Can a Preschooler be on the Move and Learn at the Same Time?

Our triangle family (my cute reference to having an only child) is filled with hands-on learners. My husband is what I call a collector of hobbies. All of his hobbies have him working with his hands. He builds amplifiers, dabbles in guitar, takes apart vintage British motorcycles and (sort of) puts them back together. Personally, I write. But I love living on the wild side and writing with a pen and paper, I enjoy cooking and sketching. My son loves building things. He will build things out of kinetic sand, Lego and his food (not my favorite building material.)

My son is also a mover and a shaker. He has to take dance breaks when a Mega Blok house is being built. He has to climb on my back when we play board games. He just has to be moving. This has taught me that for him to learn and enjoy what he is doing, he needs to be in motion and using his hands to manipulate something. Even as we read, he needs to point to the characters in books, make excited gestures with his hands and at times stop the book to go grab a Hot Wheel that "seriously looks exactly like the car in the book."

I think this is a big part of why my son gets so much out of our Mother Goose Time curriculum boxes. While I have used their curriculum for several months, Mother Goose Time was kind enough to provide June's box free of charge in exchange for my experience with the materials. This month's theme is Adventure Island, and we have been doing my son's favorite things, which are getting dirty with art projects and dancing to the music that is perfectly themed to go with the project at hand.

This week we made our own head lamps to explore the stalactites and stalagmites in caves and made our own puffy paint to create flowing lava pictures and explore why we use sunscreen. All the while, awesome songs about caves, sunscreen ad more played in the background. This multi-sensory learning experience helped my son retain new vocabulary, introduced him to a new texture and encouraged his imaginary play. Little tip, keep an old cookie sheet to contain projects that involved paint and dreaded glitter!

We also utilized pattern cards and his monthly story book. One thing I love about Mother Goose Time is that they provide several materials printed on card stock every month. I find collecting these items, like the pattern cards, story telling pictures and game pieces and laminating them, helps to lengthen their life. I invested in an inexpensive laminator and have been very happy that I did.  I will occasionally pull out things like the different pattern cards as a refresher for my son and they continue to be relevant months later.
We love the story books as well, because they combine what I call decodable words (consonant, vowel, consonant words) and sight words (and, the) to help reinforce early literacy. My son loves that he gets to color in the books as well.

Overall, we had another great week with Mother Goose Time and I finally know the difference between a stalactite and stalagmite.