We'll I'm finally doing it! We are finally doing a Mommy and Me type preschool, we have invited 2-3 friends and their little ones to join us, so it is making me stick to a schedule!! Which is great! We just finished up week 2, our A week. We are using Moncure books, The Friend magazine, free printable worksheets from Confessions of a slacker mom and letter art ideas from Totally Tots Blog. You can find all the other little pieces and fun things I'm finding on my pinterest boards just find the letter of the week that you are doing and enjoy!
Have fun and love the time with your little ones!
Showing posts with label Pre-School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pre-School. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Jumping into Spring ~ Starting anew ~ Creating a house of Order!
Hello and Welcome!
Today is the beginning of much! It is Spring and BEAUTIFUL!! The flowers are blooming, the day is warm, and we are beginning a new journey! Your welcome to join us!
The Goal #1 - Become Organized, Set our Home in Order!
Once Order is put in place (as much as possible) - hopefully by summer's end -
Goal #2 - Compile a LDS Gospel Based Pre-School Curriculum - that can be used by mother's everywhere, within their own homes with their own Children. The plan is to compile 1-2 lessons every week, as we do it here, and post it here on my blog - so anyone can Teach Their Children. It will not be just for Preschool but also for mothers to find an alphabetized list of resources to teach their children at any time; FHE, after-school, Sunday activities, lessons, basically any time you want to teach children a gospel principle there will be an index of great articles and coloring/activity pages to go along.
"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house,
even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning,
a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God." D&C 88:119 (emphasis added)
Goal #2 - Compile a LDS Gospel Based Pre-School Curriculum - that can be used by mother's everywhere, within their own homes with their own Children. The plan is to compile 1-2 lessons every week, as we do it here, and post it here on my blog - so anyone can Teach Their Children. It will not be just for Preschool but also for mothers to find an alphabetized list of resources to teach their children at any time; FHE, after-school, Sunday activities, lessons, basically any time you want to teach children a gospel principle there will be an index of great articles and coloring/activity pages to go along.
Okay - back to Goal #1! I'm breaking this down into baby steps! Otherwise I'd become overwhelmed and give it up ~ which has happened before ~ but this time I want to feel accountable to someone, so if you are out there and want to tell someone about how your goals are coming, say Hi in the comments, set your goal, and we'll all work together to attain our goals!
Baby Steps - A few of the ones I'm thinking are needed... more to come I'm sure!
#1 ~ A Schedule/chore chart (kids)
#? ~ A Schedule/chore chart (for Mom!)
#? ~ Menu/meal planning
#? ~ Cleaning
#? ~
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Pre-school musings.... again....
I am constantly trying to assess the best ways to "pre-school" our little boys and I continue to find that I am not in agreement with the ideas that are presented in many preschools and preschool curriculum's. Children are meant to be children, and from many of my studies, even as an Early-childhood education major in college, I find more and more evidence that the logic of learning through enjoyable, relaxed, and home-made activities and from the everyday love and guidance of the mother, is the best possible education a child can have! I keep fretting that I haven't "scheduled" out a perfect preschool for 2 hours twice a week. But then I see how much enjoyment my boys have in being able to just do things when we are in the right moment. For example, the other morning they had a ball cutting up construction paper into a million little pieces, there was no pressure to cut perfectly on the lines or peer pressure, but they are learning to use scissors and fine-motor skills and mostly enjoying being a child and exploring the cause and effects in their world.
As I think back to when I was a child... I was not required to preform and do certain things that put me under pressure to "do it right, or like so-and-so"? I was allowed the freedom to explore and try new things within the safety and security of a loving home environment. I think most of us who are mothers now did not experience preschool, as it was not such a widespread and "expected" thing during our childhood. In fact Pre-school was started as a program for children who were deprived a stable loving environment to learn the basics in, and it has obviously changed into a social "norm". We may not have had all the experiences, socialization, and crafts in the same manner that can be had now... but I certainly do not regret it!
I had my mother, she lovingly watched over me, she sang to me, she read to me, she taught me many things through everyday experiences, she gave me the freedom to enjoy my childhood without the structure and pressures of adult life and schooling at too young an age. That is what I want for my children. Life has so many pressures and structure and responsibility and time passes all to quickly. Children are meant to learn joy from their mothers, just as we are meant to have Joy in our children, and we can learn so much from watching and taking time to be with them and love them. And to experience the joy and satisfaction of seeing their eyes light up when they learn something new for the first time.
