The train would squish you.

Washington , Illinois does not have snow now but it is still cold. We have been putting away Thanksgiving decorations and getting out Christmas decorations. All the kids and I have been learning new things.  We got some exercise in with  "Jumping Tracks". I had some orange ribbon that I put on the floor and we kept rolling the movement cube. It was good for the kids to get some exercise. They had fun and it helped them focus better.

     I have many blessings to be thankful for. Here are three of them. These are my three daughters. All three of them act just like me.  Another blessing I am grateful for is my grandmother. She will be 97 years young in January and is still learning new things each day. She stills drives and lives in her own apartment.

    The Bilingual Books are such a great help to teach the kids Spanish and to help them with English as well. There was opportunity for cutting practice, fine motor skills, and imagination. I went through the words on the books with the kids and they were starting to pronounce the Spanish words. I can wait to teach them more Spanish words. 

"Go to a Star" with the "I Can Read Book" gave us some practice with our sight words. I had the "Sight Word Pointers" out . After we read each page I had the kids match up the sight words with " Sight Word Pointers" I went slowly with each page because I wanted to give the children plenty of time to learn what each word looked like. We did the book at least twice. We even worked on the words on the back page of the book.

    We got our " Letter Engine" and we traveled the whole alphabet. This activity was set up so well. It was easy for the kids to use. I was in need of more letter recognition items for the children. I want them to be able to know every letter in the alphabet. They had so much fun with this. Any time there is a cube to roll they want to do it. I let them roll the cube . Then I had them tell me the letter . After this I had them find the letter on the train and put a triangle on it. I hope there are more activities like this one in future curriculum. There are more adventures that we want to take with Mother Goose Time Curriculum. The next time we share with everyone it will from "Sights and Sounds of Winter". " Happy Thanksgiving  to everyone!!!!!!!!

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Buses and more

    This week has had all kinds of learning opportunities for my daycare kids and for my family.  We have had our first snow and we have had more rain in Washington, Illinois than we know what to do with. My oldest daughter Adrionna basically lives down the street from us now so she comes over about everyday which has been an unexpected blessing for the holiday season. With Concept Review: Letter Tt I had to some things differently. The kids were have trouble visualizing a letter Tt so I put the Tt flag on a tray and had the kids put the train counters on the Tt flag. This helped tremendously. They could visually see how to make a letter Tt. Engine and Caboose and all kinds of cars in between is what we came up with for the parts of a train.  The "Threading Train " activity was very cool. The kids got to be creative and use their fine motor skills with putting the noodles on the pipe cleaner. I had the kids color the noodles with markers , because other times when I let them paint them the noodles fall apart.

    I have been  laminating all the topic posters and put them up all around the house for the kids to help them review what we have been talking about. I have also been putting up the other letter poster I have from Mother Goose Time to reinforce the letters we have been talking about. It has helped the kids a lot. I will definitely be doing this for "Sights and Sounds of Winter" too.  

    The " Counting Canoe" game is a great way to teach math. I love the way it applies to real life concepts. Children learn more when they can apply it to something they have seen before. I colored the canoe page . I wanted the kids to think the canoe was out on the lake. It worked very well. The kids realized when there more of the kid cards on the canoe that all the kids would not fit in the canoe.  

Counting Canoe had the kids logic and problem solving skills on overdrive.

          

We have been working in our "More Math and More Literacy " workbooks. We worked on writing numbers and number words.We worked on word endings too. I love these workbooks so much. They help the kids learn things in small steps where they can retain the information. 

 

      The " Thread a Train" was something the kids enjoyed doing. They were able to do most of the activity on their own. it is such a blast to watch the kids figure out the activity on their own. It blows me away every time. We have more adventures waiting for us with Mother Goose Time Curriculum. We will be back soon to share more of our adventures with everyone.

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