Q & A: Daily Transitions with Mother Goose Time

Let me start by telling you that transitioning to and from lessons each day requires a certain amount of finesse at times. We usually start our day after everyone is dressed. The children wake up around 7:00 am and we head to the kitchen. Sometimes they play while I make breakfast for everyone. Other times they're too much underfoot and I resort to cartoons to finish breakfast preparation.

I wish I could say that we all sit down to breakfast together and start the day with our daily bible readings. I dreamed of starting our days that way. Clearly, I underestimated what it would be like to begin a week day at 30+ weeks pregnant with two (sometimes three) small children. These days I settle for a quick blessing of the food and a meal that doesn't involve me instructing my two year old not to throw her food.

Before I dive in to the question & answer portion of this week's post, let me start by reminding everyone that Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum has agreed to provide  us with the complete monthly curriculum and Little Goose supplement for the month of September free of charge in exchange for sharing my honest and unbiased opinions and thoughts.

How do we start our day with Mother Goose Time?

After breakfast, they get dressed and brush their teeth before we all meet at the table to start the school day.
Usually we start with reading a related book. Often the suggested Mother Goose Time book is a big hit and we read it several times. This was the case with the Eric Carle book (From Head to Toe) from week one and the book Ada Grace affectionately named "2,3, Apples!" (Ten Red Apples) from week two.

Then we move on to our first Little Goose two Little Goose activities. These activities build appropriate developmental skills for their ages and often include an "arts & crafts" element that the girls generally enjoy.
Usually, at this point in our lessons, I'm starting to see a lack of focus and/or a need to wiggle from one or both of the girls. That's when I skip ahead to the Wiggle & Giggle activity. While they dance and sing, I set up the supplies for the Tray Play or STEAM Station. It's generally easier to transition them to an open-ended activity like a Tray Play after all that goofy wiggling and singing.
Then, I can get their focus back for the final activity. After that final activity, it's usually time for lunch.

Do we do the Tray Play from Little Goose as well as the STEAM Station?

Sometimes. It really depends on the activities. Occasionally, I feel the Tray Play is a bit redundant. For instance, in Lesson 11 (Shirts) one activity invited the children to make an color their own shirts. The girls really enjoyed it! However, the tray play also invited them to color a shirt. Both girls had lost interest in coloring by the time we reached the Tray Play so we skipped that activity for the day and did the STEAM Station instead. 

Other times an activity doesn't work out for one reason or another. There was a STEAM station involving noodles that sounded like wonderful fun, but due to some allergies it wasn't a great idea for us. One Tray Play involved making homemade play dough and I admit, I cringed at the thought of it so we altered our activity for the day.

Do we use Mother Goose Time's "Circle Time" portion?

No, most of the time we don't. I always check in with "Circle Time" in the teacher's guide. We often do the greeting song and spend a little time with our calendar. Generally, the community challenge doesn't work well in our home school setting so we tend to skip it. 

What about the "Cuddle & Snuggle" Portion?

Often we stop after our Tray Play/STEAM Station activity and save the Cuddle & Snuggle for a time later in the day. It's usually perfect for the hazy moments after naps when they don't want to go back to sleep but aren't quite back to "full energy" yet.

Do we complete all the activities given/suggested by Mother Goose Time every day?

No. The girls are very young (both very recently turned 2) and we want to keep their lessons short and sweet for the time being. The Little Goose Curriculum Supplement does a great job of applying the important parts of the larger more in-depth preschool lesson and leaving out the activities meant for somewhat older children. However, I still occasionally find an activity I feel the girls aren't ready for or that they will not enjoy. I tend to skip these activities or adapt them as necessary. I really appreciate the wide variety of fabulous activities Mother Goose Time provides us with that make it possible for me to pick and choose in a way that works for my kids and myself.

September with Little Goose

We are in the middle of week #3 (clothing) with Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum.  The kids are enjoying it more each day! 

The main participants are my daughter and my niece. They're both two years old (newly two at that!) so we use the Little Goose supplement for infants and toddlers with them. Noah, my almost 5 year old, is busy with his own kindergarten curriculum, but he still likes to tag along for "the fun ones" with the little girls.
Just a reminder, in the interests of full disclosure, we receive our curriculum free of charge in exchange for our honest opinions and reviews.
As the queen of eclectic schooling, I'm often surprised by the ease of lesson planning with Mother Goose Time and the satisfaction it brings me to hand over the reins (for the most part) to the folks who send us the big yellow bus box. For the most part, I love it!

Life is pretty crazy right now between my daughter's speech therapy appointments and preparing for the new baby, so we have mostly been focusing on Little Goose activities without attempting many of the more challenging preschool activities (meant for older kiddos) in the regular teacher guides. We average 4 to 5 activities from Little Goose each day and I'm pleased to report that my daughter's vocabulary is exploding!

