egg with a crayon to do a color resist technique and colored two solid eggs.  We talked about how the longer you leave the eggs in the colored water, the darker it would get but neither could wait that long (I guess we still need to work on March's virtue--patience).

I look forward to starting our Ocean unit on Monday and finding more ways to bring up science in our every day interactions.

* Side note:  Using a whisk to hold the eggs worked brilliantly.  Thank you, Pinterest.  You've almost redeemed yourself from the homemade starch debacle on Monday. 

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.