“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.”
We are so excited to have been selected as Blog Ambassadors for Mother Goose Time, the company that develops and produces our amazing curriculum! In return for writing and sharing all the great things happening in our classrooms, we will receive free supplies and/or curriculum directly from Mother Goose Time.
For a complete list of Ambassadors, follow this link:
https://feedly.com/mothergoosetimepreschoolcurriculum/MGT%20Bloggers
When we talk about literacy in the classroom, it goes beyond just letters, the sounds they make and pre-reading skills. If you google “what is literacy?” the definition is…
Mother Goose Time takes a global approach to learning, which matches the way the brain is developing in the early childhood years. Each activity is carefully planned to include skills across the content areas, to pack the most learning and fun.
For the month of April, we are learning all about Bees and Butterflies. The first two weeks was focused on Bees and this week we shifted our attention to butterflies. Is is so fun to hear children using big words like “metamorphosis”, “chrysalis” and “larvae”.
Did you know that a caterpillar that forms a chrysalis will become a butterfly and a caterpillar that forms a cocoon will become a moth? One hangs and one lays- do you know which is which? Ask your child!
Our outside time has included many signs of Spring. We have been pulling out weeds from the garden beds and planting some wild flowers for our growing caterpillars to enjoy after they make their transformation.
Monday was all about “Eggs”. We gathered a variety of leaves from outside and made some guesses as to which kinds would be able to support Butterfly eggs and which probably wouldn’t.
Naturally, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” was on the MGT recommended book list for this month and we have been really enjoying retelling the story with our felt board!
Today was all about Caterpillars. We started sorting a dying noodles for our Butterfly Life Cycle sensory box (more on that another day).
We used our Pocket cube to practice our shape recognition, as we worked together to build the longest caterpillar. Whatever shaped was rolled, is what we picked out of the basket to add to the caterpillar. We measured each other and other things around the room in the same way.
To round out the plan for the day, we had a true letter learning activity, but even that incorporated fine motor development, teamwork and cooperation. We used our letter recognition cards. We flipped over one card at a time and decided what letter, or sound, it started with. Then we “munched” a hole in the correct letter leaf with a single hole punch. Our children came back to this activity later in the afternoon because it was so fun. We will definitely be adding it to our literacy shelf!
We love that our Mother Goose Time activity guide is so comprehensive for not only letter literacy, but overall comprehension of the topic at hand. Every child learns differently, so when we take a global approach, we can guarantee everyone learns and it is so fun!
Mother Goose Time offers plenty of opportunities to teach literacy in the classroom. We love the “Little Letter Books included (3 each month), new name tags, picture cube letter cards and so much more!
We love pulling other activities to extend the lessons. For instance, kite is one of the site words given to us to use this month for the letter K. Our Pre-K class made kites, and finished the sentence “If I was a kite…” that we wrote on a cloud to go on the back of their kite. One kiddo said they would “Go to Mexico and eat a lot of things!” Another kiddo said that they would fly to Colorado. Having them finish the sentence made it a complete one, and was a fun way to use their imaginations to create a sentence. Art and literacy go really well together, and often times the art creates a really good visual for literacy. Our kites are hanging from our ceiling with their sentences on the back. The kites are a fun visual for a word that starts with our letter this week.
Any time we introduce a new letter we always create a list of words that start with that letter. Today we made our list of K words. We practiced making the letter sound, and had to find words that matched that sound. Some of them named words that started with the letter C, so we discussed how though they sound similar, they don’t start with the letter K. We came up with 11 words.
We also love to use the “Experience More Literacy” book that is an option with the curriculum. We printed out the ‘Letter Kk’ worksheet that helps us identify letters and words, and practiced tracing and writing the letter k, as well as the site words that were given to us. The children worked really hard on their worksheets and by the end of it were getting the hang of how to write the letter K. They chose a word from our list that they wanted to write to finish the worksheet.
