Arts-Integrated Learning

I love love love that Mother Goose Time uses music, dance, dramatic play, storytelling, engineering and construction to help learn. This is a very multi sensory way of experiencing education and I feel that it gives more depth and meaning to the material being learned. I absolutely believe that a hands on learning approach in education is the way to go. Learning can be fun and does not need to include a bunch of worksheets. Don't get me wrong, worksheets have their place and we use them sometimes, but it is way more effective to learn something by playing a game or making a prop to play with. Mother Goose Time fits in perfectly with my personal ideas about education and they are flexible enough to make it play based or sit down and get to business.

This week our favorite day was day 7 which was all about Sand Castles, I mean what is more fun than sand castles, they just scream summer and fun. I wish it was a little warmer here to go along with this theme though. As I am writing this it is raining at not very summery. Alphabet Island is about as summer as it gets for right now. Hopefully the sun will come out soon because I would love to take a trip to the beach and build some real sand castles...sigh...

We started off the morning with some great story books and our alphabet letter hunt. We read the suggested story that is in the Teachers Guide called The Sand Castle Contest as well as the Included Mother Goose Time storybook Ahoy! ABC. Ahoy! ABC was a beautiful alphabet storybook that had the cutest pictures. Probably one of my favorite books so far from them. It even had little hidden pictures of items to find on each page in the back. I love starting the morning with breakfast and books, it is such a great start to the day and really sets the day up nicely.

Here are a few example photos of the awesome Mother Goose Time book Ahoy! ABC, I just want you to see how cute it is!!

After books and breakfast we went on our letter hunt and today we were on the search for the letter Tt. I set up a little table with visual and hands on items for the letter and we found what we could around the house. We usually add a magnifying glass and the pirate spy glass we made on day 1 to add a little dramatic play to our hunt. We also kept a look out for Tt all day long when out and about as well.

After this we did our Invitation to Create which is an open ended art project that stretches their imagination and makes them think about the creative process. It is so fun to see what they come up with and what their thinking process is like. I set the table up with all the supplies that I think they might want and then I remind them that they can help themselves to anything else from the art area that they might need. I then read the prompts on the included instruction card just to get them started on thinking about what they might want to do and how they will use the provided materials. Sometimes my son needs a little more support with ideas on these. My daughter is older and loves these projects and creates some really fun art from them. I then turned on the Alphabet Island Music CD and let them create. There is usually some getting up and dancing to work the wiggles out and then they come back to their project. Dancing is a great way to work out frustrations if a project idea isn't working out as planned. Once they come back with a different frame of mind they are usually able to work past the problem they were having. Plus the CDs are just really fun and they both love the music. I have a cheap CD player and I usually just let them control what they listen to. We have all the Mother Goose Time CDs in a basket next to the player and sometimes we go back and listen to the older ones.  

We also had a popsicle break! After this it was about time for lunch. I let them play with some kinetic sand that I already owned and they used some shells to decorate their own castle creations. After lunch we sat down to play the Build a Castle Game. This game was so fun and we have played it several times this week. The game board and building blocks needed for the game were included. There was also some number cards to put in the re usable cube but I decided to use a dice I had from a previous months theme. It was easier to use on our table and we were still snacking on lunch so I didn't want to take it to the floor. The point of the game was to roll the dice and move around the board collecting building blocks to construct a sand castle like structure at the end with the pieces you acquired. It was fun watching them collect the pieces and plan what they were going to make as they added to their collections. This game could be made a little more challenging for my daughter by allowing her to roll the dice twice and either add or subtract to get the number of how many squares she would move. This makes it more age appropriate for her with out making it to hard for him.

The last thing we did was some chalk pastel art from an online course we've been doing. There was a Sand Caste lesson so it kind of had to happen.

This was such a fun day and I could tell that learning and fun were both happening simultaneously. I love days like this and with an arts-integrated curriculum it doesn't feel like work and the kids enjoy what they are doing. And when we do have to do those dreaded worksheets it makes it easier to follow it up with something more play based. Hopefully this weekend we can get to the beach for some sand play. Fingers crossed for sun! 

To see more of our adventures visit me on Instagram

*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*