Sonshine and Shade: Differentiating A Mother Goose Time Activity

The kids and I began our homeschool preschool a couple weeks ago and we are SO excited to be sharing it with you all!

One of the BEST parts about the Mother Goose Time curriculum is the lesson plan! They send all the lesson plans, along with the supplies for the plan, to me in the mail! They have wonderful activities, art projects, literacy and math games. It is seriously so much fun! And basically gives direction and structure to their learning.

A Mother Goose Time Lesson Plan

The activity the kids loved the MOST this week was the "Letter Slap." They sent two copies of the alphabet to me along with this lesson. All I needed to do was cut them out and supply the fly swatter. SO EASY!!! And I found that this was an extremely easy lesson to differentiate for my children's abilities.

Letter Slap by Mother Goose Time

Jonathan (my 4 year old) is just on the cusp of reading. He knows all his letter names and sounds. He can recognize all his letters and is just now beginning to blend sounds together to decode simple words. Hope (age 2) is just beginning to recognize letters and knows a few sounds.

For Jonathan, I started by showing him the letters he should slap and he would tell me the name and the sound and then slap that letter (He loved this part!) This was WAY too easy for him, so after a few turns like that, I would say (without showing him) "Slap the letter M." He would slap it and proceed to tell me the sound. After a few turns that way, I would say, "Slap the letter that makes the 'fffffffff' sound," and he would proceed to slap it and tell me the name. This kind of differentiated instruction tells me that he knows his letter names and sounds very well! He can recall names and sounds without struggle.

One of the best parts about homeschooling:
Not wearing a shirt!

Slap that letter!

There are so many ways to differentiate this activity alone! You could give them a short decodable word and they could slap a series of letters. If your little one is struggling, just show them the letter to slap and have them slap the matching one. This is what I did with Hope, as she is just beginning to understand the letters. I was surprised to hear her know a few of her sounds though! They know more than we realize.

After a little supervision, I left them to play on their own. After just a couple squabbles over the fly swatter, they fell into a routine of helping one another and playing. It was so fun!

There have been so many fantastic activities and hands-on learning experiences this week! Here are just a couple more pictures.