First Day of Mommy School

This year I am having Mommy preschool in our house. I found a plan online to teach Ellie some basic skills this year and I am adding some skills I have of my own. After teaching from 2 year olds to 2nd grade since I was 16 in a variety of environments I am now able to use my skills on my own children. Ellie already knows her basic colors and shapes as well as all her uppercase letters as we have been working on them, but this year we will review them and learn to write them as well as work on numbers. I have so many materials from my teaching years and as I got things together to teach her I realized I kind of missed those teaching years. I have not been in the classroom in almost 3 years after being in a classroom in some capacity for around 12 years so I am excited to dust off those old supplies and get to work having fun. We are also doing a theme a week, which was suggested on the lesson ideas I found online, and I have decided on a theme for each month as well. Last week we learned about cows and this week we are excited to learn about the jungle. Our theme for the month is apples. Last week we worked on the letter A, number 1, the shape of a square and learned about cow facts and sang cow songs, read cow books, did cow crafts and read cow poems. We also sorted beads and animals by color. We work together for about an hour and on Fridays we get to do crafts involving our theme for the month, apples. This week we did apple prints as our craft. A friend of mine taught her girls last year and found a calendar with crazy days for every day of the week, like cheese pizza day or read a book day. I looked it over and picked a fun day for each week and last week we had cheese pizza day and made cheese pizzas for dinner that day. Ellie got to make her own little cheese pizza and she loved it.

I am just as excited as she is to have school time at home. I love crafts and fun activities and am having a great time watching her learn as that is the reason I wanted to be a teacher. Watching a child learn and absorb information is one of the most rewarding things in my life and I am happy to be able to use my teaching techniques on my own children now. We would love for Ellie to be able to experience a year in preschool, just a couple days a week and just a morning program, which they do at tons of churches around us, before she heads off to elementary school. We a couple years before we would look at doing that and at this point I love teaching her the skills she is ready for and stretching her to learn new things every day.

We are looking forward to learning more next week and having chocolate milkshake day (I think Daddy is going to enjoy these special days just as much as Ellie and I.)

 

Learning fine motor skills

 

Our Classroom

 

Bead Sorting

 

Making Pizza

 

One Cow Craft

 

While Ellie is at school, Quinny is busy growing while sleeping or playing on her play mat or sometimes watching her own learning program on her Baby Einstein videos. She has been wonderful and has not been fussy at all while we are busy at school.

 

Apple Prints (Daddy was pretty impressed with the finished product!)