A question I am often asked when discussing our preschool program, Mother Goose Time is,

“How long does it take to prepare and set up for the day?”

Fortunately, there is very little preparation since most everything is in presorted bags. The night before I do a quick preview of the day’s activities and briefly review suggested adaptations for my kindergartner and toddler.

There are, however, a few things you can do to make the day to day schedule run even smoother!

 

Monthly Preparation for Mother Goose Time

Teacher Guides

When I receive a new box from Mother Goose Time I look through the teacher guides and review the gathering list.

I circle the activities that I know we want to complete.

The kids always enjoy looking over the month’s summary with me and picking and choosing additional projects!

Gathering List

The gathering list is a quick way to determine if there are any unusual materials that I don’t have at the ready.

For instance, this month I’m going to need to make sure I have six apples for use for lesson 4, procure some sponges for lesson 14, and borrow some garden tools for lesson 16. Each month has 20 lessons.

I keep items that are commonly used by this curriculum such as crayons, paint, pencils, yarn/string, and play dough in a craft cabinet. I typically will gather those and add them to my “teacher basket” as needed the night before.

If you have never completed this curriculum before, there is a list of items to keep on hand conveniently located in the top right hand corner of the gathering list.

 

Weekly Preparation for Mother Goose Time

Book List

Our library has a two week limit on any borrowed books. Therefore, I gather the suggested books via library loan or occasionally purchase them via Amazon prime (love free 2 day shipping!) the week prior.

Weekly Planning Calendar

I use the Weekly Planning Calendar included in the beginning of each Teacher Guide (also organized by week) to briefly list my planned daily activities. I also list the materials I need for the day, so I can quickly grab them the night prior.

STEAM Activities

New, this year Mother Goose Time started adding suggested STEAM Stations to encourage children to test out new ideas through free play. Setting these stations up at the beginning of the week and then leaving them available allows for continuous, repeated play.

• Science and Nature
• Dramatic Play
• Blocks
• Sensory
• Outside Discovery

My kids adore these activities. The materials used for these activities are not included in the daily packs, so I make sure to list them on the first day of my Weekly Planning Calendar. Rarely, will I need to make a special purchase for STEAM Stations.

 

Customize Mother Goose Time

We further customize our Mother Goose Time curriculum to include our toddler and our kindergartner.

Little Goose Toddler Program

I add activities from the toddler program, Little Goose into the daily planner. We especially love the tray play ideas included for toddlers! Typically, all my kids join in for these activities and my little guy loves it.

More Math and Literacy Pre-K Program

Extension activities from More Math and Literacy, challenge my kindergartner with expanding her skill set, while still letting her enjoy the free play and process art activities being enjoyed by her preschool siblings.

 

Daily Preparation for Mother Goose Time

Here’s the best part folks!

Aside from requesting books from the library and gathering some novel materials on the gathering list, all you have to do to be ready for Mother Goose Time is open the Teacher Guide (shown in the image above) and open the daily bag (show in the image below) and play!

Daily Lesson Bag

With only a few minutes of preparation, I am playing with my kids while building valuable skill sets.

Included in each bag are the materials needed for the day’s activities. As an example day 1 is show in the image below: materials for creating a koala puppet, exploring a theme poster, and creating name tags.

Calendar

Also included with lesson 1 is a calendar. This calendar fits the theme and although Nature Detectives is scheduled for July, the calendar is adaptable to any month (31 days are also included and the month name is separate).

The calendar teaches month and day as well as reviewing numbers and patterns. Each month comes with a different repeating pattern for the calendar pieces.

Minute Preparation for Mother Goose Time

During seasons of life when I am significantly less organized, i.e. we just completed a cross-country move or had a new baby I give myself grace. We open the bag and go.

On more than one occasion, the kids and I have read the instructions for the first time together. We substitute items as needed and we do the activities the best we can with the materials we have on hand.

Honestly, this has worked just fine for us numerous times. If there is an activity we really want to try and we don’t have the materials I just make a note on the refrigerator, pick up whatever we are missing on the next grocery run, and we complete the project later in the month!

So even if you don’t have time to do much prep, go ahead enjoy all the work Mother Goose Time has done for you and dig in to the activities and enjoy this special time with your kids!

 

Have Fun!