Connecting with the (Farming) Community

As a blog ambassador for Mother Goose Time, we are given monthly topics to keep in mind to try and gear a post or two around. I've not been very good at it. This month we were given the topic of 'Connecting with the Community' and few focus questions to think about. While doing regular activities for the curriculum, I haven't really been able to make any connections or come up with anything grand. We just do lessons for fun, have a good time and that's about it. Most people think about the law enforcement, firefighters, mail carrier etc when talking about being a part of the community.

But, while we were visiting our local farm today, Solidarity Farm, I realized that we are mostly connected with this part of the community, this most natural part. I have been visiting this farm with my kids since September of last year for their farm school curriculum. The day consisted of activities revolving around the elements: earth, water, air and fire and helping with farm-work or chores. It has been almost weekly for the whole school year and has been a great tradition for us. We have learned so much about the dedication, hard work and the farming lifestyle in general.

At Solidarity, they don't have many animals. They mostly produce vegetables and are completely organic. So growing their crops takes work. Weeds are killed with sprays or chemicals; they are hand picked out of the ground.

I have learned the importance of community through the stories of trading and bartering that they do to have a variety of fruits as well at their produce stand. I love that this farm is all about helping others. People from surrounding properties come to help harvest or clean up fields. They also have a few helpers from other countries learning the art of farming and gardening. These individuals will take what they learn back to their home country when they are through, to help their community back home thrive. 

These chickens are new. We saw them for the first time today since they are still growing. Little Miss loves the animals they do have. Mr A and Mr Z have been wanting chickens of their own as well, so it was a treat to see these additions to their property. More chickens equals more eggs and more natural fertilizer for their fields.

 "Nurturing the Present" tee shirt

I loved this shirt that one of the farm owners was wearing today... "#8 Plant a Garden".

Here are beds of lettuce, broccoli, mint, and all sorts of other yummy things. This area is great for finding the ladybugs: a necessary bug for any organic farm or garden. The boys have learned that they do help pollinate a little, but mostly eat the aphids. Finding ladybugs was a great past time during freeplay.

 "The Earth is my Body,

The Water is my Blood,

The Air is my Breath,

The Fire is my Spirit."

The group of little kids made a table of items representing the elements and how they relate to us personally. 

Over the months we have been able to see how plants are grown and cared for from the small seed, to the sprouts, to the being transplanted into the ground to produce their food. Here is the outdoor greenhouse where the small seedlings and sprouts are cared for until they can be moved to the ground in the garden beds. They have tons.

It was neat to see how the roots grow and develop in the small starting trays. They intertwine trying to find their way to make strong healthy plants. As we helped transplant them to the beds, we would say out loud, "Grow big, grow strong. Thank you for making us food."

Here are some beds of tomatoes and beets (i think). Nice long rows with barely any weeds and drip tape to make sure they all get enough water.

Today our farm work was to help make a new compost pile.  We learned that a "compost cake" is layers of different materials that will break down to be mixed into soil. Below Mr A and Little Miss were helping gather the green material (weeds and overgrown chard) to layer in the new compost pile. The original plan was to use the chipper to grind all of the green materials up because it makes the composting process faster, but of course the machine didn't want to start. So, the pile of greens was layered as is. Sometimes you just have to deal with what you're given.

Little Miss carried some chard to the goats to feed them a snack while Mr A finished helping with the farm work for the day.

Farmer Nan told us about the importance of compost on a farm (or in a garden). He said, "The compost pile is the most essential part of the farm because it provides the most important (good) bacteria and micro organisms that benefit the soil and help the plants grow healthy and strong. It helps kickstart the growth and keeps the soil nice."
They like to name things on the farm. The compost pile we helped start today is named Shortcake.

I asked the boys, "How are you connected to the farming (or gardening) community?What have you learned from all the activities and farmwork we've helped with, since Mother Goose Time is about gardening this month too?"
Mr Z's answer was quick and obvious,"They grow food and we eat food."
Mr A took a little bit longer to answer and didn't really know how to respond but said, "I just like going there and learning and helping with all the work... I learned that plants need water and sun and you don't walk on the raised beds where they grow."
We have really been able to connect with this MGT unit from all of the experience we've had going to the farm. Our discussions have contained many farm examples and memories. This unit has really come alive for us... pun intended.

