Mixing Amazing Themes and Child-Led Learning for Summer Homeschool Success

Over the last 9 months, my son and I have embarked upon an educational lifestyle experiment by choosing a school and home preschool path over traditional classroom setting. Over this time together we have learned about what makes an insect and insect, different kinds of birds, how pipe organs work and watched so many videos on Venus fly traps, YouTube thinks I'm an Entomologist.

Most of our formulaic day consisted of reading books, following seasonal activities in the Midwest and exploring in nature. Whenever my son happened upon a topic or in some cases a fixation (the fly traps!), I let him delve into the topic further by checking out books at the library, finding snippets of video on the topic and, if possible having hands-on experiences with the interest. This "child-led" learning style has gone relativity well for my son, but we still found ourselves looking for something new, or a new way of learning about a topic. We sometimes struggled to flesh out a topic through skill and subject tie-ins and projects that might peak my son's interest.

After a ton of research, I found a program called Mother Goose Time that provided a theme-based box curriculum. I was excited to check it out as a former teacher. I loved that there was a teacher's guide and planner that showed images of what amazing creations we would make along the way. I loved that the program could be adjusted to my son's comprehension level and I loved that there was a separate bag of materials for every day that we wanted to make a school day. These bags alone included art projects, games and scientific exploration activities. So for several months, I have supplemented our "child-led" learning style with Mother Goose Time's monthly theme boxes. Now am excited to have partnered with Mother Goose Time {in receiving complimentary theme boxes) to share how I have taken the themes, along with my child's current interest and created a great learning experience that hits on tons of important educational building blocks.

Our family is using Mother Goose Time this summer to do a refresh on our basic skills. This month we are visiting Alphabet Island. In a matter of three days, we have made pirate and captain themed art projects, tested the concepts of sinking and floating with our homemade boats and worked on journaling our experience through drawing pictures and coloring in letters. My son loves having his own special name tags journals and manipulatives each month. He is really excited to write his name on his Mother Goose Time projects.

Mother Goose Time's curriculum also gives parents and teachers excellent prompting questions to ask throughout a school day. There are also images to go along with a daily theme, which allow children to point out what they notice or already know about the image. I personally keep all of the daily theme pages accessible, to give my son the opportunity to reference how things, animals or people work together in the bigger picture.

After discussing boats, captains and islands, my son pointed out that captains have a lot of responsibility and choices to make. He also mentioned that our raised garden in the backyard resembled an island. So, that afternoon he watered the garden in his captain's hat and we discussed our responsibilities around that house and what to make for "Captain's Choice" dinner. Captain's Dinner was then promptly followed by creating a cardboard box boat and navigating "Northwest!" using the Mother Goose Time map. We are officially on a compass kick!

Thus far, Mother Goose Time has allowed me to enrich my son's child-led learning with amazing themes that make sure we are addressing important skills, asking new questions and making creative memories.