What's In Experience Baby?

Experience Baby

August's theme: Colors & Shapes

Today we received our Mother Goose Time Experience Baby curriculum. Mr Z grabbed it off the porch, ran it inside and wanted to open it right away to play with it.

We've been getting this curriculum for Little Miss for a few months. It's been fun. The boys like to be included in "teaching" Little Miss. Opening the box is usually the most fun a little while.
This is what the inside of the box looks like when you first open it up. It doesn't look like much, but there's a lot of goodies in here.

The muslin bag holds lots of fun stuff. This is the Teacher Bundle. There are the activity cards.

The activity cards come in three different categories: Connect & Communicate, Move & Grow and Play & Explore. The sets are each numbered 1-12. You can do all of the same numbered activities in the same day to coordinate your days.

There is a poster to go along with the theme and it may be a song or nursery rhyme. There are cut outs to use for some of the activities during the month and several pictures to use in the foam pocket cube.

An overall Planning Calendar helps keep track of your days easily. Thursday and Friday are left open to review favorite activities that your child liked or needed a little more help on.

A music cd with 12 songs that correlate with the theme comes each month also.

This is the Child Pack. It comes in a plastic folder and is meant for transferring daily notes about the child and the activities done that day between the parent and the caregiver.

Included in the Child Pack are a few different items like this weekly overview of the activities. It is for notes and observances of the child.

Sheets of stickers for each activity with brief descriptions of activities go into the Daily Journal.

The Daily Journal has a page layout for each day. There are notes from the parents and to the parents and includes a daily diapering and feeding schedule. I love that this is an easy way to log what your child is doing. Since I don't leave Little Miss with anyone, I don't really use this much though.

When we first opened the box, Mr A asked why we get a new pocket cube each month. I guess its because little babies and toddlers destroy these cube pretty easily. My Little Miss doesn't play hard with it though and so we have several cubes. The Curriculum Overview also comes every month and is the same each time. But, its a great guide on how to use everything and what it is.

After we were done unpacking the box, Mr A and Mr Z grabbed the tub of our MGT manipulatives from our regular MGT curriculum and the box with the packing paper and have been playing  with them ever since. Sometimes the box something comes in is way more fun for awhile. Little Miss has joined them too. I don't know what they are actually playing at the moment, but I'm glad they found something to do nicely for a few minutes before we get into some other activities.

The Art Studio: A Look Into July

The Art Studio with Mother Goose Time

July 2016 Set-up, Overview

July is sure to be an exciting month with Mother Goose Time. It's all about art and we love art in our house... the mess, the freedom of expression, the process. It's all so much fun to do and observe.

Here's a small glimpse at what is come with the month's curriculum. There are many great components.

The first are the Job Shapes. They have the name of each daily activity printed on them. When a task, activity or project is completed you can add it to the poster. Each day focuses on a different color.

I love these photo cards of famous paintings from various artists. They were first to be laminated and I have yet to find a good way to display them.

The Money Kit. Each kid will be able to gain a better understanding of earning, spending, saving or giving money through activities for the day. You may need to "buy" materials for your craft of the day by spending some of your dollars. You may need to give a friend a dollar to help them buy something.

Falco the Featherless Bird is part of the Money Kit and focuses on character building traits. A story of Falco is given and the feathers reinforce one of these traits daily. On the back of each feather is a scenario to decided whether Falco has earned or lost his feather. I made copies of the Falco coloring sheet and then colored one myself to be the mascot and of course he was laminated. These traits connect to the money aspect for example... using generosity to give a friend a dollar to help buy materials if he doesn't have enough money in his folder.

The story book of the month is a fun way to introduce mixing colors. We always love the books that come with the curriculum.

With a craft of some kind everyday, this month is set up to be like a camp-style layout. I am excited. Its something completely different than we are used to and I feel like it will be a good for Mr A.

Prepping Next Month: My Routine

I'm not much for strict routines. I've never had a set schedule... well, I've never been able to stick to one. But, I have noticed that I do the same thing each month when we receive a new Mother Goose Time curriculum box.
Almost as soon as it's delivered, I open the box and look through the individual packaged bags and especially look for the manipulatives.
I make a huge mess and make a pile of the 20 daily packages. I open them carefully one by one and pull out anything I want to get laminated. Its usually a huge pile. I definitely get the circle time materials laminated like the calendar, shape/color, theme poster, letter flags and number leaves.

