Unique Ways of Teaching Shapes to Toddlers

This month our Mother Goose Time curriculum had a lot of activities featuring shapes. Not just the typical lessons you can find on Pinterest, but truly unique exercises to have your children recognize and learn new shapes while building, creating, problem solving and having fun. What I like about Mother Goose Time is that this isn't limited to one month. Each month has new and exciting ways of teaching and learning.

Each monthly box comes with a new manipulative for the children to play with and use throughout the month. This month's was a bag of Multi-Style Tangrams in a mix of colors and sizes. These were wonderful tools to use with the lessons included in the box. Here are a few of the lessons this month that featured using these Tangrams (although you can create many more activities as well).

The first lesson was using cube cards that came in this month's box with your pocket cube that is included in your Welcome Kit. Each child took turns rolling the cube and built the image on the card.

There were fun images that the girls had to problem solve and figure out. They had to use various shapes until they decided which shapes would be best. They also enjoyed figuring out what the image was and discussing different options together.

A unique game was the Feeling Shapes Game. Along with Shapes, this month we also learned Emotions. I would have never figured out how to connect these topics on my own, but I don't have to! I love the way they connect teaching multiple topics in one activity.

With this game each child would pick a shape out of the bag, decide what the emotion was, act it out with their facial expressions and then find the shape in the Tangrams. After the found the shape, they would trace around the outside of each shape on their own piece of paper.

This exercise even sparked a good 30 minutes of tracing other things around the house like toys and supplies.

Another great activity was this pattern sheet. For this, the girls had to recognize the next shape in the pattern and even create their own!

This was a great activity to work on together especially when they got to create their own pattern. They had me solve their patterns and were very excited to "help" me figure it out.

This Feeling Puzzle Game was another great game to tie together learning shapes, patterns, puzzles and emotions.

While this was a little more difficult, Bella took her time to try and find the same shape and same color as the image and place them in the same way. This one took a lot of her concentration and helped her slow down and take her time.

When they finished their faces, they acted out the emotion they just created. Any guesses on this one?

These fun Design Mats were a great way for the kids to transition into a new subject. I would give them a mat as I gathered the next project. They enjoyed finishing each picture and saying what they were.

Last but not least was their favorite activity of the month, the "I am" Spinner Game.

They had to spin the spinner, find the shape that it landed on and place it on the game board trying to fill the board up before the spinner landed on the dog.

The girls really enjoyed celebrating when they didn't land on the dog! It was fun to see them learning to take turns, help each other and celebrate each other's victories since they were one the same team.


I will save and use all of these activities for future use. The girls and I enjoyed them and they are a great way for them to have fun and learn together!

After months of being a paying customer, I was given this month's box for free in return for my honest experiences and opinions!

Pat-A-Cake Perfection with Mother Goose Time

One day of Mother Goose Time really stood out this week as Bella's favorite so I had to share! Mother Goose Time is the monthly homeschooling kit I use to teach my 3 year old. It comes with projects, activities and supplies for 20 days and SO MUCH MORE! I have posted previously about it on my blog like here .

Today's theme was Pat-A-Cake! Bella is my little baker who loves anything to do with cooking so she absolutely loved today's activities! We started off by reciting Pat-a-Cake since it is one of her favorite Nursery Rhymes.

 

 Bella loved reciting it together and has gotten really good!


Next we played this cute cake game that helped Bella with her number recognition, shape recognition and counting.

She was also able to help me separate the hearts from the cutouts. Little exercises like this have really helped her develop her motor skills in a new way.

Bella would choose a card, announce which number it was and then place that amount of hearts on the cake. She also matched the different sized hearts with their correct sized silhouette on the cake.

 

She was so proud of herself when she filled up the whole cake!

 



The next part of the day is always Bella's favorite: craft time! This Invitation to Create was super cute.

Bella created her own "cupcakes". While the recipe called for Shaving Cream, we went a little outside of the box and used real frosting!

