As an Experience Early Learning Blog Ambassador, we receive the Experience Early Learning preschool curriculum in exchange for sharing our honest and authentic stories resulting from our personal experiences. As always, our opinions on amazing things for children are 100% our own. Keep in mind that all preschoolers do things in their own time and on their own terms. What one is ready for, another might not be. Please use your best judgement when planning activities for your children.
As with so many other centers, we are still closed and so I put together take-home bags from our Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) supplies for the preschoolers and toddlers. I am the director so I don’t usually look carefully at the lesson books but with the take home bags I really need to.
I love the way that the units are put together. The children know what to expect with having a puzzle, magnet story, eye spy-which is a favorite activity, the STEAM activities and of course the My Creative Mind Daily note which has been a great conversation starter for parents and their children.
I’ve been able to send home the art activities but I’ve started typing up some of the other activities as well as the Big Questions that parents can use to open up conversations with their child.
Hiding Places STEAM Investigation Station
For instance, one of the steam activities that was includes in last week's Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) Teacher Guide was to fill plastic eggs with seeds, beans or other small items and have an egg hunt then explore what’s in them. The Big Questions listed in the book are
· Where might be a good hiding spot for food?
· Why do you think birds hide their food?
· When you lose something, what do you do?
· What would you do with food if you were a chickadee?
I like the way that they have these types of questions for teachers, and right now, our parents, to talk to the children and have a nice discussion that can open up into other topics also.
I like the music an movement activities like Hum the Hummingbird in which the children can move. It will be fun to get back into the classroom to do this. I did suggest to parents that they can do activities like this with their child.
Most days, but not every day, we have been reading books on our parent page on a social media site. This has been a learning experience as none of us are particularly comfortable doing this but the children who watch have enjoyed it.
Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) always has wonderful small group and table top activities. One of my favorites this week was the Chickadee Matching game where the children can make “nests” from paper plates and then match the birds. The pictures of the birds are quite beautiful and its fun to talk to the children about the similarities and differences. I suggested to the parents that they find photos of birds online and talk with the children about same and different.
