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 So, look, I am a military brat, veteran and wife. I live on a military base. With my military brats and my military husband. Why is this important enough for me to sound like a nursery rhyme? Because this month we are learning about different types of homes. For the children in my program, it gives us a chance to talk about the different places in which they have lived and how they are different. Many of the children have lived in hotels during moves, traveled on large ships with beds for cruises and have switched houses all before they have entered preschool. It is the way of our life. So we spend our circle time talking about the houses we have lived in and where. Another time we talked about the differences in our living rooms and what we used them for. It has been super interesting.  This theme with Mother Goose Time allows the children to learn about the different ways their peers live. It allows us to learn about each other. Circle time during this month has been about the stories. The children have been encouraged to share about themselves and their homes and to listen to their friends as they share about their homes. I have loved how this year the thread of the year has been showing the children how to embrace the differences around them. It has shown them that while we are different, there are lots of ways that we are the same. One of the ways that we were able to see that we were the same was with our pattern strips. This is a math activity, how does it teach a lesson about us being the same? I knew you were going to ask that! Well the pattern strip was about bath time! So, before we did the pattern strip we talked about bath time routines. They we worked on the different patterns. After that we talked about who had the same bath routines as us. They loved talking about bath time, about why they brush their teeth, when the brush their hair. It was a fun time, that didn't involve them just working one skill. They worked on many different skills and got to know their classmates better. This has been a very enjoyable theme for me. My preschool has not been concentrating on the letters so much as the lesson behind the theme. We know our letters so we have been working on the letter sounds. I wanted to mention this because I know for some parents and teachers that we may base our judgement of a theme just on the name. You can modify the lessons to fit the children in your care. The beauty in the Mother Goose Time curriculum is the ability to add or take away from the lessons in anyway necessary so that your classroom is getting the most out of their lessons. I decided to use the letters of the day as a way to reinforce our letter sounds and to introduce sight words. It has been very successful, even for my pre-readers. Overall I feel like this theme, has addressed so much, and is the perfect way to build on the on going theme of the year of differences and family. Thanks for reading and Live long and Keep Teaching! Ms. Tessie!  |
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