From the Classroom to the Living room - Thoughts and Tips from a Teaching Journey

 I have been working with children for half of my life. I have been a camp counselor making homemade play dough and monkey bread with toddlers. I have been a student teacher in Montessori school, fighting my need to control the days' activities. I have been a volunteer in Chicago Public Schools, striving to act as a pillar of support in a after school program that left something to be desired. Finally, I worked in early childhood special education with children that were mostly non-verbal. Over the last 16 years, curriculum and standards of learning have changed and evolved. As teachers and parents, we are now in a time where educational resources are seemingly everywhere. From Pinterest to the craft store, we could fill swimming pools with projects and workbooks that are supposed to teach and develop the minds of our children.

To be honest, this overwhelms me. Sometimes I feel filled to the brim with ideas and theories and even materials that I find beneficial from each experience. In some ways this is a good thing to be overwhelmed with experience. I think because of this I know what won't work for my toddler who is in constant motion and hates certain sounds or sensations. But in a lot of ways, it has made me feel lost. 

So last October, I began researching preschool at home. I came to this decision after seeing that my son was already receiving occupational therapy, going to gymnastics and having weekly park and library play dates. My gut said that for this child, this was enough of a regular schedules out of the home. 

I was blown away to find that even though sites like TeachersPayTeachers exist, finding a program with some sense of organization that was not work sheet based, was incredibly difficult. I then came across some Youtube videos geared toward moms (my middle of the night addiction) about a program called Mother Goose Time. Working moms of two, stay at home moms of one, women with small, in home preschools were all raving about these school bus adorned boxes. So, after literally a month of watching the videos and checking out the themes for the upcoming year, I clicked the purchase button. I am very happy I did. I truly believe that the theme based boxes have provided the majority of what my preschooler needs for fun school at home. It was Mother Goose Time name tags and art projects that encouraged my son to write his name on his art for the first time. It was Mother Goose Time that introduced the idea of science experiments and it's Mother Goose Time that reminded me as a at home teacher to encourage imagination in stories, asking questions and the importance of comprehension in the books that we read and the work that we do. 

This month I am excited to be a Blog Ambassador, and Mother Goose Time is providing our family with a free box to share our experience. I am happy to report that after nine months, my son still loves the program. From calendar time to exploring the daily theme and even the special party days that we have every month, Mother Goose Time is a hit. 

I also thought it might be beneficial some of the books we read and supplement with that have been a hit in our home:

• What your Preschooler Needs to Know (A collection of poems, songs, stories and information about science and history as well.)
• What your Kindergartener Needs to Know (next step)
• Animalia
• Montessori Letter Work, Number Work and Map Work (They have rough surfaces that the child can trace, great  for pre-writing.)
• BOB books (pre and early readers. Definitely look at your local library or even Costco.)
• Lift the flap and Look Inside books by Usborne. (my son loves Look inside the Body and How Things Work.) We buy used on Amazon or at Half Priced Books.

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.

A Planner Loving Mom who Needs Help Planning Homeschool

I confess, I own a planner. A Happy Planner, which I find somewhat ironic since my son's doctor has referred to be as "appropriately cynical" in the past. I own planner stickers, different colored pens and highlighters. But much like my three year old's baby book, my planner often finds itself abandoned.

When I began my journey of homeschooling my son last October, I was excited that not only did the Mother Goose Time curriculum that I was using come with a Teacher Guide, but it also included it's own planner. These items, along with a great matrix of skills ranging from social/emotional to fine motor helped get me excited about planning again.

My cheerful box adorned with school buses arrives weeks before the start of a new month and theme. So I am able to break into the new box on a wild Saturday night and pull out my Teacher Guide, Planning Journal and the list of skills we plan to cover in the month. I then glance over the skills sheet and open the Teacher Guide. I check out recommended books that we might have or that I want to make note of in my planner to grab at the library, I jot down the skills and activities that I want to highlight for my son in my planner on the corresponding days. I then consider the daily topics.

During this month's Alphabet Island, I noticed we would be looking at caves and volcanoes. I knew we planned on going to the Field Museum in Chicago, where these topics would be brought to life. So I actually switched topics around to better fit our schedule. That also hits home on a major selling point of homeschool, flexibility. In nine months, I've found that as long as you work within the theme of that month, you can make changes without interrupting the flow of the program.
I then consider if there are any places that we can go locally that will enhance our learning.
A new playground, with a great stream and lots of places to climb, look out and explore opened, so we checked it out and pretended to be the captain of a ship making important navigating decisions. We also talked about waterfalls and visited some locally at the Chicago Botanic Garden. All of these ideas I marked in my planner as ideas to fit into our schedule.

One more thing that I love about these materials is that they offer suggestions of which projects to keep and which to maybe just photograph. I appreciate that they help make this decision for me, so I don't become a closeted art project hoarder!

