Dinosaur Egg STEAM Station

One of our favorite aspects of Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum is the STEAM stations. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math.  Each day, our lesson includes an activity that focuses on building  STEAM skills.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to reiterate that we receive Mother Goose Time for free in exchange for sharing the journey with our blog readers. With that in mind, let me tell you about the latest STEAM station that my kids are begging to do again and again...
Frozen Dinosaur Eggs!




These activities do require some prep work and materials outside of what's included in our monthly subscription box.  For instance, "frozen dinosaur eggs" required me to purchase latex balloons and spend time stuffing dinosaur counters (included in our subscription box) and water into the balloons. It had to be done the night before, in order to allow time for the "eggs" to freeze. I'm not the biggest fan of activities that require advanced preparation on my part, but in fairness... how were they going to mail me frozen eggs?

With a little prep, we had these!

The kids enjoyed exploring the eggs and squirting warm water over them using some plastic condiment containers I purchased at the local dollar store. The warm water helped our eggs to "hatch." Not to mention, my kids love anything that means they get to play with water. Why is that?

Anyway, we did several eggs. The children had so much fun that we ended up repeating the activity every day that week! Those little frozen eggs led to some fun conversations about hatching eggs, melting and freezing water, and hot vs. cold.

But the best part, was the way they helped each other! More than introducing STEAM skills or all the fun spin off conversations, I am grateful for the community that activities like this foster. Mother Goose Time already includes community building activities every day and that's awesome. But what I love is how the STEAM stations, literacy activities, and math games all foster a sense of community by encouraging the children to work together and help one another learn and succeed.

Dinosaur Math!

This month has been all about dinosaurs! We are enjoying learning about different types of dinosaurs & the world they lived in long ago. I've become a huge fan of our preschool curriculum and I recommend it to many of my friends for this age group. At two years old, our girls are learning so much and having a great time too! Not to mention it's still relevant and interesting to our five year old (although I don't recommend it as a stand-alone curriculum for kindergarten). 
So what are we using? Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum with a Little Goose adapted guide for younger children (like the girls).  Mother Goose Time comes every month in a fun yellow bus box which is super exciting for our kiddos. I write about our experiences with Mother Goose Time here on the blog in exchange for our packages but all opinions and stories are my own.

What are they actually learning? Each day we start with a short circle time discussion and a fun themed calendar, then we have a community "challenge," an art project, a literacy activity, a story, a song, and a math activity. Today I want to talk about some of our favorite math activities so far this month.

Lesson 7 of 20 focused on learning about the stegosaurus. Despite promptly notifying me that a stegosaurus is his least favorite kind of dinosaur, Noah jumped right on board with the day's math activity and all the children had fun helping each other add spikes to the back of the stegosaurus. They were all excited to reach 17 spikes (In case you didn't know, a real stegosaurus had 17 spikes!). This activity helped introduce the girls to number concepts and served as listening comprehension for Noah.

Lesson 12 of 20 focused on learning about dinosaur heads. After having lots of fun dancing around in our dinosaur headbands with sharp t-rex teeth, the children had fun learning about patterns with the awesome dinosaur counters Mother Goose Time sent this month. Each month we get fun, themed counting manipulatives to help the children with their math activities. It's probably one of their favorite yellow bus box items each month. Today, we worked together to make different dinosaur patterns. Ada Grace truly enjoyed the pattern guide included with today's activity.

Lesson 13 of 20 was all about dinosaur tails (easily the most fun part of the dinosaur). The kids spent all day wearing around homemade tails and pretending to be dinosaurs. Noah even fell asleep in his tail! The math activity for this lesson involved building tails for various dinosaurs from the plastic links we received earlier in the month. All the children worked hard to find the right colors and attach them to the dinosaurs while building sorting skills as well as fine motor skills.

Stay tuned to hear about how Tray Plays and STEAM Stations help foster community by giving our kids opportunities to explore & work together in next week's post.

Dinosaur Art Projects

Continuing with our dinosaur theme, the kiddos are enjoying creating many different types of art this month. Our preschool curriculum, Mother Goose Time, features a new art project daily.
I'm a fan of the way they are seamlessly incorporated into our lessons and the way they expose our children to a variety of artists and processes.
Their favorite part? Besides loving dinosaurs, I think they're most excited that mom is saying "yes!" to painting. (They know I can't stand the mess.)
Last week, we really enjoyed making our own dinosaurs with shape cut outs and sponge paintings with dinosaur stencils. I thought the latter turned out super cute!

 Dino Shape Art was all about letting the children look at an image of origami dinosaurs ("dinosaurs" created from folded paper shapes) and allowing them to imagine their own dinosaurs using the provided shape cut outs. All I had to supply was the glue!

Noah commented on how strange it was to make dinosaurs from shapes like stars and hearts. Ada Grace enjoyed naming the different shapes as she positioned them on the paper. It was a great way for her to build vocabulary and practice speech sounds.

In the end the children's pictures might not have looked much like actual dinosaurs, but the focus was on the process and I feel they really got a lot out of that experience.

But my favorite art project of the week by far was Dinosaur Stencil Art! In this Invitation to Create, my kids got to use cardboard stencils and sponges provided by Mother Goose time to paint dinosaurs. 

I loved hearing about their color choices and watching their unique dinosaurs come to life on paper!

Stay tuned to hear more about our adventures with Mother Goose Time and dinosaurs next week!

Preschool Paleontologists: Dinosaur Excavation Art!

As many of you know, we have been learning with Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum for several months. We receive our curriculum free of charge in exchange for honest reviews and tales from the trenches each week.
After a short break due to spending the holidays with a newborn, we are back to exploring with our January box.  This box is probably our favorite so far! My kids totally love dinosaurs and January's lessons are all about dinosaurs.
Here's a look at one of our favorite activities from week one: Excavation Dig!

This activity helps children practice fine motor skills while learning about shapes and developing their creativity.  It's part of Mother Goose Time's Invitation to Create category which is often a big favorite for my daughter. However, my son isn't usually too keen to participate in creative art activities. He's more of a "math and science" type. With that in mind, I set it up like a real dig.

The children got to be paleontologists and "dig up" the provided dinosaur skeleton pieces by uncovering them with paintbrushes.

Then, the children arranged their dinosaur bones on the provided background paper as they wished and practiced pasting the pieces to the paper. Their "dinosaurs" turned out really cute!

Noah, ever the perfectionist, carefully arranged his dinosaur skeleton as it would appear in a museum while Ada Grace experimented with placing her pieces in different spots all over her paper before finally deciding on a very "abstract" orientation.

Other favorites from the week included fossil stamp art, a t-rex teeth necklace, Dinosaur Bones by Bob Barner, and (as always!) music and movement activities with the Dancing with Dinosaurs CD.
Check back next week to hear more about our adventure with dinosaurs as we explore types of dinosaurs including the Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Pterodactyl!