I love Sis. Hinckley's attitude toward having her children at home "(she) loved the sound of the screen door slamming shut as the children ran in from the backyard... Marjorie savored the days she had her five to herself, and she went to great lengths to keep summers unstructured so her young ones would have time to lie in the gully and listen to the birds sing if they wanted to. She wept each fall when it was time to send her brood back to school; even when school was in session she looked forward to the moment each day when her children burst through the door and started scrounging for an afternoon snack..." Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley
pg.52-53 I want to cultivate that feeling into my heart, family, and my children's lives. THIS is my time to enjoy every minute I can and teach my children through my daily living and love.
But believe me, I have days that I just needed a break from it all and that life and responsibilities seems so very demanding. I am not the perfect mother, no one is, but I am working on becoming the best mother I can be, as we all are. I love the word becoming, to become means: to undergo change or development, and I like the idea that we are all working towards becoming who we and more importantly who our Beloved Father in Heaven wants us to become. I feel that that means that we don't have to be perfect right now, we all make mistakes, but we can continue to work toward what we can become, and it gives me hope and optimism.
Some links that have furthered my thoughts on preschool...
Should I send my child to Preschool?
Better Late than Early
As I think back to when I was a child... I was not required to preform and do certain things that put me under pressure to "do it right, or like so-and-so"? I was allowed the freedom to explore and try new things within the safety and security of a loving home environment. I think most of us who are mothers now did not experience preschool, as it was not such a widespread and "expected" thing during our childhood. In fact Pre-school was started as a program for children who were deprived a stable loving environment to learn the basics in, and it has obviously changed into a social "norm". We may not have had all the experiences, socialization, and crafts in the same manner that can be had now... but I certainly do not regret it!
I had my mother, she lovingly watched over me, she sang to me, she read to me, she taught me many things through everyday experiences, she gave me the freedom to enjoy my childhood without the structure and pressures of adult life and schooling at too young an age. That is what I want for my children. Life has so many pressures and structure and responsibility and time passes all to quickly. Children are meant to learn joy from their mothers, just as we are meant to have Joy in our children, and we can learn so much from watching and taking time to be with them and love them. And to experience the joy and satisfaction of seeing their eyes light up when they learn something new for the first time.
I love Sis. Hinckley's attitude toward having her children at home "(she) loved the sound of the screen door slamming shut as the children ran in from the backyard... Marjorie savored the days she had her five to herself, and she went to great lengths to keep summers unstructured so her young ones would have time to lie in the gully and listen to the birds sing if they wanted to. She wept each fall when it was time to send her brood back to school; even when school was in session she looked forward to the moment each day when her children burst through the door and started scrounging for an afternoon snack..." Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley
pg.52-53 I want to cultivate that feeling into my heart, family, and my children's lives. THIS is my time to enjoy every minute I can and teach my children through my daily living and love.But believe me, I have days that I just needed a break from it all and that life and responsibilities seems so very demanding. I am not the perfect mother, no one is, but I am working on becoming the best mother I can be, as we all are. I love the word becoming, to become means: to undergo change or development, and I like the idea that we are all working towards becoming who we and more importantly who our Beloved Father in Heaven wants us to become. I feel that that means that we don't have to be perfect right now, we all make mistakes, but we can continue to work toward what we can become, and it gives me hope and optimism.
Some links that have furthered my thoughts on preschool...
Should I send my child to Preschool?
Better Late than Early
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
"Just save the Relationship"
Latest trial in life, one of my little ones is painfully shy, very painfully. He especially cannot handle large groups of people where he feels that he is expected to preform... like primary, library story time, preschool groups, etc... We have been trying to get him to go to primary without us going too or a meltdown for 2 yrs now. Before moving ~ 10 months ago things finally settled down and he was comfortable enough with his teachers and fellow classmates to go without any worries. Then we moved. And we tried to keep the same routine... needless to say it didn't work. So we tried the pop-pychology method of leave him, he'll cry and fight for a few minutes and then be fine. It didn't work either. I mean he stayed in class usually (with his wonderful teacher holding him) but after months of doing this we weren't getting far, in fact it was causing a lot of residual problems with his trust in us. I mean what do you think a child would start to think after multiple times of being truly nervous and scared of a situation and doing all you could to let your parents know that you were not comfortable and they say, "sorry too bad, see ya, this is good for you" (we didn't say that... but that is likely what he was feeling). It didn't do much for his trust and relationship with us. So we had a parental time-out and looked at our "play" for this situation and realized what we were doing wasn't working and was actually augmenting the problem. So we tried a new "play" (I'll have to explain this more later - kinda like a football team/coaches come up with plays for their team). And started back at square one with one of us sitting with him through sharing time of primary, once they headed to the smaller class room he really did fine on a more personal level, so we would bow out and head to our class. And it has been working! Then we started working our way out of sharing time a little earlier each week, once we knew he was comfortable enough to not feel nervous when we were gone. We are down to 5-10 mins now!
