Wife, Then Mama

Each month, along with the preschool curriculum from Mother Goose Time  we get the Experience God add-on pack.  It is full of games, crafts, and devotions, all designed to help small children understand God.  We don't always do everything in the guide, but we do quite a few activities, Little Guy learns the Bible verse*, and we read the story multiple times. This month the theme was that God is all-powerful, and the story was Jesus and the Fish - because Mother Goose Time is the BEST at maintaining a cohesive theme!  I love the story cards that we get.  The pictures on the front help Little Guy remember the story, and the story on the back (with interactive prompts) helps me tell the story fluidly rather than rambling.  This month to go along with the story cards we got some story telling pieces, which was fun.  He did pretty well at accurately retelling the story without much prompting, and it was pretty cute! *Little Guy learns the vers...

Most things I review get positive reviews.  Some things do not.  This book is one of the "do nots". How to Weep in Public was SUPPOSED to be a funny book about depression.  I know, I know, not politically correct to joke about, but then I am not politically correct.  Instead it was a depressing, offensive book about depression. Funny books make me laugh.  This one didn't even make me smirk (in its defense, I only read about 1/4 of it before I gave up) so it wasn't that funny.  It wasn't my mood, because the book bored me so much that I read it over the course of like two months.  It was offensive.  Lots of sexual jokes and disrespect for religion.  But in all honesty, offensive things often make me laugh.  These didn't, they just made me offended or uncomfortable.  I wanted to like this book.  I really like humor books, and I am not actually very easily offended.  I was very disappointed by this book, and certain...

Bubbles, Boats and Floats has been such a fun theme!  Rainbow Day was really fun.  The first thing we did was talk about how rainbows were made.  First I asked who made rainbows, and he knew God did, so I was happy about that.  Aft er we established who created rainbows, I told him that when rain and sun are out at the same time it makes a rainbow.  Mother Goose Time provided us with Rainbow Weather pieces.  We were supposed to put them in a bag and draw two, but I just laid them face down, and we flipped over two of them.  If one was rain and the other was sun we brought out the rainbow. Then we played Rainbow Dominoes, which doesn't really need any explanation.  Rain, Rain, Go Away was a Rhyme Time poster with a letter matching twist.  We just laid the poster on the ground, because I seem to be out of scotch tape.  After we said the rhyme a few times we got out the hands-on letters and he matched them to the letters on ...

Mother Goose Time offers ample opportunity to learn about every subject you can think of for preschoolers.  Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, Bible, Reading, and of course, Science.  This summer we will have a whole month dedicated to Science, which I am pretty excited about, but Bubbles, Boats and Floats had quite a few awesome experiments we did last week. This first series of pictures is of an activity called Bubble Sock.  While he was eating breakfast I cut the bottom off of a plastic bottle and put a sock over the top, which he was very curious about, but I was quite vague in answering his questions. After breakfast we did the activity.  Little Guy "reading" the instructions Dipping the bottom of the bottle in the bubble solution.  He has no idea what is going to happen next. SO many bubbles!!!  This was really fun.  When he first blew in the bottle the bubbles just fell off the end of the sock and he di...

This month has been a lot of fun with Mother Goose Time .  I only have one picture from Dishes Day, and it was of Little Guy using the pattern cards.  The activity was called Scrub, Rinse, Dry.  He always calls us this activity "making a long train", and he likes it to start with, but gets a little bored at the end.  He did fairly well with the ABC pattern. On Dishes Day we also did Painting Plates, where he used a fork to paint on a paper plate, but I apparently used my camera to take a picture instead of my phone. On Laundry Day (also known as EVERY day at my house LOL) we played Laundry Words, which is a word family game.  Honestly, Little Guy is not good at sounding out words at this point.  He did have fun using clothespins, and matching the letters, but he didn't really sound out anything.  We also did a really fun activity called Bubble Sock, but I am not going to talk about it on this post.  Little Guy and I re...

