A Visit to the Zoo and E is for Elephant

With our theme being "A to Zoo" this month, of course we had to visit the zoo! My parents were recently in town, so we went to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo and had a BLAST! The kids loved seeing the animals and spending time with their Nana and Papa. We saw many animals including a baby rhino, a tiger, goats and many more.  We even got to feed the giraffes, definitely a favorite moment for my children and I!

This week we also completed the "E is for Elephant" lesson done by Mother Goose Time.  The first project we did was certainly a favorite this week! The cutest art project on the elephant with a party blower for the trunk! So cute! It took a bit of learning for my two year old to get the party blower to work, but oh my goodness... So cute and so much fun!

The kids also completed their journals sent by Mother Goose Time. They practiced writing their names, drew their favorite zoo animal, and wrote the letter of the day.

I am so sad to say that this will be my last blog post about Mother Goose Time. Jonathan is ready for kindergarten curriculum, and Hope will be attending a very sweet preschool next year. Using the Mother Goose Time curriculum this year has been WONDERFUL! I am so privileged to be able to stay home and homeschool my children, and Mother Goose Time gave me all that we needed (and more!) to be successful this year. Thank you, MGT, for choosing me to be a "blog ambassador." It was truly and honor! I am so confident that I have given my children a wonderful foundation to their education and our first year of homeschooling was a SUCCESS!

D is for Dolphin...

"D" is for Dolphin was such an exciting day for my kiddos! We were so happy to participate in the hands-on activities and have fun with our learning.

Our first activity was to make our own dolphins out of shapes. The kids were very into this activity and I loved that it was open-ended, so Jonathan and Hope could make their own choices about how design this project. They did so well! We first talked about the shapes that were on a dolphin, an oval for the body, a triangle for the fin, etc. 

The next activity is always a favorite in this house! It was a memory game with shapes. The kiddos would match the shapes and then get to keep the pair. This was such a good lesson for social awareness and good sportsmanship.  They learned to take turns and be happy for one another when they found matches... a tough lesson to learn!

My sweet 2 year old struggled
with taking turns...
Good (and tough!) lessons learned today.

The last activity was my FAVORITE of the whole week! The kids threw a ball into a hoola hoop (I used string instead of a hoola hoop), and wrote down the letter they hit on a big note pad. This was so fun! We talked about how dolphins do tricks with hoola hoops and they were doing tricks too! Each letter they hit, we said the sound and a word that started with that sound, and wrote it down. I was so surprised to see how much they knew! Hope knows all her letters and sounds, and Jonathan needed very little help with writing the letters. AWESOME!!

Thank you, Mother Goose Time, for the wonderful lesson and review of letters. We have been so blessed to be homeschooling this year!

C is for Camel...

Mother Goose Time had us do a day on the letter "C" as part of our "A to Zoo" unit this month. Such a cute day, full of lots of sand and hands on activities. Hint: If you use kinetic sand, instead of regular sand, there is less mess with the same feel!

One of the first things I did, was show the photos of their Nana and Papa on a camel. Jon and I have both ridden a camel, but it was years ago, and I don't have a photo. My parents recently went to Israel and had the opportunity to ride a camel on their journey! Amazing!

We drew a path of glue and sand on a letter "C" for our camels to journey. The kids had fun with this part of the lesson!

We used "spy glasses" given to us by Mother Goose Time, to search for things on an "A to Zoo" poster. As an added component, we searched for the things through sand.  Each thing we searched for had the children answering questions and participating. I like this activity because it is excellent practice in following directions.

We read the book, "Dear Zoo."  Such a cute story that had the children thinking about what kind of zoo animal they would like to have as a pet.

The last activity had us practicing our number skills by rolling the dice and finding the corresponding number under a pile of sand.  Jonathan's number sense is really coming along. He can look at the dice and know the number, simply by recognizing the pattern on the dice. We used this opportunity to discover more/less, and pattern counting.

Thank you, Mother Goose Time for the opportunity to learn with my children! We are having such fun!

B is for Bird!

