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  This is my year of Prek. This year all of my students are heading to Kindergarten next year. As we enter our pre-kindergarten year using Mother Goose Time, I know educators want to know if this is actually something that can be effectively used to teach pre-k concepts to children. I am here to say that: Yes it can. You can prep a child for kindergarten with Mother Goose Time. The reason I say yes is because of the picture at the top. That is a cherry blossom art project. Mother Goose Time gave me the blue paper and popcorn for this project. Everything else? Came from the child. I showed them a picture of the cherry blossom and told them...*make your own* and this is one of the pictures that came out. They are able to create their own art without it looking like it was mass produced. THIS IS GOOD!! I have discussed why its good in another post, but this post is about the stories that develop as a result of the art they have created.  The goal of children doing their art their way is to get them to think up their own ideas. You do not want to discourage them from using their imagination during their work. During art projects I try not to interject too much while they are working. By that I try to encourage them to talk to each other while they are doing their projects. It is usually then that you are able to hear their imaginations come to the front as they are speaking with their friends. They begin to take ideas from each other friends to make their own ideas for the stories. During the cherry blossom art project I heard entire stories come forward about how where the cherry blossom tree was located, who planted it and who lived in or near it. They made art decisions based on the stories they had built up about the story and it was quite lovely to hear from the children. I enjoy listening to their chatter.
I think that is why I love the journal prompt sheets so much. Now that my prek children are writing their own sentences, it has been a joy to step back and totally let them take control of their ideas and to only interject when I need to help them with sounding out words that is not in their Starfall dictionary. I really hope Mother Goose Time never removes this from their curriculum. It inspires imagination and independent thinking and it really falls into what I am trying to do with my classroom. I hope you have come away with some ideas of how to encourage the independence of writing and imagination through art in your classroom. Live Long and Keep Teaching! Ms Tessie *Mother Goose Time provides the curriculum for an honest review |
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