The letter printouts are so fun to use and we do several different things with them each month, whether it be making artwork out of the letter or tracing the outline and filling it up with words. Today we filled it up with 16 K’s! 16 is one of our numbers this month, so it was a great way to tie in one of our numbers to practice counting while we practiced writing the letter K some more.
One other smart thing that Mother Goose Time does is introduce the letters away from traditional ABC order. This forces children to know the letters individually and what sound they make, not just because they can sing the song. We love to incorporate letter learning across the content areas because the more children see it in a variety of ways, the more likely it is to stick!
For the month of April, our Friendship Trait focus is on “Beeing Respectful”.
As we close out one unit and begin another, we sometimes have a hard time sharing the toys, games, books, etc. Our preschool class was having a particularly hard time yesterday and their teacher was fast on her feet. They had already completed the activities for the morning and were getting antsy for lunch. Ms. Heather asked if we had any books in the office about sharing and the closest we had was “How Full is your Bucket for Kids”. 
After reading the story, Ms. Heather gave each child a piece of paper with a hand-drawn bucket on it with the child’s name. She put stickers out on the table and they proceeded to fill the buckets with stickers. Some children didn’t want the help of others and some were very excited to get a sticker from a friend. We talked about how it feels good to get a sticker and it feels good to make someone else happy by giving them a sticker.
This morning was a very different tone. Children were excited to work together, they were more respectful, asking before taking, and there was a lot more collaborative play.
While everyone was busy checking out the new activities on the shelf, I was working on scrubbing some crayon off the table tops. My little friends were so excited to be bucket fillers that they all wanted to help. They were enthusiastic about being helpful and before long, we had the tables looking much better.
We love that Mother Goose Time makes character building a regular piece of our day. The first 5 years of a child’s life are critical to their social/emotional growth and a time when the brain is most receptive to learning.
It is an honor to join them on their journey!
We are so excited for our April unit with Mother Goose Time- “Bees and Butterflies”! This is always one of our favorite units and we learn so much! We spend the first two weeks learning about Bees and the second two weeks on Butterflies. Here is a sneak peek of what we are going to learn!
Our Portfolio dividers and one of the beautiful Daily Topic posters for April. We love the beautiful photographs on the Topic Posters- such a great way to get us thinking about what we are learning each morning. Thanks Mother Goose Time for giving us such a great platform for fun and learning!
We have reached the end of our “Desert Discovery” unit with Mother Goose Time– March flew by so fast!
Our Days were full of fun and STEAM learning, but one of our favorite activities was the Desert Night activity.
This project took two days and led to some great conversations. We began by drawing in crayon some things we thought we might find in the desert at night. There were animals, cactus, other plants, bugs and snakes. We talked about what animals might be awake and what might be sleeping at night, and why. Then we painted over our drawings with thinned black paint. The next day, when the painting was dry, we added sparkly stars in the night sky. This was one of our favorite projects.
Another favorite activity from our play shelf was the balancing cactus. Sometimes children were stack them independently, and sometimes we would use it as a cooperative game. We always love the new puzzle for each month from Mother Goose Time. It is a great way to add to our collection of available activities each month!
Each month with Mother Goose Time, we receive two new books (one Forest Friends Book and one exclusive MGT book) and we use the Recommended Book List to gather other great books from our collection or from the local library. Mother Goose Time is such a complete package program!
For the last week we have been on Spring Break at our school. We understand that for some parents, this is inconvenient, but what we do takes so much time and energy and we need breaks to refocus and rest. Spring break is always much needed, not because we don’t like what we do, but because our brains need a break. We spend all week looking after young children, planning and implementing lessons (thanks to Mother Goose Time, most of our lessons are already prepared for us), answering emails, cleaning, budgeting, menu planning, and grocery shopping (and no, that’s not all ).
We think about the following week, the following school year, special activities, and extra things we can do to help the young children in our care succeed (and no, that’s still not all).
