Incorporating Music into Our Lessons

One of the most wonderful things about the curriculum we are using this year is the use of music throughout the lessons! My children love the songs provided and I love how they enrich their learning.  I will be putting a lot of videos in this blog post, so be sure to click on the links so you can be connected to the YouTube videos of songs we sing everyday. And please excuse the tune/tone of our songs as we are still learning to carry a tune. 😂

Many of us know through our own learning experiences that if you can put something to song, it will be learned faster and retained longer. Through a couple years of teaching, I learned that songs can also be used to communicate! In order to call my kids to our circle/learning time, I don't use my voice, I use the circle time song provided by Mother Goose Time.  This not only helps me to use my voice less, but it also helps my children to take control of their own learning. They are prompted with something (other than my voice) to take action and prepare themselves and their learning space. All the tunes can be found in the circle time album within the member resources. This is such an awesome feature! We use this album EVERYDAY and the kids absolutely love it.

Everyday we sing the Days of the Week Song. I have noticed a HUGE difference in my children's knowledge of the days of the week. We are now able to communicate so much better about upcoming events in our family because they understand the order of the days of the week. We also sing the ABCs everyday. It is SO simple and probably one of my favorite parts of the day because they are just so cute when they sing this song.

Mother Goose Time has incorporated songs about the shapes the children are learning and we are sure to sing them everyday. We are currently singing, "The Circle is Round" and "The Square has Four Sides." The songs are so simple, and when Hope and Jonathan are drawing or identifying shapes, they never fail to sing these songs.

Usually during our circle time, MGT has us sing a song about the topic of the day to the tune of another song. For instance, on the day we learned about walnuts, we sang "The Brown Walnut" to the tune of "The Muffin Man." There's even instrumental music on the circle time album, so we can have some backup in singing our song. Such a creative and fun way to learn!

Every month, MGT provides a themed CD full of songs for the current theme. So on the day we learned about walnuts, we closed our learning time with a songs about walnuts. This is a great way to end the day! The kids always finish our lesson time with a smile because of these songs.

For future learning, I would love to find some songs about letters (and their sounds), and numbers. If any of you teachers/homeschoolers have any resources, pass them my way!

www.mothergoosetime.com

Porcupines and Phonemic Awareness

Hello All! First, I just want to take a moment and express how blessed I feel to be able to homeschool my children and document our time together during this busy, crazy, and wonderful year.  This year has already been good for us! Establishing a routine and relationship of learning/teaching takes time and so much work, but it is SO worth it! To see my children learning from my teaching is one of the best feelings in the world! HOMESCHOOLING IS AWESOME!! Don't get me wrong... some days are long and difficult... But the next day is new and full of opportunity. It has been such a good year already.

Down to business... This week we learned about trees as habitats to the creatures that live in the trees, specifically porcupines, birds, bugs, raccoons and squirrels. The porcupine lesson was one of our FAVORITES so I will mostly be talking about that one in this post.

The art project for this day was SO cute! They had so much fun making and playing with their own porcupines.

Jonathan's porcupine turned out so well, and he was able to tell me all about the quills and the "defense" of the porcupine.  It was so fun to see what he already knew about the animal. He worked on his fine motor skills with the coloring, gluing, and placing the toothpicks to complete the puppet.

They also made their own porcupines with play dough and uncooked noodles. This was another great activity to practice fine motor skills and learn "bigger" and "smaller."

Hearing Hope say the word "porcupine" may have been my favorite part of this lesson!

The best activities for my Jonathan was the "Pokey Words" literacy activity. He had fun writing and matching the letters and even began reading some of them! I was able to assess his understanding of the letter names and sounds, and how far his phonological awareness has come. 

His phonemic awareness is definitely something that we can work on, as I would sound out the word "dig," and Jonathan would come out with a different word. So I would say, "/d/ /i/ /g/" and Jonathan would say "Gig!" with a lot of enthusiasm. Haha! So I looked up some activities that will help Jonathan blend the sounds he hears (or sound synthesis). Some of them are great! Such as this song: 

To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands":

If you think you know this word, shout it out!
If you think you know this word, shout it out!
If you think you know this word,
Then tell me what you've heard,
If you think you know this word, shout it out!

The teacher says a segmented word such as /k/-/a/-/t/, and the children respond by saying the blended word (pp. 700-701). We will definitely be implementing this throughout our school time to practice.

Another great resource this week was PBS! I got a free subscription for a week of PBS on my Amazon account and I found a "Wild Kratts" episode for every animal we studied! The kids LOVED it, and the show is so informative and fun. 

We also studied raccoons and bugs. We happened to see a huge grasshopper outside and got some great photos on the day we studied bugs. 

