First Day of Homeschool Pre-Kindergarten & Tot School

Today was the first official day of homeschool Pre-K. Let me be completely transparent about how our day went. Complete CHAOS. I expected to feel pulled in two directions at times, mentally and physically challenged, and on my toes the whole day. I must be a dreamer, cause today wasn't what I expected of our first day. I expected there to be moments of frustration, and tweaking of the schedule and teaching, but beautiful moments of learning. Ha! Not today. Hopefully tomorrow after I rewrite our schedule and rethink my lesson plans.

So let's begin school following a three day weekend. Sounds good and all, but what I didn't account for were two extremely over-tired, needy kids. Should have seen that coming. Don't get me wrong, Littlemiss was uber excited about learning with me, but she tends to get hysterical over the little things when she's tired (wonder where she got that from). And BooBoo was screaming my name all day, and he cried A LOT.

So our learning time in the school room this morning was CRAZY. What I thought would be an hour, took almost two hours, and that was only doing less than half the things I had planned. The school room was trashed. In an attempt to keep BooBoo happy I popped him some popcorn to munch on, so he would let me read books, which ended up all over the room. Looking back I don't know what I was thinking when I planned on keeping him in the school room with us for an hour while I worked back and forth with them.  I am clearly a dreamer.

What really threw a wrench in our day was the courtesy phone call I received at 11:53am to say that I was late to my 11:30am appointment, but if I could get there by 12:30 I could be seen and would avoid being charged without being seen. Oh joy. It was just what I needed after the crazy morning in the school room, and totally interrupted the rest of our learning time. I threw food down in front of the kids and gave them 5 minutes to eat, then shoved them in the car to race to the other side of town. 

When we got back from the appointment, BooBoo went down for a nap. We did a few lessons while he snoozed and it went much smoother. However, Littlemiss had some difficulty focusing, but at least I was able to finally focus on teaching her! I think her attention with only get better as we spend more time together, it's just going to take some time. I'm moving most of my learning time with Littlemiss to when BooBoo is asleep! 

No worries peeps, I'm not giving up on homeschooling, I'm just getting more realistic. Some of you may have been waiting for me to "come back to reality" with all this enthusiasm, fervor, and romantic thoughts on homeschooling. Well, just know that I have more respect for homeschooling moms after today. I'm committed to this as long as we are called to it, so cheers to a great school year! 

Also, after looking back on today, we did well. It wasn't easy and I need to be more flexible, but the kids learned and had fun together. It was worth it.

Seriously EXCITED! 

The absolute best picture I could capture of BooBoo. He's about to throw down the tray and run down the front lawn! 

I snapped a few pics throughout the day. I didn't have much time to take pictures, but I'm glad I snapped a few!

BooBoo's Learning Center for the week. "A is for Alligator" theme. We are working on the color red this week and I have a few insect themed activities based on the science theme we are focusing on. 

Apple, Lego alligator, ambulance, and airplane. That blue airplane is quite possibly BooBoo's favorite toy. He flies it all over the house "vrrroooommmmm." 

Left to right, and top to bottom: Sorting bears, magnetic insect book, magnetic insect puzzle, big blocks, Melissa and Doug Sort and Snap caterpillar, and sorting red and yellow objects.  

Littlemiss's trays will change some during the days, but the activities on the bottom shelf will stay the same every day. They are mostly for independent learning and play. 

Our reading activity for the day was spelling out words to correspond to pictures I printed off google. We are working on spelling and reading all the three letter words that are in the sound set a, m, s, t, & p.  

We did this first, so BooBoo was content for the first 10-15 minutes.  

She can easily identify what letters are in the words by sounding it out, but she struggles to get them in the correct order. 

Some of the loveliness that happened, the tearing down and throwing around of learning toys on the ground. You may think, "this isn't so bad." May I remind you that the blue square is a hundred board and all the wooden tiles are meant to be in numerical order from 1-100. We are still setting ground rules for which toys can be thrown about in the school room! 

This picture marks the "turning point" where BooBoo became a hysterical mess. See him eating the play dough there. Well, once I took it from him (mean Mommy) he lost his mind the rest of the time and begged me for it. I give him props for persistence, I just don't think I want to live with the repercussions of him eating an entire ball of play dough :/

I tried to get his attention to sort bears with him today to start teaching him his colors. Absolutely NO INTEREST in their colors. He was enamored with the two kitty cats and was meowing, and patting them and making them kiss. Could he be any cuter. I think not. I can't stop laughing thinking about this moment today. Maybe he will be a vet one day, like his great uncle?

Pushing the letter A with his fingers. He actually engaged in this activity without consuming any play dough. Miraculous! 

A Mommy-win was Littlemiss working independently on a puzzle in the back ground. She did it and focused without making a peep!

 A beautiful learning moment today.

The idea was to make play dough insects. I made one to show Littlemiss the attributes of an insect, but she had her own ideas.... 

Forget insects, this is her monster. Nothing can stop the force of this little girls imagination. And I'm glad she enjoyed it.