Skip to main content

Amazing Picture Books and Read Alouds

We took this week off as sort of a sick/holiday week. We started off the week with colds and everyone wanting to rest. Then I worked on thanksgiving, my husband had a four day weekend, and then we made a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. It was very difficult to stay on any routine this week, but we had fun and that is a bonus of homeschooling. We get to just kind of go with what life throws at us and not stress about it.

One thing we enjoyed a lot this week was reading lots of books. We love read aloud time, it is such a cozy time! We like to snuggle up on the couch with a blanket and a couple books and read. Mother Goose Time has been a fun addition to this time of day because they always include a really great picture book with the months supplies. And not only do they send a book, they also send fun extension activities that go beautifully with the book. This Month they sent a  story from the Takuna Tribe of South America. It's titled Chimidyue A Folktale of the Amazon Rainforest. It is retold by Leslie Falconer and the beautiful pictures are by Chris Lensch. We enjoyed this book several times this week along with the accompanying puzzle and the magnetic story pieces.



The magnetic story pieces is a new item that Mother Goose Time started including in their curriculum this year and they have been a great addition in my opinion. My kids use them every time we read the story and act out the scenes as I read. I think it helps keep them focused on the story and gives them a way to process the story in a hands on way. I also like that it provides opportunity for them to retell the story or even make up their own stories. It is fun to watch how they get creative with this. Here is a picture of my son acting out the story as I read it to him. 


These are very good quality and sturdy so far, they have held up all month with both of my kids playing with them. I keep them in a little basket along with the book and place it by the handy magnetic oil pan board that I got at an auto supply store. It was a cheap board and works perfectly with the magnetic story sets. 

Another great thing about getting these books in the curriculum is that after awhile you end up with a beautiful little library of gorgeous picture books that are fun educational reads. Look how many we have collected over our time with Mother Goose Time!


We go back to these books and reread them often, and my son loves to  pull them out and look at the pictures. He likes to look through the pictures and tell his own version of the story by what he remembers of the books and what he is seeing in the pictures. I love seeing him quietly doing this while I'm helping his sister with something or while we are having down time. If you are interested in buying just the story books from them you can! They are reasonably priced and with the holidays coming would be a great gift! Here is the link to the page to purchase storybooks

One last thing I wanted to share was our moldy bread project, I wrote about this two weeks ago in a post found here


After two weeks the damp bread has grown a lot of mold just like we guessed it would. The other two have grown no mold at all though, and that surprised us all. We are going to keep it up awhile longer to see if any mold grows on the other bread. We think the next bread to mold is the bread slice that came straight out of the bag. I guess we will have to wait and see. 



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








 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mother Goose Time Our Way

When I first started homeschooling I wrote out schedules and times for when we would do certain subjects and activities. I pretty much drove myself crazy trying to keep up with our strict schedule. I felt stressed and most of all I felt like I was failing. I've come a long way since then. Our homeschool is so much more relaxed and homey feeling. I think the biggest change I made is going by a routine instead of a schedule. A schedule is so rigid and gives you this feeling that you can't stray from the schedule. A routine, for me anyway, is so much more flexible, and  Mother Goose Time has fit in so seamlessly with our routine. In fact I will be a little sad when my kids are to old for this program because I love the way Mother Goose Time enhances what we do each day. Our morning routine pretty much starts off the same each day. We start with what I like to call Breakfast and books. This is the time that I introduce the Daily Topic for the day. Mother Goose Time provides a Da...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bug Homes

This week with  Mother Goose Time we learned all about Bug Homes. We talked about bugs that use plants as their homes, live in dirt, make hills, webs, and hives. This was such an interesting week especially for my older daughter. She had so many questions and these topics sparked so many conversations. I think our favorite day was about hives. We learned so much about bees and we even did a fun experiment. One activity we did was the Honeycomb activity. This was an invitation to create project so I set up everything that they would need and then let them create. This helped my son with his fine motor skills because we used little hexagon stencils to draw the picture, It also gave me a chance to have him verbally tell me what he included in is picture. He did a great job and retained quite a bit of information. I loved that after the project was over he was able to tell me what was going on in his picture. He included the hexagon cells of the honeycomb, them he ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Black Tie Not Required

World Penguin Day was this week on April 25 and conveniently we had a day about Penguins in this months  Mother Goose Time box. I switched a few days around so that we could do the Penguin Day on World Penguin Day because what better way to celebrate this adorable birds special day then to learn all about them. We started off the morning by reading the suggested story in the Teacher Guide which gave us some really good information about penguins. After reading the story we used potatoes as eggs and tried balancing them on our feet like the daddy penguins do. It was pretty hard and we gained a lot of respect for those amazing dads! After this we played the Penguin Moves game from the Teacher Guide. It used the included pocket cube and the cube cards. This game had us waddling, hopping, and sliding to different letters and numbers as review. This was a lot of fun and a great way to get the wiggles out first thing in the morning. They especially...
Post a Comment
Read more