Starting Again. Mother Goose Time with the Youngest

It's finally happened. My youngest is old enough to enjoy this preschool curriculum!
I started using Experience Early Learning formerly Mother Goose Time with my two boys several years ago. We used it for about 3 years. Then we had the Little Miss. I was overwhelmed with 3 children. I tried to keep up with the learning activities, but it was too much and I took a break. But now a few years later, I felt like I was in a place to do it again. I have a ton of old units leftover that are pretty much complete.
So, this week, Little Miss and I started with the unit, Ocean Commotion from April of 2018. We've had a great time so far. I actually forgot how much I liked it and needed this time to connect with my children too. Over the years, I've become bored and complacent and knew something was missing. I just didn't know what. My 3-year-old, Little Miss, was just watching TV all day while the boys were at school. We both needed a change.

Little Miss and I began our EELfMGT unit by taking a trip to Sea World to visit some sea life. Her favorite thing to do is pet the bamboo sharks, so we were there for quite some time.

Dolphins are silly when swimming upsidedown.

We love touching the bat rays too and fed them lots of fish.

We watched a sea turtle work his way out of a tight spot and the school of fish swim back and forth.

Day 1: Ocean Water
This was a fun day. Little Miss taste-tested different types of water. She came to the conclusion that regular water is better for humans and the saltwater is just right for the fish, sharks, and whales. She doesn't want to be a fish.
One of our projects provided by EELfMGT was an Invitation to Create. The inspiration photo is an aerial shot of the ocean. Since most of the earth is saltwater, the paint was watered down. With an eyedropper, Little Miss collected paint and squirted it onto her paper then sprinkled salt on top. She loved this!

She said several times, "I like you for letting me do this Mom. I love Mother Goose Time."

After starting her second picture, Little Miss decided to pour the paint. She loved watching the colors mix together.

Little Miss decorated her EELfMGT nametag also. She loves the stamper markers.

Since the earth is covered in water, the main bodies have names. To learn them, we had containers of water with the ocean names. The pocket cube was rolled to find out how many shells would be dropped into one of the oceans. We also found the ocean on the globe.

Our last experiment for Ocean Water was to see if objects would sink or float in regular, salt or sugar water.
What a fun day.

Day 2: Ocean Floor
We learned about things that you would find on the floor of the ocean; Sand, crabs, shells, plants, rocks...
Our Make&Play craft was to make an oyster with a small paper plate and bead. Little Miss colored her oyster and glued on her bead. She got a little inspiration from a few real pearls that I had collected over the years.

We used kinetic sand to play the shells for a while. We counted them and hid them underneath.

After a little while of playing with just shells, I remembered we had a ton of animal figurines and so we found all of our ocean animals. Then we picked out the ones that might be found on the ocean floor.

Day 3&4: Ocean Caves and Ocean Plants (I combined the 2 days)
Using a few blankets and a table we made a cave. We also glued some green strips of paper together to make some plants to camouflage the entrance. After talking about some animals that would live in a cave and some that wouldn't, Little Miss collected shells using a flashlight and placed them on the number cards. She's getting better at counting. Number 4 is one that she always skips though. But, we did do a lot in our cave that day. We read books by flashlight, we ate lunch, we played with play-doh. Even the dogs investigated the cave and hung out with us for awhile.

Learning about the Ocean Zones was not very interesting. She didn't care one bit about the Sunlight, Twilight or Midnight zones of the ocean. All she wanted to do for the Invitation to Create was to cut the paper. But that's ok. Sometimes your brain just doesn't care about any more information.

Thanks to Mother Goose Time (Experience Early Learning), we have had better days together this week. Hopefully, we can keep it up. By day three of the week though, I think Little Miss was going through TV withdrawals. It was a bit harder to keep her attention because she did want to watch her shows. But, it will take time to adjust.

Postcards from MGT

Ocean Commotion with Mother Goose Time

and learning about mail

This month has been busy with our beach field trips. Getting behind on lessons is easy to do and its also easy to get so busy that you don't see some of your loved ones for weeks at a time.

Luckily Mother Goose Time provides a postcard for each child in the curriculum each month. It's normally in a daily bag towards the end of the month.

One side is blank for the child to draw a picture corresponding with the montly theme. The other side has a place for a note, address and stamp.

Mr A got busy drawing some of favorite sea creatures.

Little Miss got busy covering her postcard with scribbles on the front and back.

Mr Z made all sorts of sea creatures: a dolphin, sea anenome, diamond fish, sea snakes and a crab.

With the help of our awesome neighbor, he has really begun to want to spell and read and write. Mr A is in the phonics stage of his writing. He reads level one books and is working on sight words. Writing is slower and he sounds out the words carefully... sometimes a little too carefully and ends up adding sounds that aren't really there. With the MGT postcard, he was able to come up with a note himself and write it on his own. A simple activity to cultivate independence and ownership of his literacy skills.

