Fables and Folktales - Paul Bunyan

One of the things I love about preschool with Mother Goose Time is its close attachment to classic children's literature. Perhaps not everyone is nostalgic about nursery rhymes, Fables, Beatrix Potter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, oh the list could go on and on. As I child, I loved the sound of my Mother's voice reading. At bedtime, around the camp fire; her perfect voice transported me to other places, times and worlds. Literature for children is truly magic and Mother Goose Time provides a looking glass to jump through with my children. So this month we've been journeying through classic fables and folktales as told for preschoolers by Experiencing Early Learning and illustrated by Chris Lensch.

We have also enjoyed reading stories included in our daily packages like our week of The Legends of Paul Bunyan. I'm not big into using media and technology while teaching young children. Personally I feel like they are bombarded with it everywhere and teaching is a nice chance to take a break from that level of stimulation. But this week one of the prompts was to use something that distracts the child to focus their learning. This may be a stretch, but TV is a huge distraction for my kids, so I decided to use it to my advantage while we were exploring this story. I love Disney American Folktale cartoons. Johnny Appleseed is my very favourite but Paul Bunyan is a close second.

Paul Bunyan and the Flapjacks

Our Mother Goose Time story this week was Paul Bunyan and the flapjacks. The kids and I then made flapjacks together. I love baking with the kids because it combines so many skills - Math, as we measure ingredients into the bowl, Science, as we can talk about reactions that occur as we mix things together so that our baking rises, and art,  as we can get creative with what we are baking.

We took this activity a little further creatively by colouring some of our batter and squirting it into the pan to bake briefly before adding the rest of the batter to make a design.

Creating more Challenging Manipulatives

My daycare closes for the summer, so during the months of July and August I have had my school age kids and their friends around. I've lost count of the kids that float in and out of my yard and make themselves at home. If you show up at my house - I'm gonna treat you like my kid. That's just how I roll so I've had to improvise to create some preschool + environments (stations, manipulative experiences... whatever fancy word you want to call them). 

This was one of my favourites and it went well with our Paul Bunyan week. I wasn't about to give them a sharp ax to chop wood but school age kids and even preschoolers with close supervision can start to learn to use a hammer. Wanna kill an afternoon with a 5, 6 and 8 year olds? Give them some instructions, nails, hammers and wood. They were practicing, making games to navigate marbles through etc. It was great fun.

Disclosure: I receive Mother Goose Time Curriculum free of charge for educational purposes in return for posting my honest experiences using the curriculum. Photos of children featured on my blog for review of Mother Goose Time are used with signed consent of the child's parents. I welcome any questions or concerns.