Thursday, March 26, 2015

Toddler Tray Times Teach!

The best way to "teach" toddlers is to allow them to be toddlers and play!

Toddler Tray Times are so much fun in the Little Goose planner!

Here we have, Daniella manipulating paint, paper and other art supplies however she likes. Through this play, she is learning her colors, we are talking about how things feel (cold/warm/smooth/rough) and she is working on fine motor skills (when she chooses the paint brush and/or to sprinkle glitter) as well as gross motor skills (hand painting). Age appropriate learning through play! 




Sonia joined in to. With the same art supplies but with a more "advanced" manipulation of the material. She chose to splatter paint with her brush and paint her nails! 




Monkey see, monkey do right? 

***
Mother Goose Time has really brought me closer to my children and my God. Through this wonderful program, I have been given an opportunity to grow with my children on our spiritual path as well as having a bonding, home school experience that I could not have without this very informative and complete curriculum. For more information on this curriculum, please go to http://www.mothergoosetime.com/ or visit them on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/MotherGooseTime.


Worship Wednesday - Call on God whenever you need Him

 
Worship Wednesday
March 25, 2015
Spirituality is such a hard topic to teach kids and this is why I love the Experience God add-on. We do not belong to any religious background, but I do teach my children that there is a God as well as Jesus and other spiritual teachers. With the content of this package, I get all the "stuff" necessary to help me teach about God and Jesus and I can truly see a difference. 
Sonia now prays with me at night and when she wakes up early enough, I invite her into my morning prayer. If she doesn't, we start our circle time off with a quick prayer. I do not force spirituality down her throat but, instead, incorporate it into every day life. I will not instill a fear of God but will show her how kind and forgiving He is. 
Each day we start in prayer, end in prayer and in the middle do kind acts for strangers and our family.
This week, we talked about how we can call God whenever we need Him. We made a phone to call God with our craft supplies and we even put our own phone number on there. Sonia can learn how our number while she plays with this phone. 
I asked Sonia when she would call God she said: 
When I'm scared
When I need help sleeping




If the phone is not available, how can you call on God: 
I can pray 

What do you pray for?
My mommy, my daddy, my sisters, my dogs, my cats and all my food


 
***
Mother Goose Time has really brought me closer to my children and my God. Through this wonderful program, I have been given an opportunity to grow with my children on our spiritual path as well as having a bonding, home school experience that I could not have without this very informative and complete curriculum. For more information on this curriculum, please go to http://www.mothergoosetime.com/ or visit them on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/MotherGooseTime.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Flashback Friday - A week in review

Flashback Friday
A week in review
3/16/15-3/20/15
 
Every home schooling mom has had the same questions, or some variation of them, run through her mind. Am I doing it right? Are the kids going to learn enough? Will they be ready for the world? Sometimes, I think, I'm not doing enough at home...I didn't take them to a play date today, I obviously suck. Well, here is a helpful hint and it has truly helped me. Just for two or three days, track everything you do. Don't do things just so you can put them on the list and say you did them - make an honest inventory. What you will find will amaze you! The days you feel you haven't "done enough" are the days that you will have done a few, if not more, of these - woke up before the kids, prepared coffee and the lesson plan for the day, when the kids wake up, dress and feed them, do at least 2 hours of school work with the kids, load and unload dishwasher, clean up after the art projects, do one load of laundry, make the kids lunch...I'll stop there! And that was all before lunchtime! We home schooling moms take on double, sometimes triple the amount of work and yet we still think its not enough! Take a moment to breathe and honor all the work you have done. Your children will thank you....

Now, lets talk planets and solar system. We received the Little Goose Curriculum this week and were very excited to put it into place. Daniella, my 2.5 year old, is able to engage with us, at her level, and actually "get" some of the concepts. Amazing! Sonia, my 4.5 year old, is walking around the house talking about comets, the Milky Way, planets and constellations. Ummmm, thank you Mother Goose Time!

Let's get to the good stuff!

Pluto

Time to blast off into space into space! How do astronauts travel in space? They need a space helmet! Here we go.....










Did you know that Pluto is not considered a planet anymore? Let's play Planet Bingo!






Toddler Tray Play time! Let's make our own rocket ships so we can really blast off!







Jupiter & St. Patrick's Day

Jupiter is the BIGGEST planet of all and has 67 moons! We didn't take too many pictures of Jupiter because I got really into the movement activities and completely forgot! We spoke about letter "R" words!

Here we are creating our St. Patrick's day craft!









Uranus
Can you land on Uranus? Nope! It is made up of gas and ice and if we tried to stand on it, we would sink! 

Let's tell a story! They chose to use shopkins instead of their own picture.









It took 9 1/2 years to get to Uranus - An astronaut could not go on the trip but a lot of astronauts waited for the Voyager 2 to get there - what did they need? PATIENCE! Let's make bracelets to show we have patience too!



 


  Neptune
 Neptune has swirling storms! Can we make a swirling storm on paper? We sure can! 




Even the dogs got into our next activity? We played Comet Throwing by taping a piece of paper to each ball and throwing them fast in the air. When a piece of Neptunes rings, made up of ice and rock, fall off they are thrown towards the sun - they are called comets!






Toddler Tray Time! Neptune bracelet...take a look at how involved Daniella is!






 Saturn
Saturn starts with letter "S"! Sonia brought her Sweetie Sweets into circle time to show us something with letter S.




Saturn has hundreds of rings that look like one big ring! We blasted "Saturn Swirl" and played with our new Saturn Wand!
 




Galaxy
"Does the Galaxy have milk in it...is that why it's called the Milky Way?"
No. But when we look at a picture of the galaxy it looks like Milk because of all the stars. Sonia named her galaxy, well, Sonia of course!







   
Hey, Diddle Diddle! The Sonia jumped over the moon!




And finally....
We played our Space Race Game! Sonia won!







What a week!

Mother Goose Time has really brought me closer to my children and my God. Through this wonderful program, I have been given an opportunity to grow with my children on our spiritual path as well as having a bonding, home school experience that I could not have without this very informative and complete curriculum. For more information on this curriculum, please go to http://www.mothergoosetime.com/ or visit them on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/MotherGooseTime.