Week 1

The best part about having a curriculum to follow (we chose the Peaceful Preschool) is that it gives me ideas that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of on my own. It also pushes me to challenge and trust my kids a little more than I might have without it. The thought of giving my kids a knife and saying “hey, let’s see if you can slice this apple” totally wigged me out. How do you just all of the sudden start that? But seeing that it was included in a curriculum designed for 3-5 year olds made me think that maybe they could. And guess what….. they TOTALLY could. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t even and neat and one of them even cut her finger a tiny bit (don’t worry, these are kid-specific knives so no serious damage… but they are “real” knives that are designed to actually cut through things instead of just a pretend plastic knife), but they did it! And they were so proud of themselves and so was I! Even baby H got to join in on the baking fun (though she was only allowed to use her pretend knife).

Here they are, following the recipe for an Apple Crisp provided with the curriculum. They cut, measured, poured, stirred and combined. They were all so proud of the finished product!

Adding H into the mix for the remainder of the week after Day 1 was nothing if not interesting. On Tuesday morning, I wondered if we were going to be able to make this whole thing work. She wanted to be right in the mix of things and I was trying to put her to the side with… basically… busy work. Once I let her attempt to do what the big girls were doing, things improved a great deal and the rest of the day was a breeze! But then, in true Harper fashion, she woke up with an ear infection on Wednesday morning and we had to throw a doctor appointment into the mix of the day. She definitely reminded me not to get too comfortable and that every single day would bring with it its own challenges, but also its own successes!

We’ve had so much fun with all of our activities this week! Here are some photos from the week to give you an idea of what else we played with! My next post will be all about an apple counting activity that I added in addition to the suggested curriculum. See you all soon!