From what I pull out of the daily bags, I write the number of corresponding day in the corner so I know where to put it back.

Then I head to Lakeshore Learning Store to get my pile laminated. This time while I was there I was asked if I was just going to invest in a lamination machine for myself. It just saves me space not having my own.
When I get home I sit at the table and cut apart all the pages. It normally takes about an hour to get it all cut and then sorted back into the right daily bags.

February is all about Food and Fitness with Mother Goose Time. So, now that I have all the materials laminated, cut and sorted back into their bags, I look for additional resources and books. I gather what extra things I can find to enhance the curriculum and add it to the box to save for the day. This month I have plenty of extra things actually and I'm a little overwhelmed by it. I have a whole curriculum of My Plate from the USDA to work into the MGT curriculum. It includes books, sight word readers, posters, recipes and so much more. As overwhelming as it is, I'm excited. Hopefully the boys will enjoy this unit too.

Mother Goose Time Welcome

Professionalism: Mother Goose Time takes the thinking out of planning. They do it for you.

I searched for a long time, looking for a curriculum that I could use at home with my kids. Finally, I came across Mother Goose Time. It seemed too good to be true. As I compared MGT with other curriculum options, there was really no comparison. I was blown away by the curriculum and ease of everything. And I had to try MGT.

Mother Goose Time takes your day care, preschool or homeschooling experience to the next level. I mean, they make it so easy for you to be professional and it doesn't even take that much effort.
I am using Mother Goose Time with my two boys at home (sometimes another friend comes to join us), so a lot of this stuff doesn't really apply to me, as far parent conferences and other things you would normally find in a professional environment. But, I love that all these materials are available to me. Here is a link below for a welcome video that describes what type of materials are included in your first subscription box.

There is also a video link below to view a new product that MGT has provided in August's subscription box. This baseline assessment package has so many materials to help you prepare your new school year and it is pretty cool. It tells you how to gauge what learning levels each child is on and how to track their improvement. There are also materials on how to conduct a successful parent-teacher meeting. I can only imagine how great these materials will help parents feel about their child attending anywhere that uses this program... as long as the teacher implements them. I'd be pretty happy.

I do intend on using some of these materials to help my 4 year old prepare a little better for school. I can also track what learning path my 2 year old is on so that I can help him improve in areas of learning. Even though we do MGT sporadically throughout the day and don't really have a set routine, I love the contents of the subscription boxes. Mother Goose Time is fantastic and its hard to believe that everything you need to run a successful preschool is included. Its true. The value is great! and so many people are there to help if you have any questions. There have been so many times that I have reached out to MGT staff with questions.
This learning and teaching community is like no other.

p.s. My favorite piece in the Baseline Assessment kit is the Developmental Continuum of Skills guide. This thing is amazing. It has skills  and benchmarks that reach all the way to second grade! This is definitely getting laminated and referred to often.

Welcome video

Baseline Assessment

I Rearrange My Materials.

So, I have had my circle-time materials all over the house since I started using Mother Goose Time last September. I've been moving it from wall to wall trying to find where I like it the best. This set-up has suited me the best. The arrangement makes me happier. It only took me 9 months to figure it out. Lol. Sometimes things take that long. I love that I can move our materials around though and that our home looks like a preschool. It's pretty awesome. But have fun with your set-up of whatever materials you are using =)

On the wall opposite of our circle time materials, I plan on putting up our Experience God curriculum posters. On the back of these there are parts of the Parable of the Sower story to correspond with the picture. I love how fun and friendly the graphics are on all of the materials. I think this will be a great addition to our daily learning.

Here is a sample activity in the Experience God teacher guide. It is so simple, yet it will be a great hands-on reinforcement activity of a simple theme: Open your heart to fill it with what's important. The wider it is open, the more you can let in.

I have another post written about our new theme coming up, Growing Gardens, with Mother Goose Time. You can find more on what to expect (here).
I also found this fun activity that I will be implementing into one of our lessons. It is called Roots and Shoots and seems like it would a great addition to your lessons as well =) http://pbskids.org/plumlanding/educators/activities/roots_and_shoots_ed.html

Gearing Up for Growing Gardens

Growing Gardens is the theme for May 2015 with Mother Goose Time.

Focus topics are:

Letters F Y R

Numbers 9 & 10

Shape diamond

Color pink

Pattern AABBCC

Sight Words said, little, like

Friendship trait Honest

 We will be learning about Gardens!

