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 While I teach Preschool aged children, I am also a Family Child Care Provider. This means that my classroom is not as large as a corporate classroom. When I lived in Maryland my ratio was 8 children to one adult. I moved to California (military move) and went to 6 children and it was a change for me! I was use to having 10 children every summer (including my two boys). Now it is me actually having some days in the summer where I get off work early because many of the children in my class go on vacation. Family Child Care providers are responsible for not only the education of the children but we are the one person who provides everything that a corporate center has various employees dedicated to provide. So with being so busy it becomes very important to find a way to teach children how to improve their skills and at the same time make sure they are encouraged to remain curious and to ask questions. This means we tend to lean towards using themes for the month. We do not have to have the pressure of coming up with a new theme for every day or week on the fly and we can choose a daily theme or a weekly theme to address the monthly theme. This is part of the reason that I chose Mother Goose Time for my business. I liked the fact that they had a monthly theme that was broken down into weekly and daily themes. It makes it is easier for the children to learn about many different aspect of the theme without feeling overwhelmed. So, today we will discuss the ways that Mother Goose Time uses themes and how they can be used in a family child care home.   Here is the theme web for Mother Goose Time. This web shows us the break down of the themes of the month. We worked on reviewing the Alphabet for the month of June. This was also combined with learning about the different aspects of being in the sun and learning about islands. Within the month all the different skills are worked on multiple times. At the same time new concepts are learned. With this curriculum the first day of theme introduction is the foundation of what is to come during the month. For example, the first day was learning about the island and as we go through we stack more and more blocks of new knowledge. We are building on the knowledge and learning how to connect them to prior knowledge. Using Mother Goose Time in a family child care home works because it allows for the provider to teach fun topics with ease. It also teaches art, literacy and math without using rote memory practices. It makes it easier to use differentiated instruction. This is very important for family child care because we work with so many different age ranges. I myself only work with children ages 2-5. But that is because it makes it easier to tailor learning for the individual child. At least for me. I am able to modify information and materials for some children and add on for others. This means that without too much extra work I am able to maintain high engagement. Learning is so much fun and themes help to give focus for the teacher and the student. -Ms. Tessie Mother Goose Time provides this curriculum for an honest review. |
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