Discovering Nature With Mother Goose Time

I have been using Mother Goose Time for several years. I discovered this company when my daughter was in preschool, it looked like a lot of fun so I gave it a try. What's not to love about having everything all planned out for you and ready to go. I had never homeschooled before and was super intimidated by it all. We ended up loving the ease and flexibility of it so much we continued with it for her whole preschool year. A few years later when my son hit the preschool age I went right back to Mother Goose Time. I noticed that some things had changed, but the changes I noticed looked awesome. I also noticed that the core of the program had not changed, they still offered a ready to go program with lots of exciting sounding monthly themes. The ease and flexibility was still there, and now having two to homeschool I knew I needed something to help make my life easier.

My point with this is that I want to talk about how they have really exceeded my expectations the last couple of months. We have enjoyed all the monthly themes so far but the themes of the last three months have really been amazing. We learned about ponds back in March, then we studied birds in April, and now in May we are just getting started with bugs. It has been a fun Segway into spring and I have see such a change in my kids in the last few months in regards to nature and science. They have become more aware of the life and wonders of the world around them. Now when we go for nature walks around the lake by our house they notice the pond life and plants, they point out birds and they are completely focused on spotting things and pointing things out that we have learned with Mother Goose Time. We spend more time looking at the ground, and in the trees then we did before. The conversations we have on our nature walks are deeper and more meaningful. They are excited to get out in the world and explore and ask questions.

We just started this months theme Bugs and Crawly things and we have so far learned about ladybugs, spiders and grass hoppers in the first three days. Today while we were at Forrest school I noticed that they had there eyes down and were observing more bugs then usual. We found all sorts of buggy treasures today! I cant wait to get deeper into this months theme so they learn more about the bugs and can have great conversations about the bugs as well. We saw beetles, spiders, worms, snails and slugs today. It was so fun to see there excitement and I know Mother Goose Time has had a big role in that with their very science rich themes the last few months. Here are a few of the bugs we saw today

It had rained the night before so we saw plenty of earthworms and Banana Slugs all over the forest today. The kids are looking forward to learning about these bugs later in the month. I know that we will find more bugs on our bug hunts over the next few weeks and the kids awareness of bugs will be heightened as well. What a fun month we have ahead of us.

As a side note I just want to share a picture of a bird mobile that my daughter worked on last month. We were inspired by the Birds and Eggs theme and started learning about the birds that live in the Pacific Northwest. We just moved to the area and it was a great opportunity to get acquainted with the birds around here. We checked out a bird guidebook from the library and went on bird watching walks periodically. We even made nesting material bags to hang in the trees around our neighborhood for the birds. We decided to paint the official Washington State bird which is the Willow Gold Finch and then we did the Steller's Jay. This smaller version is for a family in West Virginia that we are exchanging nature items with. We are still working on a larger version for ourselves that will include an Acorn Woodpecker and one more bird. This has been a great project to go with the birds month though.