What you need to plant a garden. Watching the garden grow and the different parts of a plant. What kinds of visitors the garden will have. The different vegetables that can be grown in the garden.

 Activities included in this month are matching games, building a scarecrow, feeding a crow and playing vegetable dominoes.

 

 The Add-ons that I chose to get this month are the Experience God and More Math and Literacy workbooks. The theme for Experience God for May is God is Wise with the accompanying Bible story Sowing Seeds based on Luke 8. There are four crafts included for each child (one per week) with daily devotionals to help inspire learning about God. We will see how this goes. We've never really been people to talk about religion in the home.  

Mr A loves these workbooks. They are just advanced enough to review skills needed to prep for school.

The manipulatives included in the curriculum kit every month are among my favorite things. For this unit we received another set of the plastic shapes with a design mat. We have quite the collection of these now and they are so fun to play with. The little plastic bunnies will be fought over though. They are so cute. There are a few different sizes and will be great for sorting and sizing.

The Bonus Day included in May is Mother's Day. The kids will be able to make a flower pot craft, play a matching game and learn about mother's and how to appreciate them. 

For extra themed play and activities I got extra seed packets, a Safari LTD Toob of fruit and vegetables, kids gardening tools and the book From Seed to Plant.



I also found my life cycle box and will throw in these plant models and cycle spinner.

I can't wait for another fun month with Mother Goose Time. This is such a great way to spend the day with my kids. Learning, crafting, playing and experiencing the world and nature in different ways each day.

Ocean Commotion: Whats Coming Up?

Ocean Commotion with Mother Goose Time starts in a few days and we are super excited. Ocean animals get my kids crazy. I think I'm really looking forward to it too because we live in San Diego... the beach, aquariums, sea world. We have so many field trips to take. (Although, I hate the beach. I know, I know... how can you be from SD, CA and hate the beach? The sand, the sun and no shade, the itchy sea water, the sand EVERYWHERE. It's a nightmare, but, I'll risk it this month for the sake of "education". lol.)

Our Add-On for this month:

Dance N Beats: We are trying this again. The dances are fun and addicting, for me anyway. The boys mostly just stare at me while I follow along to the dvd. The guidebook that comes along with it is great however. It has pictures of the dance moves, words to the songs with written motions, additional crafts and additional activities to coordinate with the song.

Manipulatives:

In the Ocean Commotion unit, we received a basket of real shells to use as our counters for various activities and also a heavy duty plastic set of shapes.

I decided to get our calendar laminated this month. Putting the day on the calendar is a favorite around here. We will be focusing on a ABCC pattern this month, as the calendar shows.

Focus items:

Letter flowers: X W O

Sight word flowers: am what I

Blue, Triangle

Respectful

The flowers I keep in a tissue box. They stand up nicely and are easy to grab when using them for an activity.

The Teacher Guide & CD:

These complete lesson plans already provided are my favorite. It takes all the stress off of trying to come up with activities and plan what to teach yourself. I highlight the main discussion questions and songs/fingerplays/factual information to trigger memory quicker. I try to read through everything the night before and pull all materials for crafts/activities for an easier flow in the morning.

The cd has 12 fun songs that go along with the lessons. Last month we played ours so much, the cd started skipping.

These are a few things that I haven't utilized too much that are included in the Teacher Packet, besides the Gathering List. It's a quick reference of what materials you need to pull for the days activities. The Planning Journal has extra space for notes and a broken down agenda of the activities. Daily Calendar is another quick reference guide. The big chart is a breakdown of all the Skills & Standards that are incorporated into the daily activities.

Inside the individual days' packet:

Here is a sample of what a pre-packaged day may look like. There is a focus picture with a question that I hang on the wall. Day 5 of Ocean Commotion is about the Coral Reef. It includes a sheet with different types of fan coral to look at and compare. A craft is included with essential materials and instructions. Kids will make their own fan coral by cutting out shapes from this plastic mesh and then using a child friendly needle to thread yarn through the holes. Also introduced on Day 5, is our book for the month: OCEAN ANIMALS A to Z. It has an ocean animal for every letter of the alphabet and a large print of the letter itself. The child is asked to trace the large letter on the page in various ways.

We can't wait to share our month with you.

(PS I know my photo quality is terrible. I will try to improve my skills this month with a picture taking device other than my phone)

Sent from my Galaxy S®III

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)
Sent from my Galaxy S®III