A New Month, A New Theme! - What's In the Box? - Mother Goose Time

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 children for the next month. 

This month Mother Goose Time sent a thank you note to us!

This is our Experience God Children's Pack for the month.  Our story is about Jesus and the Fishermen, and the theme is God is All-Powerful.  Again, it goes amazingly well with the "Bubbles, Boats, and Floats" theme.  There are art projects, coloring pages, and parent newsletters.

This is the Teacher Pack for the month.  It includes story cards, a lesson book, a memory verse picture, and some story telling pieces.

Every month we get a Celebration Kit.  If I am being 100% honest, we don't always use them.  We used the Celebration of Peace in January, and the Valentine's Day Celebration, but we don't do the Easter Bunny or Santa, so December and March we didn't use them.  Something I think would be really cool is if there were two kits to choose from in months with religious holidays, so you could choose a religious Celebration Kit or a secular one.  This month we are celebrating Mother's Day, and we have a story (If You Give a Mom a Muffin) with story telling pieces, a couple of games, and some art projects. 

This is the Circle Time Kit.  Each month we get a new kit to update our Circle Time Display to fit the new theme, new month, and new focus topics.  This month we are learning 17, 18, diamond, A, D, and U, and the color purple.  Little Guy will be quite disturbed by this purple thing (EWWW!  Purple is for GIRLS! I can already hear him saying :D  ), but he will survive.

The Teacher Tool Bag has the new manipulatives (always at LEAST two a month, sometimes more!) we will be using this month, along with the Teacher Guide, Planning Journal, Theme Web and Gathering List.  Oh, and of course the new CD with themed songs.  The CD is always a certain type of music (Classical in December, Folk for Bees and Butterflies, and this month is Latin inspired) which I think is really fun.

These are the daily bags for the first week.  We start out Down the River.  I don't know if we will make it to a river this week since I have way to many small children to take to a river by myself, but maybe we will make it to a small creek if the weather is nice!

Next we are On the Lake.  I am *hoping* to take Little Guy swimming on Swimming day, but again I have a lot of kids and a trip to the pool with just him might not happen.  We will definitely be going to the duck pond near our house on Duck day though!

The third week is all about soapy water.  We will definitely have a lot of expansion this week.  My kids all take showers (some more enthusiastically than others...) because we have a lot of people to bathe in a short amount of time.  I will definitely be running a bubble bath for the boys* on Bath Time day, as well as letting Little Guy help was dishes the next day.  I am planning a short field trip on Car Wash day to go through a car wash, and we have a washing machine that has a light in it (not sure why...) so he can watch the laundry on Laundry day. 

 Our last week of Bubbles, Boats, and Floats is about Wonderful Water.  I think its pretty amazing that my three year old is going to learn the water cycle and states of water.  I am not sure my grade schoolers know that!

Mother Goose Time has a LOT of art projects every month, but we don't always get to them.  I wanted to make sure that everyone knows that Mother Goose Time is art intensive.  These are all the art projects that have been given to us this month.  Most of the materials are provided, other than things like tape, glue, and paint.

These are the art projects for Week One.  Every art project comes with a little flier on what you are doing so you have an example and you don't have to carry the Teacher Guide around.

 Week Two projects

 Week Three.

Week Four we will probably skip Water Police, or at least not call it by that name, just make a cool police hat.  I do not relish my three year old telling me to turn off the water while I do dishes or something.  We are working very hard on teaching him NOT to correct adults (because while it can be hilarious when he tells someone "It is not a burrito, it is an enchilada." it is not showing proper respect for your elders), and I think this might undermine our attempts a little bit...

I am so excited to get started on this next month.  So many fun games, cute projects and interesting books to read (each month there is a book list, with one book for every day, which we check out at the library).  We can't wait to share our fun!

*boys -  we have two boys at our house right now.  Boy Z is not old enough to do MGT (he turns two tomorrow) but he does hang out while we do it, and sometimes we have him do the easy stuff.

***All of this curriculum is provided for us free of charge from Mother Goose Time.  I am a blog ambassador for the brand, which means I get free product in exchange for sharing all the fun things we do and showing off our pictures!  All opinions are my own!***