Before each class we would all recite this little poem about the different elements. I like how it teaches us to pay attention to the earth and respect what it gives us. Our Earth is our community and we are all connected to it. The greatest community of all is nature, its beauty and its resources.

I promise to take care of the earth,

I promise to respect the water,

I promise to listen to the air and

I promise to nurture the fire,

all in the spirit of wonder.

Happy Gardening!... it is a lot of work.

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.

Phonics Awareness Made Fun

It's a Small World with Mother Goose Time

Week 2 of the It's a Small World unit was about things that you would find at an international/world market. (see previous post here.) I took Mr A to the market across from the Grandparent's house to see what we could find. We found that this particular market was a grocery store and we did find some quite interesting things. There were several American items that we could read and recognize, but other things we had no idea what it was. The store was fun to explore.

a thin tortilla like flatbread that was almost as tall as Mr A

 a vacuum sealed whole fish. Mr A did not want to hold it

 a bag of chips that we assumed were hot & spicy potato chips

 a giant bottle of root beer maybe.

 cheese in a tall can.

Anyway... that was our trip to an international food market. It was rather intimidating not being able to read the labels and know what things were. But it was fun.

On to Week 3... it was about a few of the Natural Wonders of the World. We talked about the Grand Canyon, waterfalls, Ayers rock, and giant trees. Mr A responded very well to this activity though during the day we learned a bit about the Matterhorn mountain.
We used the Pocker Cube for the letters of the month, K G & Q. We took turns rolling the cube. Each letter had its own mountain. Every time a letter was rolled a block was added to its corresponding block mountain. Before we could add a block though, we had to say the sound of the letter. Mr A had a great time strategically stacking different shaped blocks to make it harder for me to go after him. As we progressed through the game, we began also saying words that either started, ended or had the letter sound in the middle.

Our blue mountain for the letter G fell down the most.

My favorite is the giraffe Mr A put on the top of the letter Q mountain.

There aren't many phonics or language arts activities that Mr A likes very much. He's never really enjoyed that subject, but this he really liked and wanted to keep playing for quite some time. What a fun suggested activity that Mother Goose Time provided.

SD Zoo Birds Field Trip

Birds and Eggs with Mother Goose Time

Field Trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park

By now, I think you would know that we like our field trips. I feel like its the only way to connect to the theme we are studying. Plus it just makes much more fun. Seeing things in real life is exciting, especially when you're little. So we headed to the safari park and found lots of birds and several fun surprises. The safari park was the best place I could think of to see a variety of birds up close.

The first stop were the flamingos. The boys like them. While watching the flamingos though, we found other fun things...

 ...cranes yelling at each other. They were really loud.

Here's one picture below to play ispy... a mama, a baby that boys agreed was super ugly and a nest of eggs.

 Mr A had the super sharp eyes and spotted the eggs hiding in the plants.

 This egret was hunting lizards. When it sees a target, it will hold its body still while wiggling its long neck gently back and forth. It then moves slightly forward while wiggling its neck and then strikes. It was gross to see the lizard wiggling down the egret's neck as it slid down the long throat.

Nest were everywhere. We did a lot of looking up. I lost count at how many we found, but there were obviously a ton because of the walk-in aviaries and the wild birds that come for the free food.

The Secretary Bird is one of the coolest non-flying birds. It stomps its food to death and can survive poisonous snake bites on its legs because it doesn't have veins in the lower part of its legs (where there are no feathers. We watched it build a nest in the corner of its enclosure. I couldn't get a good picture of the nest since it was hiding behind trees.

Vultures... ugly birds but actually clean despite their appetite.

I don't remember what this little guy was. He was calling to another one with their wings spread out. Not sure what they were talking about, but the birds were loud.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon... one of Mr A's favorite birds. He likes their color and the mohawk of feathers on the top of their heads.
While we were in this aviary, I actually saw two birds fly into each other. I was sad I didn't get it on camera or video. I laughed so hard and was surprised no one else saw it. Two clumsy birds totally crashed. I only I will know that, I guess.

This guy was busy finding stuff in the dirt, maybe bugs?

There are several wild mallard ducks that live at the park. While the boys were playing at one of the playgrounds, they found an egg laying on the other side of the fence. I suspect it is a duck egg since its about the right size. No birds were around though. They were excited to see another real egg on our adventure.