Some things are pretty mundane.  Dishes, laundry, bathtime.  But when you are three, EVERYTHING is exciting, and Mother Goose Time  always provides fun stuff to build on that enthusiasm!  I was really looking forward to this week because there were a lot of easy activities to really entertain Little Guy.  We started the week with Bath Time.  First we read Harry, the Dirty Dog.  Despite it being a very old book, and pretty cute, I don't think I have ever read it.  Little Guy really liked it and has been looking at it a lot since we read it. Our first game was supposed to be done with sponges, but since I don't have any sponges, we used a weird clip thing from those vacuum seal bags.  First we spun the spinner, then we had to balance the "sponge" on the parts we had spun.  First he had fun balancing them on his body, then he thought it was way more fun to balance them on me. Later we continued with the Harry the Dirty Dog th...

This week we were learning about things we might see On the Lake.  Mother Goose Time set us up with some very fun activities for this week, and on Friday we combined Duck day and Rock day, and it was a lot of fun! Usually Little Guy is dressed for school time, mainly because we take pictures, not because I am actually good at getting up and ready for the day.  But he had asked if he could do his Mother Goose Time in his pajamas, and since I am always wearing my pajamas I thought that was only fair!  I figure it can't hurt anything as long as I don't make a habit of it! Little Guy did so well!  I think it might be time to start doing the assessment questions again.  I took a break from assessment after the first month or two, because it was stressing me out and making it unpleasant for Little Guy.  He just wasn't "passing" the assessment, which was making me feel like a failure and become rather pushy.  Now that he is three and a little m...

I love the Mother Goose Time curriculum that we have been using.  It is teaching my son so many things I never would have taught him on my own.  Here are just some of the things my just turned three year old knows only because of Mother Goose Time: Your heart pumps blood Bees and butterflies have a proboscis Scorpions have pedipalps Recognizes cardinals, blue jays, owls, robins, and probably a few other birds Can identify a huge variety of musical instruments (more accurately than I can) I am so pleased to offer him such a varied learning experience.  But I have to get better at it.  In December he knew all of his letters, numbers, and most of the sounds the letters make.  Before Mother Goose Time that is all I was teaching him.  Last week I sat down with him and he only knows most of his letters, a few of the phonetical sounds, and some of the numbers.  This is NOT Mother Goose Time's fault.  They are great at incorporating learning ...

Back in November when I was just starting Mother Goose Time , I did a REALLY long series of posts on exactly what was in the school bus box .  I was incredibly excited, and wanted to share everything! I am still super excited every month when our Mother Goose Time box arrives, and every month I PLAN to do an unboxing video, but unfailingly my camera is low on battery, and I am not going to wait until it charges to open the box.  Plus then I have to wait for the kids to be sleeping, because getting them to be quiet while they see all the fun stuff that comes out of the box is impossible. This month's theme is perfect for the warmer weather that *should* be coming in May.  I do live in the Pacific Northwest, so it could just end up raining all month.  But I digress.  Our learning focus this May will be "Bubbles, Boats, and Floats".  This is what you get on your porch each month.  A cute box, full of almost everything you need to teach your ch...

Our family prays multiple times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime), but sometimes the rote prayers we say everyday are a hindrance to teaching children what prayer really is: Talking to God.  This month the focus of Mother Goose Time's Experience God add-on pack was God Wants Me to Pray.  Each week was a different topic, ranging from prayers of praise to prayers of petition and intercession.  Pretty deep stuff for a 2-3 year old. The story for the month was the Easter story.  Our character trait for the month was forgiveness.  Seriously, I could not be happier with the way that Mother Goose Time has perfected the art of themes. Every month our Experience God Children's Pack comes with craft activities to do once a week.  One of our activities this month was called "Pray Every Day".  We wrote numbers on the calendar, then decorated it with stickers.  Along with our lesson, this was a reminder that we should pray every day. ...

Mother Goose Time is great at finding ways to teach kids things while they are playing.  One of the ways it does this is through the arts.  Music, visual arts, dramatic play and movement are all ways that Mother Goose Time respects different children's styles of learning, and the process of learning through play. They always provide ample opportunities for learning through visual arts.  Little Guy isn't very good at learning this way, because he doesn't do the activities in a very accurate manner.  They are more fine motor development skill building activities.  Music is a fun way to learn things, and usually learn them long term.  Back in January when we were learning about Safari animals, we sang a song about respecting animals space.  He still sometimes sings it.  He also learned about musical instruments back in December, and still remembers how to properly hold a violin! The amount of dramatic play that Little Guy does now is am...