It takes a lot to keep a licensed childcare center running. And if you are like us and share a space, our weekends are cut short due to setting up our center on Sunday’s. This means family time is cut short. Burn out is very real in the world of education. Breaks allow us time to re-charge. Spring break offers time to catch up with our own families. We get to spend quality time together, check-in with one another, and create more memories together.
Self-care is vital. When you spend most of your days looking after everyone else, it is easy to forget to take care of yourself. Educator’s tend to put everyone else before themselves, and breaks allow us time to take a step back and do something for ourselves. Not to mention, educator’s don’t stop thinking about their jobs just because they are on a break, they think about fresh ideas to start implementing as soon as they return. We really do love what we do, and we certainly have earned the breaks we have scheduled.
Educator’s shouldn’t feel guilty for taking a break – it is part of self-care and we have certainly worked hard for it. Here are some highlights from how some of our staff spent their Spring Break with friends and family!
We love that Mother Goose Time sends Portfolio Dividers with each unit. It is fun looking back on each unit throughout the year and the dividers help us remember all that we have learned, and what work went with which unit. These are found in Lesson 20 of each theme. We like to pull these out right away and get them in their portfolios so as we go through the unit and are collecting work samples we can put them in their portfolio right away – doing this makes it easy to keep up with a portfolio for each child!
With each new unit, we have a Continuum of Skills poster that shows how we will be meeting the National Standards for Early Childhood throughout the month. When there is a star, that is a prompt for the teacher to collect a work sample, take a note on how the child approached the activity, or even take a picture of the work being done to add to the portfolio.
In Pre-K, we have the portfolios sitting on their writing shelf. They love looking through their portfolios every so often and seeing their work. We try to collect art and writing samples for each month, along with pictures! It is so fun to see how their work progresses over time!
We use 1-inch white binders for their portfolio’s, make a cover page that lists our school, the year, their name, and then we put their hand prints on it. The portfolio’s come in handy during Parent/Teacher conferences, when we want to show parents what their child has been working on. The parents love looking through their work samples and seeing the photos. We send the portfolio’s home at the end of the year. They make a special keepsake!
As we mentioned in our previous blog post, we did some rearranging last week. We combined two smaller groups within our center (our Wobblers and Toddlers) and it has made for an interesting dynamic for sure. It is so fun to see our younger children engaging in dramatic play, building, and art, while our older children have enjoyed exploring more large motor opportunities than they previously had available.
They now have a much larger space that is closer to outdoor access. That makes us all very happy!
Our Wobblers (12-24 months) were working hard on sharing space and parallel play, and they were using the “Experience Baby” curriculum set. Our Toddlers (24-30 months) used the “Little Goose” supplement and were learning the structure of a classroom with Circle Time and Activities. Now this class is doing some of both! This opens up new opportunities and experiences for all of the children in the group, while meeting the needs, interests, and capabilities of each one. The teachers can divide up the group and do separate activities with the different ages, or they can combine and all work on one task. 
We all enjoyed decorating the Doctor Bags (Make and Play) and taking care of our bears on Thursday. (Health week, February MGT “Health and Fitness”). It is so fun to see how much empathy and compassion these little people already possess.
The younger children are welcome to join Circle Time, but are free to come and go as they need to. The older children are encouraged to join in with stories and songs, and because they were used to doing Circle Time already, they set a good example for the younger ones. 
It has been so fun to see this class take shape. We love that the Mother Goose Time program is so versatile and there is always something for everyone. The activities are fun, engaging and easily adaptable for a mixed group, such as ours. Having a combined group does present its own challenges, but they are really getting the hang of it. Nice job, Littles!
The month of February has been all about health and wellness with Mother Goose Time. We have spent a lot of time focusing on healthy foods, and how to take good care of our bodies. Valentine’s Day also brought up good conversations about kindness and how we all need love to be our best selves. In our program, we believe children that feel good, tend to behave in a more kind way, make better choices, and are better learners.
