Preschool Goals: Revisited

Before the start of 2014, I spent a lot of time compiling Letter of the Day, Theme, and other preschool activities to start doing with Big three days a week. I had it all figured out. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we would sit down during Little's nap, sing our ABC's and count to 10 with a pretty little poster I made. Then we would do an activity surrounding a letter of the day. For the first day, we were suppose to color and glue five little apples to a cut-out "A" while singing some rhyme about apples falling off of a tree. After our letter of the day, we would do a themed activity. January's theme is winter and hibernation. Like I said, I spent a lot of time putting together activities. The first day's activity was playing with an ice cube in a bin while adding ice and warm water to see what it does. After the themed activity, we would have an awesome snack that was just cute enough to go along with our day. Day One's Snack: Sliced Apples and Peanut Butter.

Cute right! I spent so much time creating lesson plans. I am an educator; I know how things work. However, I am an adult educator and I realized quickly my mistake in planning Big's curriculum: He. Is. Two. He is basically in charge of his own life right now and very into being independent. After I found on that first day of home school preschool that I don't want to spend my day cutting out apples, I realized Big was just as happy to color one apple out of an alphabet coloring book I found for $2. I tried to switch gears and move on to our themed activity, but guess what, Big still wanted to color. Like I said, he's the boss and am I really going to fault the kid for wanting to color? No. Then the baby cried, and I had to nurse him. Mr. M had a fun time playing with an ice cube with Big, but I was lucky that he happened to be home from work and able to help facilitate my unrealistic preschool goals.

After that day, I realized that if I could just sing the ABC's, count to 10, and let Big color one of his alphabet pages for the day three times a week, we are winning at home school.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that he is two. Coloring a page, practicing pronouncing the sounds, and trying not to eat ALL the crayons is my new goal for him. And he's excelling. I predict all A's for Big this semester.

Coloring a banana while eating a banana: Now that takes skill!