Here are our favorite parts of Little Goose:

Cuddle & Snuggle - 

According to Mother Goose Time, the purpose of this curriculum feature is to foster emotional well-being, positive relationships, self-esteem, and confidence.  Since we use our curriculum primarily with two little girls, I feel like that makes this part of the day extra important. Girls in our society often struggle with low self-esteem and lack confidence as they grow and face growing pressure to look and act a certain way. I appreciate having these small moments in our day to spend extra time building a strong foundation with our girls while they are young.

Last week, the girls had a lot of fun with every cuddle & snuggle we did! On Monday, they spent time looking at family photos and naming all our loved ones. On Tuesday, we made silly sounds together in keeping with a focus on one of our 5 senses (hearing). I also let them practice with different volumes at this time. There was lots of giggling as we practiced yelling "MOO!" and whispering "cock-a-doodle-doo." Thursday, my 5 year old gladly participated in one of his favorite activities: rubbing lotion! We talked about our sense of touch as we touched one another's hands and felt the squishy lotion between our fingers.

Wiggle & Giggle - 

[No, not all the curriculum features have such cute names!] However, these are our favorite! Mother Goose Time does offer a more in-depth music and dance curriculum feature for older children that I almost included in my first order. My kids love music and I was thrilled to discover "Wiggle & Giggle" is a daily part of the Little Goose supplement. In case you're wondering... music, dancing, and other activities set to music are also included in the traditional Mother Goose Time schedule for older children as well.

So why include this feature? Mother Goose time understands that physical and mental development are intertwined for young children and physical activities help stimulate brain processing and gross motor coordination. Besides, it's a great way to break up the activities that are more "sit down at the table" type deals.

My children have loved almost every song on the Head to Toe CD included in this month's box! They love it so much that lately I have to be sure it's in the car any time we leave the house. My daughter's favorite songs are "Too Hot to Touch" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Even my son enjoys the song called "Dancing Shoes." All three kids have a great time dancing around the house, playing freeze dance or hot potato with the music, and singing along in the car.

Check back in a few days for a few of our favorites from Week #2 on the five senses and Week #3 about clothing. The kids are loving it and I can't wait to share it with you!

Mother Goose Time: Getting Started

September is our first month using Mother Goose Time curriculum for young children. 

Being the self-described queen of eclectic homeschooling, I'll admit that I was nervous about using a "boxed curriculum." But Mother Goose Time has a lot to offer and I'm so glad we decided to use it for our youngest two learners this year!
Before I start telling you what we love about it, let me share (in the interest of full disclosure) that we do currently receive Mother Goose Time and the Little Goose companion free of charge in exchange for sharing our honest opinions and experiences on the blog.

Mother Goose Time sends an entire month of curriculum, organized and ready-to-use, in a giant yellow school bus box each month. When our box arrived, my daughter Ada Grace was the first to discover and unbox all the cool stuff. I was really excited about the way it is all organized. Each day's curriculum is packaged with all the activities in individual bags.
(It's a lot of plastic bags, but we have been able to reuse them for lots of other things around the house and eventually they make their way to our recycling bin, so I don't feel too guilty about it.)

Each month has a theme and this month the theme is all about the body. I ordered enough supplies for my oldest because he loves learning about the human body, but he has only been interested in participating in about 1/2 the activities with the two year old girls.
For our first week, we focused on body parts: head, arms, legs, hands and feet. Ada Grace and Elly are inseparable best friends, but they have very different personalities. Therefore, they both enjoyed different activities each day. In the end, there were some activities that all the kids just loved!

5 Favorites from this week:

1.     The Head to Toe CD - They loved dancing, playing freeze dance, and singing along with the songs on the disc. Not even my oldest could resist wiggling and giggling with the little ones as they danced around the living room!
2.     My Puppet Activity - All the children had fun making puppets from paper bags and construction paper. (I liked that I only had to provide glue and crayons.) After they finished building their puppets, my oldest organized an imaginative puppet show for me in the living room. Elly, my niece, enjoyed hugging and caring for her puppet for the remainder of the day. 
3.     X Ray - This was Noah's favorite activity! He even asked if he could keep the x ray pictures Mother Goose Time sent as a visual to display in his room. In this activity, the children explored bones in the body by creating skeletons with some neat punch out "bones," black construction paper, and chalk. Noah was focused on making his skeleton anatomically correct, while the girls just enjoyed pasting "bones" all over their papers and having too much fun with our glue sticks.
4.     Big Blue Pocket - Each child made a pocket with construction paper, yarn, crayons, and pom poms. Ada Grace insisted on coloring her pocket purple (her favorite) and Noah enjoyed gluing extra pom poms to his pocket. My favorite part? Having the children practice threading with the yarn in the pockets is a great way to build fine motor skills in preparation pencil grip and early writing.
5.     Head to Toe by Eric Carle - All of the children love the book! This story is great for teaching them about the way their bodies can move and the way different animals use their bodies. Not to mention, they all loved acting out the different animal movements. Can you wave your arms like a monkey or arch your back like a cat? They definitely thought it was a lot of fun to try! 

...stay tuned to learn more about Mother Goose Time and next weeks lessons about the five senses.