Now for most people. this might not be brag-worthy, but for me, it is a bit of an accomplishment: We have done ALL of the activities (well, not the STEAM stations) for FOUR DAYS IN A ROW!
Last month we tried to do Mother Goose Time with the boys that I baby-sit, but it wasn't a huge a huge success, unless torn paper and slobbery manipulatives are successful.
I decided that I would try again at the beginning of each month, because at two, children really can mature a lot in 30 days. I had much better luck, and although I don't think the little boys are really grasping the point of anything, I think they at least kind of like it. Little Guy is pretty stoked because now we can do Mother Goose Time everyday again.
This month's theme is Alphabet Island, and for the first week we were "Setting Sail".
The summer months with Mother Goose Time are all about review, hence the alphabet twist to the island theme. Day one was just about Islands in general.
There are always coloring pages available to print in the Member Resources area of the website, one to go with each day. This month however, each of the children got their own coloring book. I love this idea, and would love to see a new coloring book each month, and although that probably isn't a reality, I will probably get better about printing and binding (stapling) the coloring pages each month. It is really nice to be able to sit them down to color while I make sure I have every thing ready for the next couple of projects.
Little Guy and I always discuss which colors he needs for each thing he is coloring. He did really well with coloring in the picture nicely, My only complaint about the coloring book is that as you can see on the "Hh" page, the picture of the day doesn't necessarily go with the beginning sound of the word pictured. My son noticed this on day 4 about wind, because the focus letter was "Dd" and wind begins with "w". He was a bit perplexed, but I told him to just go with it.
The first thing we did was the nametag activity. I love that they write their nametags almost every month, letting you see how they improve as the year progresses. This month we did something a little different, and I wrote the names on the nametags, then they (which means just Little Guy, because the other little boys are not to that point yet) copied their names onto a different piece of paper and decorated it like an island.
He did really well, although he likes to be lazy and write his nickname, not his full first name. In his defense, he doesn't often get called by his full first name, and it is less than half as long to just write what he goes by. However, my husband loves his first name and wants him to learn to write it, so I have been working on it with him (more in our other curriculum than in Mother Goose Time). You can see here that he drew an island, then I asked him what else might be on the island, and he drew a lot of animals. I asked him what would be in the sky and he drew a sun, then I asked him about the water and he added water. It was definitely the best picture he had done, and I INTENDED to actually keep this one (usually we do art for the sake of fun, then it sits on the counter for 1-30 days -depending on the clutter level of my counter - before making its way to the trash), but my husband was helping me clean up and it ended up in the trash as well.
To work on Little Guy's storytelling skills, I had him tell me about his island:
"My island is Africa. There is a bird, a sun, and my name. And a bird, and some sand, and a nest and some water. There are zoo animals."
After Island Names we played Number Islands. Which was actually accidentally quite torturous for the children, but more on that in a minute.
I put numbers 1-6 from our foam puzzle we received this month into a tub of water, then we rolled the pocket cube with number cards (that had dots like a die). After we rolled we got that number "island" from the tub.
The torture part was that it was a sunny day, and they were all out on the deck in bare feet. After a while they were all whining and complaining that it was hot. Little Guy elaborated that it was his FEET that were hot. Decks get really hot in the sun, but I had socks on so I didn't notice. We played this game really, really fast so we could get back inside.
I decided that I would try again at the beginning of each month, because at two, children really can mature a lot in 30 days. I had much better luck, and although I don't think the little boys are really grasping the point of anything, I think they at least kind of like it. Little Guy is pretty stoked because now we can do Mother Goose Time everyday again.
This month's theme is Alphabet Island, and for the first week we were "Setting Sail".
The summer months with Mother Goose Time are all about review, hence the alphabet twist to the island theme. Day one was just about Islands in general.
There are always coloring pages available to print in the Member Resources area of the website, one to go with each day. This month however, each of the children got their own coloring book. I love this idea, and would love to see a new coloring book each month, and although that probably isn't a reality, I will probably get better about printing and binding (stapling) the coloring pages each month. It is really nice to be able to sit them down to color while I make sure I have every thing ready for the next couple of projects.
The first thing we did was the nametag activity. I love that they write their nametags almost every month, letting you see how they improve as the year progresses. This month we did something a little different, and I wrote the names on the nametags, then they (which means just Little Guy, because the other little boys are not to that point yet) copied their names onto a different piece of paper and decorated it like an island.
He did really well, although he likes to be lazy and write his nickname, not his full first name. In his defense, he doesn't often get called by his full first name, and it is less than half as long to just write what he goes by. However, my husband loves his first name and wants him to learn to write it, so I have been working on it with him (more in our other curriculum than in Mother Goose Time). You can see here that he drew an island, then I asked him what else might be on the island, and he drew a lot of animals. I asked him what would be in the sky and he drew a sun, then I asked him about the water and he added water. It was definitely the best picture he had done, and I INTENDED to actually keep this one (usually we do art for the sake of fun, then it sits on the counter for 1-30 days -depending on the clutter level of my counter - before making its way to the trash), but my husband was helping me clean up and it ended up in the trash as well.
To work on Little Guy's storytelling skills, I had him tell me about his island:
"My island is Africa. There is a bird, a sun, and my name. And a bird, and some sand, and a nest and some water. There are zoo animals."
After Island Names we played Number Islands. Which was actually accidentally quite torturous for the children, but more on that in a minute.
I put numbers 1-6 from our foam puzzle we received this month into a tub of water, then we rolled the pocket cube with number cards (that had dots like a die). After we rolled we got that number "island" from the tub.
The torture part was that it was a sunny day, and they were all out on the deck in bare feet. After a while they were all whining and complaining that it was hot. Little Guy elaborated that it was his FEET that were hot. Decks get really hot in the sun, but I had socks on so I didn't notice. We played this game really, really fast so we could get back inside.
Spyglass was our last activity of the day. Each of the kids got to decorate a spyglass, and they each got an eyepatch. They we went outside and looked for things that were different colors. Mostly they just ran around that this point, but Little Guy knows all of his colors so I wasn't to worried about it.
Day one was a lot of fun, and I am really glad that the littler boys have gotten to a point where they can (sort of) participate. Little Guy loves Mother Goose Time so much, and always learns a lot about the topic we are studying, so I love when we can incorporate it into every day!
We receive Mother Goose Time for free in exchange for sharing our pictures and experiences. All opinions are my own.
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