Such a variety of birds in this world. Its neat to see them up close and connect to our Birds and Eggs thematic study. The boys' favorite thing was finding the nests of eggs. What fun.

Tadpoles in Real Life

At the Pond with Mother Goose Time

This has been such a fun unit... and mostly because the lake in our neighborhood came back with all the rain we've had. It was dry for years.

One of favorite things that we've discovered on our hikes around the water were TONS of tadpoles. It was amazing. Swarms of them gathered at the waters edge while feeding. The rains after we discovered them made the water level rise and so we haven't seen them gathering like this in quite some time. They've all dispersed I guess.

We've learned about frogs several times with Mother Goose Time through various thematic studies, but having our very own tadpoles nearby was new. We've gone over the life cycle of a frog before and have plastic figures of the cycle as well so the boys know quite a bit about these creatures already. So we saw them in a new light with this exploration.

Unfortunately, now I think a lot of them are getting eaten by birds that have discovered the new water and such an abundant food source. But, I think there's enough we'll have enough to hear them croaking songs of new frogs in a few weeks.
While we were hiking around the lake and observing the tadpoles, we discussed the tadpoles and frogs by using the focus questions from the different activities in the MGT Teach Guide. I wrote them all down so I could refer to them while at the lake, but mostly we just freely observed. Some of the questions were: How is a tadpole like a frog? How is it different? What might be fun about being a tadpole?What would you like about being a frog? How far do you think a frog can jump... or you? Where do you think frogs like to go in the pond? What about a tadpole? (We combined day 3 & 4 into one: Tadpoles & Frogs.) Of course I also asked my own questions like What do you think eats tadpoles? What is the tadpole eating? Where do they go when it gets dark?
For tadpole and frog day, we spent most of our time out exploring the lake. Honestly, besides writing down and taking the questions from the guide, we didn't do anything else from the daily bags. The field trip wiped us out. But oh mam, did we learn a lot while watching them in live action.

Algae at the Pond

At the Pond

I asked the boys what topic they wanted to start with this time because the Mother Goose Time's March unit doesn't need to be done in order. Mr A picked day 10's Algae since he found some at the neighborhood lake the other day.

After Mr A got home from school, we did some activities before heading to the lake again to explore.

In the daily bag was a shape mat and some foam diamonds. Mr A got right to work figuring out where the different sizes went. Though, the shapes were not the correct size for the spots they were supposed to go. Mr Z would have gotten frustrated that the shapes were smaller than the shape mat.

While Mr A was doing the shape mat, we talked about what algae is and what it does. He was interested that algae was a plant and that it could grow on turtle backs. Mr Z chimed in that it could be food for tadpoles too.

The Invitation to Create was to paint your version of algae using yellow and blue. I forgot to add shaving cream to the paint to make it puffy. But the boys had fun mixing the colors to make several different shades of green.

 The Inspiration photo was of swirly algae with lots of different colors of green.

They added the included glitter and said the glitter was all the tadpoles in the lake.

Since we had glitter left over from the Invitation to Create, we used it for our experiment of cleaning dirty water. In a bin I put water and some vegetable oil, then the boys added the glitter and dirt. Mr Z wanted the frog in there too.

It sure was yucky, slimy water. The oil made everything stick to our hands.

I brought our several utensils to see which would maybe clean the dirty water the best. A cheese grater, small strainer, a scoop, coffee filters and baby wipes.

We began using the scoop and trying to keep the oil, glitter and dirt from getting into the beaker. The strainer and cheese grater definitely did not work. But the coffee filter did. It left the water the cleanest and most of the oil was trapped on top along with the dirt and glitter. Mr A switched the filter with a baby wipe to see the difference between the two. The wipe had let the oil through and was draining much quicker than the filter. Mr A noticed that right away. As we were finishing up Mr A squished his hands together and says "Oh man, I shouldn't have done that activity. My hands are so messy." Our hands were super messy and oily.

PS... Dont ever mix glitter and oil if you hate glitter.

We had a great time exploring the neighborhood lake. Over the last few years all the water dried up. But, we've had crazy amounts of rain and the area is coming back to life. There's tons of water, a gazillion tadpoles, and lots of birds are coming back. We found several spots with algae... well, at least that's what we called it. This algae was the floating-on-top-of-the-water kind.

And just because these brothers are cute together. =)

Algae with Mother Goose Time was a fun time.