Her favorite part was definitely putting the sprinkles on top!

Oh, and of course trying the frosting and sprinkles for herself!

After her first cupcake she was in the mood to create more cupcakes so we used her manipulatives to create out own cupcakes with Floam.

She even put a "cherry on top"!

I love to watch the creativity she uses during class time.

Lastly, to clean up, I had her string her manipulatives onto her shoe string (included in this month's kit). Her fine motor skills are leaps and bounds above what they were when we started Mother Goose Time! I loved watching her accomplish putting all the Blue on her string! The manipulatives are one of my favorite things included in each box.

 

 I love her concentration and determination! She is so focused during her little projects. I love the things we get to do together every day thanks to Mother Goose Time! I recommend this program to everyone!

 

After months of being a paying customer, I received this month's box for free in exchange for my personal experience!

How to Easily Teach Your Toddler Daily Topics

Daily Repetition in a Fun Way!

As a parent we are so busy taking care of our children and every day responsibilities that it's hard to keep up with the little things you could be teaching your toddler daily. Until I started Mother Goose Time I never considered teaching my (now 3 year old) toddler what day of the week it was, much less the month. Thanks to Mother Goose Time we now have a daily schedule where I can take an opportunity to teach Bella (naturally) about these daily topics.

Here are some topics we learn about at the beginning of the day:

1) Day of the Week

2) Date Today

3) Month We are In

4) The Weather Outside

 

(Each day we also re-learn about our Monthly Shape, Letter and Number)

While this seems like a simple concept, it can be hard to keep a child interested in learning this DAILY. That's why I love the way Mother Goose Time is set up to be engaging and fun. First, we have a display board! Everything besides the board came in the Welcome Kit that you receive for FREE with your first box! I take out the Display Board when we are about to start school. Bella now recognizes what will happen once I grab the board and looks forward to school time.

 

Monthly you "start over" and introduce the new month. This week we started January. On your board you have space for your Month Name, Calendar, Letters of the Month, Daily Topic Photo, Shape Clouds, Numbered Fish and Weather Icons. I use this putty to hang most items that we change frequently, or these self-adhesive Velcro dots for heavier items that we will use all year. While some items come in your Welcome Kit, each month you receive new letters, shapes and numbers so your child does not get overwhelmed with learning too much new information at a time.

 

The Calendar comes with numbered dates that feature characters that go with that month's theme. This month's theme is Baby Animals. The days easily pop out and are great for the child to remove themselves. I have Bella remove the day and will explain "Today is Friday, January 6th". Then she uses a glue stick and glues the date on the calendar herself.

This helps her motor skills and coordination along with number recognition!

Next we grab her Weather Icons which include a Sun, Cloud, Wind, Snow and Rain. I laminated them and placed self adhesive Velcro on the back and on the board so we can easily hang them daily. We then go outside and discuss what the weather is like. We will talk about the clouds and what we see. She also predicts things like "I think it might rain later".

I use a sheet protector to store my extra calendar days and weather icons and hang it on the back of my board with the self-adhesive Velcro.

 

This is our board on a typical day with all of our daily items attached! When we are done with school I fold it up and slide it behind my bookshelf. It's a very convenient tool and super easy to set up and update. It's the perfect start to school time and Bella knows once the board comes out that school is going to begin and we get to glue and go outside to see the weather! She really enjoys the process and consistency of doing it daily. She now knows her days of the week and we are working on the pattern of which days come after today.

This portion of the Mother Goose Time program is really great and has been able to teach Bella many things I struggled with teaching on my own. I definitely recommend trying a month for yourself. The best part is, there is no commitment! If you're like me you will fall in love with this program (which you won't mind since it's so affordable)! Check out how affordable it is here!

Bella Gluing on the Date

This Month's Adorable Calendar Dates

 

After months of being a paying customer, I received this month's box for free in return for my honest feedback!