Our 7th Month

Blast off to Space is our seventh month of the Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum.
i love the ease of it all. the boys love having something new to do and learn about everyday.

here is how i store my materials. its not great. it definitely is not pretty, but it works for me, at the moment. i have previous months in the back of the filing cabinet drawer and the current month stays in the bags in the front. i do go through and pull out things like the theme poster, letter sets, and games to get laminated at Lakeshore Learning Store, so that they last longer. 20 pre-packaged activities are sent in your curriculum box. opening these boxes each has been like christmas. i cant wait to see what is included each month. i like looking into the bags to get a feel of what is to come. i leave the bags in tact though for easy grab-and-go. im afraid things will get misplaced if i take everything out. (if i do take things out to get laminated, i lightly write what day they go to on the back, so i know where it goes)

lesson plans are included and even written out for you. i dont have to wrack my brain trying to figure what to teach each day... its all provided for me. i do however, add facts by searching the internet or books we have here at home. i use google to find photos, info and videos related to the topic of the day. i like air pano for panoramic photos. i like to throw in tidbits of information for my 4 year old. sometimes, i feel that the lessons lack a tad of info, on some days. as, i read through the lesson, i highlite the questions in one color and the information/answer for the question in the other. sometimes i write in info if i feel my son could benefit from more facts. its amazing what he can remember about a subject... sometimes i dont think hes even paying attention, but he'll talk about things at the most random times.

manipulatives are also included. this month is a fantastic wooden balancing game! i can already picture the boys fighting over the pieces and them getting thrown everywhere, but it amazing. it is introduced on Day 4.

the cd of the month has 12 fun and simple song that are used throughout the lessons and activities. my 4yr old learns the songs fairly quickly and sings along with the cd when we have it playing. we actually have the add-on Dance n Beats this month, which has additional activities in the guidebook and easy fitness dances for the kids that use the songs from the music cd. we actually have tried this add-on before. it didnt go over too well with my boys, but they seem more interested in movement now. so, we're giving it another shot. the first time we tried it, the boys just basically watched me do the dances and made fun of me or said i wasnt doing it right, but wouldnt actually participate. lol.

a book is also sent in your box. it corresponds with the theme of the month. they are great quality books with fun illustrations, that are loved in our home library. this month it is introduced on Day 8.

In your Welcome Kit, when you receive your first month, each kid gets their own scrapbook for the year. it is a review of the month that is usually completed on Day 20 of the curriculum. we just finished Its a Small World, so here is what my 4yr old's page looks like. the kids cut and paste a picture representing the letter, draw themselves, color the shape and bird and fill in the number of the month. sometimes he follows the instructions, sometimes he doesnt. (i got all of the materials that came in the Welcome Kit laminated as well, since we move our "school" location in the house often. if its your first month, i highly recommend laminating)

every month you have 3 new sight words to work on, 3 letters, a color, shape and a value/moral on the friendship feather. i am not fantastic at incorporating the morals/ values for some reason. we have them all up at the same time on our MGT wall. i also need to get better at reviewing the sight words.

I'm not that great at routines, but i have found that it easier to our lessons in the morning. its when the boys are most attentive and cooperative. (on weekends, if we havent missed a day during the week, my oldest asks what we will be learning about. most of the time i say we can review what we already did... but he usually is excited for something new)
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Italian Heritage

Leaning Tower of Piza

Why do you think the Tower of Piza is leaning?

i asked A this question from the MGT focus picture... his answer "the ground is heavy".

While taking a trip to Italy, i pulled out a bit of geneology. My husband's family is from Italy. His great-grandparents immigrated from Italy to New York and an article was written about them in the Life magazine decades ago. There is even a family picture with my husband's mom as a little girl.

A liked seeing a picture of his Nana in a magazine. He says he wants to go to Italy.

We made towers with rocks in the fresh air and made towers with foam and toothpicks and messily decorated a few pages in our MGT books.

lessons are usually like pulling teeth when we have things to do in the morning. today, the boys have been cranky. we had to do a few things in the morning. i guess i need to know all of limits a bit better. the limits of the boys when they arent in the mood and my limits when i'm not as patient as i should. sometimes, i probably should put my selfishness aside and say forget the lessons. sometimes i try to force the lessons and activities because i like them and want to share them with the kids... but that usually never works very well.
being a stay at home mom and trying to be a (school)teacher is hard. i'm not very good at it.

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After the tantrums ended...

Wednesday mornings we have music class. We love it, but it messes up our Mother Goose Time routine... if you can what we do a routine. We also had errands to do. So, when getting home, it was meltdowns galore.

After settling down and adjusting our activities a bit, we took a trip to Russia to learn about St Basil's Cathedral.

I asked A what he thought was inside the building. He answered, "a bunch of pictures". Good answer. I explained it was a church a long time ago, but is now a museum with art and artifacts.

We played with our onions tops for a minute. The boys were still cranky and fighting over whose turn it was to put the tops on.

I figured the boys just needed something more hands on. So, i pulled out the wood blocks in natural wood and red since we learned these were the original colors when the building was built. We made several different versions. This put everyone in a better mood... cooperative, creative play.

I helped cut out our cathedral pieces. A lost interest after cutting a few pieces. He enjoyed following the "map" and gluing the pieces on though. Z just has a crazy mess of a building. But i love the colors and designs of this art project.

The boys enjoyed help in make our tomato basil soup. Smashing the tomatoes was a hit and A had a great time spiral cutting the zucchini. We added some veggies and chicken and had our soup for dinner. It was delicious and A like it much better since he helped in the process.