Hello All! I am so sad that this will be our last month of Mother Goose Time Curriculum! And the last unit is SO GOOD! I am so happy to be continuing to learn throughout this month with my children. The new unit is call "A to Zoo" and the kiddos will be studying a new letter and animal everyday. Yesterday we did "A is for Alligator" and today we did "B is for Bird."  I must be honest with all of you... I am going to writing blog posts for the next few weeks, in the next couple days because of our impending move. We move from California to Georgia/South Carolina in 2 weeks, and I want to get all our blog posts done before we get there. I will be completing the rest of this unit throughout the summer with Hope and Jonathan after we have settled into our new home.

One of the first things I reminded the children of, was our visit to the South Carolina Zoo about a year ago. They had an amazing bird exhibit where the birds land on you! I showed the kiddos a bunch of photos and videos of that time.

A wonderful part of the curriculum this month is the little alphabet book that is included! Each day, the kiddos get a new letter/animal to add to their books. Hope just loves to read the book daily as she adds her pages. I laminated these books to keep them sturdy and reusable as we go.

(I would like to add a little side note about my daughter's dress. I know many of our pictures this month have included Hope wearing this poofy, yellow dress.  She gets to choose her own outfit for the day if she sleeps all night long, and it is almost always this dress! And I honestly don't care if she wears that dress daily, as long as I get a full night of sleep! Haha!!

Our first activity had the kiddos making a letter "B" out of feathers. Jonathan also wanted to make a lower case "b," so we made sure to do that as well. We had a little trouble getting started, so I pulled out the big letter given to us by MGT to help.

We made our own beautiful birds with feathers!

We "fed baby birds" worms and berries made of play dough. I loved this activity because the kids drew a card with a number written on it, and that is how much they were to feed the bird.

We found letters in a book provided by MGT. This book is so cute and corresponds directly to the animals/letters we are learning this month. The kids have already asked me to read it multiple times.

All in all, another great day in our little preschool! Thank you, Mother Goose Time, for another wonderful lesson.

A Day on Rainbows...

The weeks until our move to Georgia are passing quickly! We only have 3 weeks left here in California and are beginning to pack up our lives to move across the country. We are so thrilled to be moving, and so sad to be leaving this wonderful town.  I will miss our friends so much!

This week Mother Goose Time is wrapping up our Bubbles, Boats and Floats theme with the wonders of water. Our favorite day this week was spent on rainbows! The kids and I had so much fun learning about the colors of the rainbow and how it is formed.  This day in particular had them practicing the names of their colors and doing a lot of team work.

Our first activity called for teamwork in building their own rainbow. We first discussed the order of the colors and the Roy G. Biv clue to help them remember. We also sang a rainbow song that the kids already knew.

I found the teamwork part of this portion was especially difficult, considering their ages and development level. There was some bickering during the construction of this artwork, so I stepped in quite a bit to help them make their rainbow. We talked about the importance of working together and each of them doing their part. It turned out so cute!

Next was our "Make and Play" art project in which the children each made their own rainbows.  This gave me the opportunity to talk about the components of what makes a rainbow. In order for a rainbow to shine there must be clouds, rain and sunshine. Jonathan did this entire project on his own: cutting, gluing and drawing. I am so proud of him! Hope definitely needed help, but she also did very well!

I had the kiddos watch the song we sang earlier on YouTube and they sang along. I also read them the story of the first rainbow... The one created by God in Noah's Ark. The kids LOVED this story!

Next came an activity where the kids did some roll play with some characters from a book. Mother Goose Time provides these really sweet books about Forest Friends and how they learn responsibility and other character traits. This story had the children pretending to pick up garbage out of the river and acting responsibly. Such a cute story and so fun for my kiddos to act it out with the little paper characters provided by MGT.

Our last activity was matching the water-themed, paper dominoes provided by Mother Goose Time. This activity also required some teamwork to get the pieces all in order. I was so proud of how they did! Of course, this was at the end of our learning time, so tempers and attention spans were a bit short, but overall, they did very well. At the end, we counted all the tiles.

 Thank you, MGT, for another great day in homeschool preschool!