Mother Goose Program in Knoxville, Tennessee
The Mother Goose Program is funded through Knox County and is part of the Helen Ross Mcnabb Foundation. The program is for infants from birth (or as soon as the mother or caretaker is up for outings with an infant) to 30 months of age and their parents, grandparents, or other caretakers. There is no charge for this program for the caretaker or parent.
We first moved to Knoxville, Tennessee when my oldest daughter was 14 months old and the Mother Goose Program was one of the first activities that was recommended to me. It became the highlight of our week! We were a regular part of that group until she was almost 30 months and we had moved on to other activities. The Mother Goose Program teaches parents how to interact with their children. The brain is stimulated from a very early age through music, repetition, play and visuals. Any parent looking for new and fun ways to interact with their babies or toddlers would enjoy this program.
And the babies love it! Imagine entering a room full of mothers or other caretakers sitting on the floor without their shoes and babies in their laps. Imagine getting to look at eye level at all the other babies just your size and getting to shake maracas, wave flashlights, or play with puppets, all while listening to appropriate music. The Mother Goose Program teaches how to stimulate a child’s curiosity by using play, music, and reading or reciting stories.
Studies show that babies learn through repetition and that repeating an activity three times is required to begin hardwiring it into the brain, so each activity is repeated three times, with lots of hand-clapping in between. Such familiar finger plays as “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “This Little Piggy” are introduced along with others like “Criss-Cross Applesauce” and “Baby Bumblebee”.
Babies and toddlers learn through all their senses, so knobby balls, soft and cuddly balls, furry puppets, and other tactile toys are brought out to be played with and to accompany the appropriate songs or activities. Bells, maracas, and other shakers stimulate the baby’s sense of rhythm by shaking them along to such rhymes as “Popcorn, popcorn”.
Sometimes the lights are dimmed and tiny flashlights are handed to each caretaker/child pair to be used as accompaniment to such songs as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “Watch The Stars, See How They Run”. Babies look on in awe at the patterns the lights make in the darkened room.
The Mother Goose Program in Knoxville, Tennessee, is every Thursday at three different times: 9 am for walkers up to 30 months; 10 am for crawlers and beginning walkers; and 11 am for lap babies. Mother Goose meets at the Knoxville Center Mall on the first and third Thursday of the month; and at the Cokesbury United Methodist Church on Kingston Pike on the second and fourth Thursday. If there is a fifth Thursday in the month, the program does not meet on that day.
I have the privilege of being part of this fun, enriching, rewarding and FREE Mother Goose Program again with my second daughter. She lights up when she sees the other babies; she begins clapping when she walks in the room because she associates Mother Goose time with lots of clapping; and we both get to interact and socialize with other people our size. There are a lot of reasons I am pleased to be raising our children in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the Mother Goose Program is one of them!
