Mother Goose Time - Discover the Desert, Pyramid, Hieroglyphics and Horse Craft

During the month of March, our Mother Goose Time topic is Discover the Desert. You can see that we have a colorful poster for every month, showing our monthly topic, each week and our daily activities. I love this web, because introducing our month this way will later help the children organize their thought for writing activities.

Monthly Topic Web, Discover the Desert

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

As you can see, our oldest daughter decided to change the main characters on the story web. She personalized it by creating illustrations of her sister and herself. She taped her illustrations over the top. I noticed they tend to like to have characters that look like themselves. As a teacher, I noticed all kids like to do this. I guess that's why they have so many types of books that have personalization options now. As soon as she finishes her work, she tends to self-direct herself, as she creates her own little projects.

 

Mother Goose Time is a preschool curriculum that can easily be differentiated to include older and younger siblings. It can also give the older children a fun, yet educational break from rigorous studies. It can be used in school or homeschool settings.

 

I spent a great deal of time searching for the best curriculum I could find, and Mother Goose Time was the best answer for our family. My preschool-age daughter loves Mother Goose Time. Even though she is going to be in Kindergarten next year, we will likely continue using Mother Goose Time as we add more reading, writing and math. We will likely get her Kindergarten curriculum through www.SetonHome.com, because that is working really well with her older sister. Mother Goose Time already has a lot of science, history, music, movement and art that can be educational for older elementary-age children. They also have an Experience God supplement that is excellent. I highly recommend it.

 

Some of our favorite crafts this month were creating pyramids with linking cubes, hieroglyphics and the horse craft... or unicorn.

Portable Bulletin Board

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

 

Here is our portable bulleting board for March. It's so nice that you can move this around and even bring it with you if you are homeschooling as you are traveling. We added a United States of America flag to ours, so we can say the Pledge of Allegiance. I think next year we may add some prayers on it, too.

 

Daily Topic Poster

Each day, we have a new daily topic poster to add onto our bulletin board.

 

Pyramid Linking Cubes

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

 

She really enjoyed using her colorful linking cubes to create pyramids. Mother Goose Time provided these linking cubes along with the beautiful photographs of the pyramid.

Hieroglyphics

This was such a fun and educational activity. Mother Goose Time provided the sand and cards with words, such as house, foot, cobra, water, mouth and arm. The girls enjoyed creating the hieroglyphics. Then, they naturally decided to start creating their own hieroglyphics.

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

Creating hieroglyphics in the sand was really fun for the girls. This is one of the activities that was appropriate for her older sister, too.

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

"Mom, I made cobras!"

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke
"Look mom, I made an eye."

Horse Craft

Our oldest daughter is such a fun older sister. Look how she is using the horse she made to surprise her sister. Her sister just woke up and she wanted to teach her how to make the craft. She actually decided to create a unicorn.

 

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

 

Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

 

Here you see water canteens, horse (a unicorn) and camel crafts. Of course, Mother Goose Time provided songs, games and lots of other fun activities, too.

 

All in this adorable, little school bus box.



Photo Copyright Caroline Brooke

 

 

Thank you, Mother Goose Time!

 

 

 

 

Mother Goose Time- Planting Seeds and Worm Painting

Planting Seeds

The girls loved learning about planting their own seeds and watching the seeds grow into plants.

This week we learned about soil, seed, sun, water, roots and worms.

Here are some highlights from our week and our favorite lesson plans you can feel free to use, too.

 

Although this lesson has been designed for preschool, this is also exactly what 2nd grade children learn for life cycles of plants! (I was a K-2nd grade teacher.) So, this worked out perfect to use with both of my daughters (ages 3 and 8).

 

Mother Goose Time included the following to help us get started with planting:

• soil
• seeds
• Growing a Garden Observation Record (pictured above)

You will also need:

• Spray bottle filled with water for daily watering

 We put their little pots right on the breakfast nook table, and every morning the girls loved to water their plants. The grass grew very quickly.

 

We ended up adding the soil and grass seeds to the Experience God (supplemental add-on) pots the girls made that their little beans were growing in.

 

These pots are prettier and the girls had decorated them. So, they have two types of seeds growing in the pot, a bean and grass seed.

 

The sunny garden journals were beautiful! The girls loved sitting in front of their potted plants and writing in their journals.

 

I noticed that our 3-year-old daughter drew a picture that turned out great! For some reason, she was not happy with it, so she scribbled all over it. It seems like that is pretty typical for that age. I've worked with a lot of preschool through kindergarten-age children, and it seems to get better towards the end of Kindergarten.

 

It must be very challenging to develop strong fine motor skills while coloring, and it can be frustrating for young children who are trying to express themselves and get their little hands to create what their minds are thinking.

 

I typically like to hurry and pick up the work my preschooler has completed before she stares at it and decides she doesn't like it, and then proceeds to scribble over the top of it. Her older sister used to rip it up, not just scribble over the top of it. :) Fortunately, it seems that this acting out of frustration ends at just about when they develop stronger fine motor skills.

Worm Painting

 

I was so disgusted when I saw a teacher using real worms for the children to paint! I can't remember if this was for Kindergarten or First Grade. This was years ago. I do know that the teacher had the children gently wash the worms and put them back into the school garden when they were done.  I was surprised to see plastic, very realistic looking worms inside our Mother Goose Time daily lesson plan kit. I was thankful that these were just plastic, and not real. :) Thank you, Mother Goose Time.

 

Here are our worm paintings. The girls dipped the plastic worms into the paint and rolled them onto the paper. The process created interesting patterns. They enjoyed the process of creating their own designs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the girls were done with their worm paintings, they decided to wash the plastic, pretend worms and put them into their pots with their growing seeds. They liked to pretend that the worms were making their home inside the pots, next to their growing plants.

 

I'll share more free lesson plans with you soon. Next time, we will learn about watching gardens grow: sprout and stem, leaves, flowers, produce and weeds.

 

I'll also share a fun Mother Goose Time Experience God lesson plan, which is an add-on. This lesson is about the farmer who planted seeds, and how those seeds are like the word of God in our lives... I'll give you the posters and script to read, along with a fun planting activity to illustrate how seeds grow when they are taken care of properly. Where we decide to plant those seeds surely makes a difference in how the seeds grow.