My big concern is how things are going to work when we head to Kindergarten next year. This is part of the reason I decided to take care of preschool myself (which I'll be honest - hasn't been as structured or frequent as I'd planned, and I obviously haven't kept up with blogging what we do). We are in a babysitting co-op (which is great!) and one of the girls we had over the other day was in the pre-schooling co-op, which we had decided not to join in on in the fall. But watching him interact with her and with the way things are going now with primary, I'm beginning to think he may be ready for a new change... and started thinking about preschool co-op. The catch is that I'd need to be able to stay with him for the first 5-10 mins (at least) every preschool day. And the other one is that once again, I just don't like the idea of leaving his education at this age to someone else... ugh I'm caught. What I'd love is a preschool co-op where a few mom's worked together to provide preschool for their children and had a schedule etc, but didn't drop off their kids... all stayed together and worked together. A Mother & Me Preschool!
Anyway what I was really getting at with this post is... everyone tells me to let him cry, just leave him and he'll be fine. And I tried that, but it does not work for him, and no I don't think that we are coddling him. I've even had people say I should talk to a psychologist about it... but I don't think he needs that. I was really flustered about everything, wondering what was the best thing to do... and it came to me all of a sudden, "Just save the relationship"
I had read this years ago in Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley. Yes he may get around to accepting the fact that that is how school goes, but he would be resistant and it would deteriorate his relationship with us (as we already learned), and he would likely learn to hate school. So despite what anyone thinks of me, him, all of us... I am going to work on saving the relationship. Because in the end, it won't matter whether he was the perfect school child walking into class, it doesn't matter if people think something of us because we have to work harder to help him be comfortable in new situations, it Does matter how he feels and what he thinks of us as his mom and dad and our love for him. So now when I'm not sure what to do, if our relationship hangs in the balance I will "Just save the relationship" because if we are close to him, we can be a much greater influence for good in his life.
My big concern is how things are going to work when we head to Kindergarten next year. This is part of the reason I decided to take care of preschool myself (which I'll be honest - hasn't been as structured or frequent as I'd planned, and I obviously haven't kept up with blogging what we do). We are in a babysitting co-op (which is great!) and one of the girls we had over the other day was in the pre-schooling co-op, which we had decided not to join in on in the fall. But watching him interact with her and with the way things are going now with primary, I'm beginning to think he may be ready for a new change... and started thinking about preschool co-op. The catch is that I'd need to be able to stay with him for the first 5-10 mins (at least) every preschool day. And the other one is that once again, I just don't like the idea of leaving his education at this age to someone else... ugh I'm caught. What I'd love is a preschool co-op where a few mom's worked together to provide preschool for their children and had a schedule etc, but didn't drop off their kids... all stayed together and worked together. A Mother & Me Preschool!
Anyway what I was really getting at with this post is... everyone tells me to let him cry, just leave him and he'll be fine. And I tried that, but it does not work for him, and no I don't think that we are coddling him. I've even had people say I should talk to a psychologist about it... but I don't think he needs that. I was really flustered about everything, wondering what was the best thing to do... and it came to me all of a sudden, "Just save the relationship" I had read this years ago in Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley. Yes he may get around to accepting the fact that that is how school goes, but he would be resistant and it would deteriorate his relationship with us (as we already learned), and he would likely learn to hate school. So despite what anyone thinks of me, him, all of us... I am going to work on saving the relationship. Because in the end, it won't matter whether he was the perfect school child walking into class, it doesn't matter if people think something of us because we have to work harder to help him be comfortable in new situations, it Does matter how he feels and what he thinks of us as his mom and dad and our love for him. So now when I'm not sure what to do, if our relationship hangs in the balance I will "Just save the relationship" because if we are close to him, we can be a much greater influence for good in his life.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Index ~ A is for...
One of my favorite things about our Preschool is that I can integrate Spiritual and other area's of interest into my teaching.
Spiritual A's:
Aaron - prophet in the Bible & Book of Mormon
Able
Abish
Abinadi
Accountability
Act
Apostle - LDS.org
Ark
Articles of Faith - LDS.org
Articles of Faith - LDS.org
Atonement - LDS.org The Friend
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