Thank you, Mother Goose Time, for the amazing ideas and resources for our homeschool adventures. We are truly blessed!

The Shaders Learn About Orchards

The Shaders Learn About Orchards

This Mother Goose Time unit could not have come at a better time in our lives, as we now live in Visalia, CA. If you don't know much about the central valley of California, there are a TON of beautiful orchards here! I was so excited to cover this week with the kiddos because not only would they learn more letters and numbers, they would learn and try new healthy foods. The beauty of homeschool is: FIELD TRIPS! We got out twice to enjoy learning more about orchards in the central valley.

This week the kids learned about apples, lemons, oranges, plums and cherries. Mother Goose Time always has really cute art projects to go with each topic. This is the kids favorite part of the day... They love to create things!

Oranges

Apples 

A bird in a tree :)

The children's museum here in town has an entire section dedicated to orchards and trees, so we made a point to visit here as well. The kids LOVED this part of the museum and spent a lot of time sorting and picking the "fruit."

The very BEST part of the whole week, was the opportunity we had to visit Jackson Family Farms in Kingsburg, CA. The kids (and I!) learned so much on this field trip! We all ate fresh organic fruit from the orchards (pomegranates, figs, persimmons, and of course apples). What a treat! I was SHOCKED at the new foods my picky eaters were willing to try.  We left with full hearts and bellies. It was an absolute joy for the children and I to be in the country again and spend time with people who love Jesus and the farm animals there.

Also, going to the orchard gave me a unique perspective on what my children already knew about orchards and trees. I was able to ask the kids questions about what they knew and I was surprised at how much they had caught on to the concepts! Jonathan was able to tell me the parts of a tree, what fruits might grow in an orchard, how roots work, and even the beginning stages of photosynthesis. It was a different way for me to assess what he knew... and much more fun than pen and paper!

Yummy apples!

"Farmer Rob" is the owner of the orchards

He was such a wonderful tour guide!

Hope loved their big dog!

Grass fed chickens roamed free

Thank you, Jackson Family Farm!

I am so thankful to Mother Goose Time for giving us the chance to open up this whole new world to my children. We are truly blessed to have the opportunity to homeschool for preschool this year. 

The Shaders Learn About Trees

Hey all! This week has been so fun in the Shader home.  We have been learning all about trees, and let me tell you, the kids have learned SO much! The Mother Goose Time curriculum had so many fun ideas and art projects and centered around learning about the tree. I supplemented the lessons with a few of my own ideas, art projects, and books from teaching elementary school throughout the years.  And the children were able to connect what they learned with a previous trip to see General Sherman, the largest tree on earth!

On day one we learned about roots. I decided to grow a couple of the black beans the MGT sent to us in a plastic bag. I wasn't sure it would work, but it totally did! The kids were able to observe the roots coming out in the following days. If you were really ambitious, you could have your children keep a little journal about what the roots/leaves look like everyday.

Our black beans growing in the plastic bag

On the day we learned about leaves, I had the children do a "leaf rub" art project. It's so simple! We gathered a few leaves from our backyard and were able to really enjoy learning about the veins in the leaves once they could clearly see them.

There was also a really fun activity organized by MGT for the children to put the leaves on a sheet or parachute and shake it to make the "leaves" fall. They had so much fun and practiced their colors as they picked them up. You could also write letters on your "leaves" and have the children practice their letter names and sounds as they pick them up. Such a great activity!

Here are some photos of our General Sherman trip we took a couple weeks ago! The kids had a great time on the hike and we were so glad we went... However in full discloser, not much learning happened when we were there! The children got car sick on the curvy drive up and vomited all over. That's why Hope is in a swimsuit top and 12 month pants in all of these pictures! By the time we got there, Mama was over it. Not much teaching happened there, but a couple weeks later the tree unit came along! I was able to show them photos and remind them of our visit. They were able to learn even though the trip did not go as planned.

A great book to read during this unit, was an Usborne book I've had for a while. "Secrets of the Apple Tree" is a "shine-a-light" book and has hidden pictures only revealed with a flashlight. The kids LOVE this book and learn more about creatures that live in and around a tree, along with the seasons of a tree. Such a cute book.

Whenever I can, I try to coordinate what the kids are watching on TV with what we are learning throughout the week. This week I found a really cute and short Berenstain Bears video about planting seeds and how to be patient, two themes for this month! I also found a great Cat in the Hat video on Maple Trees and how they grow.

That's all for this week! I never feel like this blog gets the attention it deserves, but I am so happy to be documenting our learning this year! I am so thankful to Mother Goose Time for giving us this opportunity.