After an address and the stamp were put on his card, he ran it straight to the mailbox. He's anxious for the recipient to recieve it.

Literacy at the Beach with Letter S

Ocean Commotion with Mother Goose Time

Field Trip to the Oceanside Harbor



I have never been good at teaching literacy or reading or language arts in general. We are a family that likes math, science and art much better. 

Since Mother Goose Time's theme this month is all about the ocean, we had to take a few trips to explore it in person since we are so close. It is great being close to so many resources for learning. During the month we have covered topics such as the seascape & the oceanic zones, large and small creatures and ways to protect the ocean and its animals. All of these things were mentioned briefly while we were there playing and observing and to connect our learning with the MGT theme.

I realized while we were at the beach that there are so many things there that start with the letter S. I began to point them out and hint to the S word that I spotted and both boys were quick to answer. I suppose teaching letters and sounds is more fun when we take it into the real world.

Here are the S words that we found. I spelled some words in the sand or we emphasized the letter sound and talked about the definition after a word was mentioned.

Surf: I explained that the surf is the area of water they are playing in or it can be a sport or activity that you do in the waves.

 Search or spy: Little Miss was excellent at searching for tiny things in the wet sand.

 Snack: You always have to stop for a snack after some good hard playing at the beach.

 Seagull: You always have to chase the seagulls when they're after your food or just hanging around close by.

Seagulls in the surf

 Skeleton: Mr A found some skeletons of tiny sea creatures while digging in the sand. A crab leg and shrimp tail.

 Seaweed: So many kinds of seaweed. There was dried seaweed on the sand. A huge stem the Mr A pulled from the surf.

 This was a giant line of seaweed or kelp. There are these type of kelp beds all over our coast.

 The boys dragged it around all over.

 Sand: So much sand! Playing in the wet sand and rolling in the dry sand is always a good time.

Little Miss had a different perspective while spotting a sailboat in the distance.

Mr Z did a great job practicing writing his name in the sand. He does it backwards, but its a good first step to doing it himself. I am proud of him.

The ocean is the ultimate real-life sensosry bin!

Honestly, I hated the thought of the beach for such a long time. I hated everything about the beach and would avoid it all costs... the hauling of all the junk, the sand, the sun, the itchy water, the mess. But, with the thought "Put your feelings aside, the kids have so much fun" in mind, we have had such a great time these few times we've made the trip to the beach. Despite the mess of sand getting absolutely everywhere, the beach is a fantastic place to visit. Field trips are my favorite way to let the kids connect to the theme that we are working on.

I was proud of Mr A because by the end of the days that we spent at the beach finding things that started with the letter S, he was finding them on his own or trying to spell them and even repeating them when we got home while emphasizing the S sound.

Learning doesn't have to be only done in a school or even at home... we love taking learning into the world. I'm glad this Ocean Commotion theme allows us to get into nature and experience it first hand since we live in a place that lets us.

Just Pick Something

I pulled out a game provided by Mother Goose Time in the curriculum for the day about Shipwrecks. Shipwreck Hideaway came with little fish popper as your moving piece. They boys played the game for a few minutes until one of them pressed the fish down all the way until the suction cup stuck. The game was over after that. They had a great time waiting for the fish to pop and fly somewhere around them. It was fun to watch them wait in suspense and get startled each time the little fish finally flew.

I got out the Divers day packet and cut out the flippers for Mr A. Yesterday from the store he got new pool goggles. So, he tested them out with his paper flippers. He liked them, but they didn't stay on well and he ripped the first set we tried.

One of the activities I grabbed from the Divers day packet, was the Storytelling Set. Mr A and I went through each page of the book provided in the curriculum, Ocean Animals A to Z. When we came to page that had one of cutouts, he added it to the ocean poster. Then they played with the cutouts after all of them were on the poster.

We had a major dance party for a little while too. It was fun. We love the music cd's and listen to them often. Mr A can sing along to all of the songs by the middle of the month.

I still have yet to get him to actually participate in the Dance N Beats Dvd's. I think I figured out it's because he thinks the moves are too girly. He mentioned the other day that there aren't any 'boy moves' in the dances.

Finally, this morning, I pulled out the boys' MGT scrapbooks. The scrapbook is keepsake book with a review of what letters were worked on, the number of the month and simple question pertaining to the month. This month the sentence to finish was: My favorite ocean animal is ...? They each glued on their pictures for the different letters. Then added the others to the sea star, instead of drawing a self-portrait. Mr Z colored with concentration.

Mr A likes to color his shape with two colors, red and blue, since those are his favorite. He can't choose just one.

We had another fun, yet simple morning. I randomly grabbed activities from packets that we missed over the last few weeks. I like the flexibility of teaching at home, especially with MGT. Quick lessons/activities sometimes work best for us. Attention spans are low since we are out of routine. To ease back into it, we are doing one thing at a time and rather quickly.