Preschool: Literacy Scavenger Hunt

We finished our dinosaur unit today with a literacy activity that Mother Goose Time sends each month.  It's called Word Puzzles.  MGT sends some words with blanks for missing letters and using little word cards, the child recognizes which letter should go in the blank. 

How can you tie in dinosaurs into this activity?

Using the Teacher Guide, MGT suggested to remind learners that as the earth grew hotter and more plants died, many dinosaurs had to search for plants to eat.  So Avaleigh was going to act like a dinosaur and search for the missing letters hidden around the room,

 like the dinosaurs who searched for their food.  

First Avaleigh studied the big card and the corresponding little matching card.  She then told me what letter was missing.  I encouraged her to search for the missing letter in the room.  Lately, her favorite game is Hide and Seek so this was right up her ally.

After finding the missing letter, she placed it on the blank and practiced making that letter's sound and then sounding out the word with my help.

Once we were done with our Literacy Scavenger Hunt,

Avaleigh practiced writing the words in her My Little Journal. 

She's still into tracing letters, so I wrote all the words from our Scavenger Hunt game, and she worked on tracing over the letters.  I also drew a blank line next to each word, hoping that she would then try to write the word on her own... that did not work at all.  However, she did practice writing her own capital A and the letter V several times.   

Her finished page.

See that pointy creature with the one eye in the bottom right hand corner?

That's a stegosaurus yall. <3

Avaleigh has just started drawing on her own. When I asked her what it was, she immediately got up and pointed to our Theme poster (pictured below) and told me "It's a stegosaurus mommy."

It sure is Sweet Pea.

What a fun unit this has been!

Now onto a Small World!

Make learning happy, friends!

Home School Lesson: EMPATHY

The Golden Rule:

Treat others how you want to be treated.

One of the perks of being an only child is things are usually your way.

There's not anyone else you have to share with or take turns.  

It's your game.  Your way.

A child can become spoiled quickly being an only child which my girl was for 3.5 years.  

Instilling a spoiled, entitled attitude was and is one of my biggest fears as a mother especially as my husband I decided to home school Avaleigh and not send her to preschool.

How would she learn to share?

How would she learn to take turns?

How would she learn that it's not all about her, but others matter too?

As a mother, our choice to home school Avaleigh made me much more diligent to teach her from the very beginning how to understand the feelings of others.

Being able to empathize is critical, especially in the world we live in today.

My desires for Avaleigh start with how and what I do at home each and everyday.

I want her to have friends.

I want her to love others even the unlovely.

I want her to resemble Christ in her community- 

one who loves unconditionally and administers grace not grudges.

I want her to place others ahead of herself and remember that the world does not revolve around her.

I want her to be respectful and use manners.

I want her to treat others how she wants to be treated.

These things don't happen magically.  They are created by fostering intentional decisions everyday on MY PART as her mother, her teacher, and her role model.

And as I sit back thinking about that statement, those are big shoes to fill, but if I want the above statements for her, it starts with me.

I have to play the games with her.

I have to make sure she takes turns.

I have to teach her to share and why we do that.

I am so thankful for the wide assortment of games and activities Mother Goose Time provides us with each month.  Each time we play is a moment to teach her how to empathize.

I have to make sure she says please, thank you, I'm sorry, excuse me, yes mam, no mam, yes sir and no sir.   If I want her to say those things, I have to be saying them TO HER as well.

"Can I please see that?"

"Will you share with me?"

"Wait Avaleigh.  It's my turn now."

"Excuse me, Avaleigh, can I get by please?"

"Thank you so much for handing me that!"

"Yes mam, I would love to play with you."

Each day as I home school her with Mother Goose Time, 'I am graced with the opportunity to mold and shape my little girl into a person who will love and be loved by those around her. 

It's a big challenge for me, but that's what I signed up for when I became her mom.

Thank you Lord.

Help me to teach her to love and administer that love. to others.

Lord, please give her a heart that feels for others and help her to remain calm even when hate spews from those around her.  Lord, help her to be like you.  I can not do it.  Lord, please help me take every opportunity I can to mold her to be like you.

Thank you Jesus for loving me through my ugliness.

Live Unboxing of February's Small World and Experience God

I decided to try to go live on Facebook this past week and show the awesomeness that is Mother Goose Time.  In the video below, I show you an up close look at the 20 daily bags that come in this February's Small World Unit.  We are jet-setters this month yall!

I can't wait to dig in with my girl!

Below is another video showing you the Experience God curriculum pack. 

During the month of February we will be studying how 

"God Asks Me to Love My Neighbor."
A perfect lesson for everyday, but especially during the month all about spreading love <3

Interested in seeing more?

Check out Mother Goose Time- a top notch preschool program here.

Click here to see more lessons offered in the Experience God curriculum... so great!

And be sure to follow our adventures by 

liking us on Facebook

and subscribe to my YouTube Channel.

Happy Learning!

Preschool Dinosaur Activities

Dinosaur Week!

This past week we studied 6 different dinosaurs with our Dinosaur Dig unit from Mother Goose Time.  We studied: Tyrannosaurs Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegasours, Triceratops, Mussaurus, and Pterodactyl.