This June, I received the curriculum free of charge in exchange for my thoughts and experiences. I'm happy to be back to planning our summer learning and adventures with the help of Mother Goose Time.

One Box of Homeschool Supplies can Replace a Playroom of Clutter

This idea goes for anyone with a preschooler, not just a family that considers themselves to be a homeschool family. I'm sure already this summer you have taken your child to a Target or Walmart. I have. My son now sits in the bottom of his red boat and navigates me to the One Spot at Target, because they have water squirters, coloring books and a bit of everything else. I am slightly peeved though, because no longer is this toddler trap an oasis for $1 items, some of the items go up to $10. Not cool.

Don't get me wrong, my family owns a ridiculous Hotwheel Garage and an embarrassing amount of Thomas and Friends Mini characters that I trip on in the night. We are not plastic-free, Zen people. However, I am trying to buy less that lights up and makes noise (doesn't help the sensory processing issues) and do more project-based purchases, or educational items that will grow with my son.

One way I have done this is to have a Mother Goose Time box delivered monthly for my son. I have purchased many in the past, but am currently receiving them in exchange for my thoughts on the products. 

Every single month, I am getting at least 20 days of pre-packaged activities. This includes creative art projects with supplies, books, manipulatives and puzzles. I am the last person you would consider to be a homeschooler, mainly because I used to teach in public school and I am a DIY drop out. I seriously love opening the daily bag and pulling out a craft for my son, reading materials, games and more. We have even had days where we just where out bathing suits and go to town on two or three projects. This allows us to get crazy for an hour or so with paint, sand and all sorts of fun sensory experiences. 

A lot of what we receive from Mother Goose Time is stuff we use over and over. My son has even been investigating with his Mother Goose Time magnifying glass for months. We now have a collection of puzzles, music CDs and books added to our library that my son truly enjoys and they came included in every box.

While I continue to work on asking some of Thomas and his Friends "go back to the island of Sodor," I will continue to supplement my son's learning, crafting and library with Mother Goose Time.

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.

Creepy Crawlers - Exploring Insects

Did anyone else have a Creepy Crawlers maker toy as a child? It is the chemically cousin to the Easy Bake Oven. It churned out neon colored jiggly bugs that a child cherishes for 2 minutes, before  the child promptly leaves the bug to be eaten by the dog off of a cream couch cushion. This weekend, as the weather decided it could act like Spring for a moment in Chicago, some real life creepy crawlers and winged creatures made their way into our yard.

This seemed like a prime opportunity to discuss insects.  I resisted the urge to purchase a Creepy Crawler maker toy, bug catching kit and a hazmat suit for myself. I kept it simple. We looked at meal worms and crickets, with a print out of their life cycles. We then fed the bugs to our box turtle, so if you do not have a turtle  laying around, I understand. We played with dollar store plastic bugs in homemade play dough and we made bugs out of stones and sticks, to breakdown the body parts of a bug.

Keeping it simple did take 30 minutes of prep work on my part, but we had fun and my son is still talking about how a spider is not an insect and repeating the word thorax. Because apparently it is hilarious to say. If Spring has sprung in your neck of the woods, give these little activities a try and let me know how your low-tech insect adventure goes!

Make Your Own Light Table

Much like a moth to a flame...every time we visit a play place or library that has a light table, my son naturally runs to scope it out. Not clever that time, sorry. So anything that my child plays with for more than 10 minutes, I feverishly Google and see how much the item in question costs. Well, when I searched light table, I was less than thrilled to learn that they can cost around $200.

After that bombshell I thought, you can buy some lights for like $2 and a used wood kid's table for about $10 online, but put the words light and table together and hand over your credit card. So I had to fight my anti-DIY tendencies and make a plan.

I did some research and decided on the sweater box method in the name of: I live in a small house and don't want to stare at an extra table in my living room. So I bought a fully clear (including the lid) sweater box for about $11, 3 strands of Christmas tree lights at $2 a box and I already had black construction paper. While you could use wax paper to line the inside of the lid, I decided to take a sander to the inside of the lid, with a fine grit paper. I then drilled a hole in the side of the box and lined the rest of the box with black construction paper, simply by taping it down. Finally, I placed the lights in the box, connecting the strands to one another, and feeding the loose end on the drilled hole. cover the lid, plug in and you have a light table.

We don't have the most well known brand, Magnatile, but rather a brand called Picasso Tiles that I purchased on Groupon. Most brands appear to work together. Best of all, you can store the tiles IN the box and shove the box under the bed when your child isn't playing with it.

I am not a DIY mom by any means, but this was an hour well spent. My son has played with this for a few months now, and I see it lasting us a good while. $17 well spent!