A learned that St Basil's Cathedral was built a long time ago and it was a church first.... remembering one thing is better than nothing :-)

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1, 2 Machu Picchu

Today we started off with some review using the mother goose time picture letter sets. i havent been very dilligent on the phonics of the alphabet or the sight word reaaders. so, first we matched the capital letter with the first letter of the word. we reviewed past letters too.

next, we reviewed 3 of the "i can read" books provided in previous months. each month there are three new sightwords to learn in a simple fun book. most months, i have just skipped these. why? because... i dont have a good reason. lol. this morning, we worked on a few more words. A knows 'the' and 'see' rather well. he gets excited when he recognizes them. by taking 15 extra minutes today, he now knows 'can', 'jump', 'we', 'it' and 'is' a little better. he was happy to realize that he read 3 books with little help. but that 15 minutes was pretty frustrating. so, we will try to review more often. teaching your own kids is pretty hard. hopefully we will get better.

these word puzzles didnt last too long. Z matched the hands-on letters to the mats though. A wasnt interested. i dont think he's much of a language kid.... give him patterns, numbers and some sort of math and hes happy.

the Incans used some sort of pulley system to get their big stone blocks to the top of their mountain. so we recreated a pulley in our hallway using 2 door knobs, string and small bucket. i got them to wind around just right, so that when you pulled the bucket lifted. A and Z had fun taking turns and lifting and lowering things put into the bucket.

we colored and applied lots of stickers to our MGT passport for visiting Machu Picchu.

A and Z played for a long time in the sand box.

i asked A what he thought ruins were while looking at the focus picture. he answered "blocks with no roofs." i'd say thats close enough. we talked about different ways that buildings, houses, and castles could be destroyed: weather, fights/war, tornadoes. we made ruins in the sand and they can also be destroyed by feet!

we've been singing our song all day...

1,2... machu picchu
where are you... machu picchu
in peru... machu picchu
going to... machu picchu
walking through... machu picchu
old not new... machu picchu
what a view... machu picchu
thank you... machu picchu
 

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PYRAMIDS

Today we filled the morning with activities relating to Egyptian pyramids, mummies and camels. Mother Goose Time provides a paper puzzle every month. A is fanastic at them. When he finished, we observed how tiny the people and camels looked in the picture compared the giant pyramids. we located where pyramids were located on our picture maps too that are hung around the house.

i cut out some triangles from spare cardboard and let the boys decorate them with do-a-dot paint markers. they sure do have fun slamming those things around. i also found some pyramid self-adhesives from orientaltrading.com. so, those were added to few of the triangles. With some patience, i glued them together to make our own pyramid. A is proud of it.

the boys colored a page in the MGT passports then used more do-a-dots to decorate their color page.

included in todays packet was a camel puppet craft. i took the boys to the bathrooms and we imagined the tubs filled with water. we talked about the difference between humans and camels and how much they can drink at one time. camels can drink a bathtub full of water and we can usually only drink one glass. it was a do-a-dot day... A used them again to color his camel. And of course, the boys needed googley eyes and pyramid adhesives to add to their puppets.

i touched a little bit on Ancient Egypt using out Safari Ltd Toob. we played with play-doh for quite some time. we made imprints and pyramids. A worked on matching the figurine to the imprint for a little while also and made an ancient egypt city.

mummies are wrapped in guaze then put into the pyramid in a special case. A practiced mummifying some stuffed animals... but you cant talk about mummies without being one yourself. so, the boys got dressed up too and sat in the mummy case.

to finish our day about Egypt we looked at my new resource site AirPano and observed real life photos of the pyramids in Giza.

A says he learned that camels drink a lot of water at once and store it in their hump.

For putting this lesson together this morning, it was really fun. i havent been feeling well lately. my patience is thin, but we learned a lot together and i am glad that i forced myself to put the activities together.

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Waterfalls

The end of the week got away from us as far as MGT goes. We were busy and life happened. The boys had things going on and i tried a few new classes too. Anyway, we just got around to Day 14: Victoria Falls. 

I put up the crepe paper that was provided, in the hallway entry to resemble a waterfall. (Z had unrolled some of it anyway while i wasn't paying attention.) The boys had fun running through it for a few minutes though.

I found an amazing site of aerial panoramic still shots set to music. (AIR PANO) We looked at waterfalls from around the world and observed their differences and similarities. We even found a picture with a canyon. (waterfalls around the world) I enjoy seeing how A cross references things that he has previously learned.... I love finding real life photos and videos to incorporate into the activities and lessons. So this site is perfect.

A and Z made their waterfall wand craft. I helped Z glue the pieces together, of course. They were distracted so getting them to participate was a trick. But they turned out cute and are displayed on our front door along with our other Mother Goose Time crafts.

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The Matterhorn

The Matterhorn!

14692 Feet tall. Triangular shape formed by glaciers sliding down the mountain. Made of sedimentary rocks from the African plate. In the Alps between Switzerland and Italy.

After music class we took a hike up a "mountain". It was a beautiful day. We discussed different ways to get to the top of the mountain. We came up with walking, bikes, horses and cars. We made it to the top and kept going for a bit. We stopped for a small picnic and admired some pretty purple flower in bushes that were all around. The boys walked the whole way themselves... we only went maybe a mile total but it was mostly uphill. On the way back down i noticed a snake sunning. It scared us, but i realized it was just a gopher snake so we observed it for a few minutes and takes about their tongues. It darted away when it smelled someones dogs coming up the road.

 Arai also noticed that their were small ditches where water has flowed and that they looked like small Grand Canyons.

When we got home our craft was a cable car. We strung them up and experimented with how cable cars worked. They make good necklaces too. 

Today was a good day with our field trip.
MotherGooseTime

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