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 Last month the theme of Mother Goose Time was learning about the world around us. I enjoyed it a great deal. As did the children. Especially because I also use Little Passports to teach geography. We were able to learn about celebrations all over the world with Little Passports and learn about different landmarks and their importance with Mother Goose Time. Mother Goose Time supplied us with passports for the children to draw pictures of the places we were learning about. Many of the children in my class are not in the stage of drawing people or things to represent their thoughts. So those children used different colors to represent many of the things they had learned in the classroom. But that is not how I figured out what they learned. It was the conversations we held as they drew the pictures. I asked them questions about why they were using certain colors, what they remembered about the place and what their favorite part of the locations were. The answers ranged from “I like blue” to “It’s a really high mountain”. This theme also was doubly important to us because we are all military families. These children have been moving around since birth because of the military. They can grasp the concept of travelling better because of their personal experience. I used this experience to connect them to the theme. I did this by bringing up places they have travelled before we talked about new places, showing them places that I have travelled on a map and talking about the different ways that you can get places. This led them to talking about different ways they have travelled. Apparently their most favorite ways to travel is by car. I found this to be surprising. Especially since I remember travelling from Maryland to California with my two wild children and some animals. They were done by hour 5. I was done hour 3. It was not super pleasant. I will make sure their parents know so the next time they travel with their children and there is a melt down they can kindly remind them that they said that they LIKE to travel by car. It won’t stop the melt down, but it will become a fun story to tell. All in all, the children were engaged, and they retained most of the information. It wasn’t because we sat at a desk and talked about it or even during circle time. It’s because we made it relate to their own personal experiences. Live long and Keep Teaching! Ms. Tessie  |
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