As a teacher, it is important to be flexible when it comes to classroom management strategies and techniques. The same strategy that was working in the beginning of the year may no longer be working halfway through the year. We always focus on being kind, that is what matters overall. Teaching our young children to be kind to their friends, how to problem solve, knowing when to recognize that they need some space, and when to walk away and talk to a teacher are important skills.
As a Pre-K teacher, I want our children to have a basic understanding of these skills before we send them off to kindergarten, and their world becomes a lot bigger. What do you do when some of your students are testing their listening skills, not only with their teachers, but their friends too? What do you do when some of your students are really close, and though this may not be intentional, they are starting to leave others out of
their group, resulting in classmates feeling sad and left out? And, sometimes, it is intentional – “You can’t play with us” being a popular phrase suddenly. Some of our friends have become more pushy with each other, pushing their friends when they need space or when they are frustrated rather than communicating.
At this age, communication can be hard. It isn’t always a skill that comes easy. As teachers it is part of our job to teach them how to communicate when they are upset. It is also our job to communicate with their parents, to find out if some of these things are popping up at home too. We want to better understand the whole situation, so that we know how we can support them at school. Staying consistent between home and school is really important for a child’s learning. I’ve learned some children have started testing boundaries at home too, so it isn’t just for their teachers at school. A little understanding goes a long way!
I thought about what I could do to make my classroom more manageable when children seem to be needing some space. They needed a productive space where they can have some alone time when needed, refocus, and then feel ready to join our group again. The goal was for them to recognize when they needed space before things felt too crazy. I set up a Refocus Center in my classroom. It is complete with a book, “You’re Here for a Reason”, a Feelings Journal, crayons, two stuffed bunnies, a stress ball, and a sensory bottle.
So far, this center has been a game changer! We talked about this new center at circle time, and how they can come talk to me when they felt they needed some space, or, if I felt that they need some space from their friends, I may ask them to go to our “Refocus Center” for some quiet time. They are using the journal exactly what it is for, to draw how they are feeling. I’ve had children come up and tell me they felt they needed space, then they sit down and immediately start drawing how they feel. One student in particular told me they felt they needed some alone time. I told her she could go to the Refocus Center, and she sat down to draw how she was feeling. We talked about her drawing and she told me she was feeling sad and lonely. I asked her why, and she said that nobody wanted to play with her. We talked about who she was wanting to play with, and how she could let them know how she was feeling. She went and talked to her friends, they all started playing a game, and she was feeling much happier within a few minutes!
This center has helped to give me insight into my student’s day. Talking to them about their drawing lets me know how they are feeling and what kind of a day they are having. They are allowed to feel frustrated, sad, happy. We have to help them understand how to control some of those feelings, being frustrated in particular, so that everyone stays safe and we can all have fun in the classroom. The bunnies allow them something to hold onto, and sometimes are a good distraction, along with the sensory bottle and stress ball. If you are needing a new classroom management strategy, setting up a Refocus Center really seems to do the trick. Children don’t always tell you how they are feeling, but having them be able to draw how they are feeling and then talking about it allows you some insight into their day and how you can better help them problem solve. This center has helped make our classroom feel more calm.
In addition to some new strategies in our classrooms, sometimes our space needs a “refocus” as well. Teachers are notorious for saving things that could be used again someday. The problem with that is our center has very limited storage and our classrooms have to essentially disappear at the end of the week, as we share the space with a church. To meet the ever changing dynamics of our groups and the needs involved, we decided to do a whole-center classroom shift. We discovered a variety of things that we no longer needed and cleared a lot of things that didn’t spark joy. 🙂
The new Toddler Space
The new Pre-K Space
The new Preschool Space.
Sometimes teachers, spaces, and children need a chance to refocus. Time to think about what is most important, how we feel about it, and how to make a plan for improvement.
Now we are really excited to finish up with “Health and Fitness” and prepare for “Desert Discovery” with Mother Goose Time!