Tyrannosaurs Rex

The first dinosaur we studied was of course T-Rex.  This day we received her My Little Journal and for the first time she wrote her name all on her own without tracing any letters!

She also worked on her pattern making skills when she made the T-Rex tooth necklace.

She chose to do a large tooth, straw piece, small tooth, straw piece pattern to complete her necklace.  

Patterns is something she is not strong in, but MGT supplies so many pattern making opportunities that I know she'll get stronger and stronger in no time. 

Brontosaurus

Each day I try to emphasize the characteristic that is unique to that particular dinousaur.  For brontosaurs, Avaleigh and I discussed how his long neck is what makes him stand out. We found him on our thematic poster, and I questioned, "Why do you think the brontosaurs had a long neck?"

"Eat leaves," was her response.  So we built a long neck using some of our building blocks from one of our previous MGT units creating a neck from our brontosaurs head to its oval shaped body.

 (which is our monthly shape) 

One thing that I have noticed about my girl, and I have known for a long time (thanks to MGT) is that she is very particular about making something look like the picture.  When she saw the picture of the Make and Play Bronosaurus, she had to get the same marker color to make it's spots match. 

 She loves to match.  

Stegosaurus

In the Invitation to Create on Stegosaurus day, Avaleigh created a piece of abstract art.  Maybe if I had given her a 1/2 piece of the paper plate it might look more like a stegosaursus.  At least she had fun making her artwork.

Triceratops

Our 4th dinosaur to study was triceratops.

We received a stencil of a triceratops and a T-Rex to help make her Invitation to Create.  Instead of using the suggested paint, we whipped out the markers and she worked on tracing the outside edges of her stencil and coloring the dinosaur.  However, the punch out paper dinosaurs are her FAVORITE TOY right now!  She calls them the "Mothers" and all the dinosaur manipulatives we received are their babies. <3

Mussaurus

Sorry for the blurry picture below.  On Mussaurus day, Avaleigh created a egg musical shaker and we practiced shaking it fast to music and slow trying to keep up with the tempo.  Mommy has no musical sense. 

Pterodactyl

The Pterodactyl was the last of the 6 dinos we studied and on this day we got to do our monthly puzzle from MGT.  These puzzles match the monthly book which is called Jurassic Jam and is all about dinosaurs and music.  Avaleigh has gotten better and better at being able to complete puzzles on her own and it's wonderful getting a new one each month.

Look at that face of accomplishment!  She was so proud of herself for being able to do the puzzle all on her own.  

This was just 6 days out of the 20 bags we get from MGT!  So much fun, so many things to learn, and so many memories to be had.

Happy Dino Week!

Need some dinosaur books to add to your collection?
Check out Usborne Books and More to find some awesome ones!  

Preschool Paleontologist

Paleontologist.

That's what my little girl became last week as we opened our newest box from Mother Goose Time: Dinosaur Dig!

For our first 4 days of home school preschool, we studied paleontologists, bones, fossils, and excavation sites. 

With her name tag, I wrote her name, and she used a glue bottle to trace her letters.  She did really great! Honestly, I was surprised.  Then using a 1/2 tsp she scooped and poured sand on the glue creating a raised surface.  Once her name tags were dry, I buried them under the sand creating an excavation site. Using a paintbrush and an old magnifying glass (also from MGT), Avaleigh went digging for the bones of her letters.

Mother Goose Time also sent this really cool field guide on our Paleontologist day.

It's filled with images of different dinosaurs and their names.  I added some background to the coloring pages, like mountains, and the dinosaur's name so she could trace and color it. 

   

We used the field guide the next day while completing our STEAM station on excavation sites.  Using some shape manipulatives from a previous box, Avaleigh put together "bones" in play dough to make the image of the dinosaur.  She looked at the Pterodactyl and created what you see below in the play dough!  

On Wednesday we studied fossils.  She created her own fossil stamp and using a stamp pad she pressed her image all over the provided paper during our Invitation to Create.  She decided she wanted to imprint the purple marker into her image as well.  Stamp it all! 

Our stamping fun didn't end there though.  MGT sent us some awesome dinosaur manipulatives this  month and what better way to make a fossil than to stamp dinosaurs into play dough? So much fun.

 On Bone Day, she worked with pre-cut pieces to make fossil images.  This activity is going into a baggie and going into her "out to eat" activity bag.  Perfect for the restaurant table!

The final activity we did during our Paleontologist week was a math board game called Dinosaur Dig.  Each month there is some kind of board game and these are so perfect for preschoolers.  They're simple and don't take too long to complete so attention spans don't waver and you can finish a game pretty fast.  This also helps with her wanting to play again and again. 

In this game, we used our dino manipulatives as our pieces and moved around the board collecting bones and losing them based on where we landed.  

The challenge for Avaleigh was at the end when we compared the amount of dinosaur bones we had.  She has no problem counting, but when I asked who has more, she really struggled answering correctly. I now know what we need to work on...comparing. 

It was so much fun doing activities with my girl each day and watching her become a paleontologist.  I just loved when her daddy asked her what she learned about, she spouted,
"I'm paleontologist, Daddy."