One of the things that I had gotten very excited about when I started buying supplies for our little home classroom (the corner of our family room), putting together a curriculum and planning our daily schedule was the thought of being the teacher: pointing to everything, decorating our walls, doing all the work with things that were very new (and colorful) in our house. When I realized that my daughter wanted to help with Group Time by putting the date on the calendar or switching out the weather markers, I imagined the two of us being the same age and saying, "No, it's MY turn!" or "But this is MY game!!" I guess we both wanted to play the teacher.
So I learned to humble my self...by placing a step ladder in front of the calendar and letting Aislin assist with teaching the date, season and weather...letting her distribute and collect our Group Time supplies...and letting her hold the books during Story Time and even read the simpler ones (infant/toddler books that teach about colors, shapes, etc) to us. Group time has since been smoother and more engaging for her, and less of a battle for the three of us.
It probably helps that I've also come to the realization that Group Time doesn't need to be a full 30 minutes, or even close to it. We can sing preschool songs and do a brief activity, all of which may only take 10 minutes, but it's enough. As long as they're fascinated, as long as they understand the concepts being taught...and as long as they have FUN, then it was successful.
The following Group Time activity was brief but super fun: we put some red paint in one corner of a zip lock bag and some yellow paint in the other, blue and red in another bag, and blue and yellow in the last...and I sealed them up and let the kids squish the paints together until the paints turned into orange, purple and green. They thought it was great and also beautiful, so we taped the bags up to our sliding door to admire in the daylight :)
Another Group Time activity involved wide Popsicle sticks taped to paper plates, each with a facial expression drawn on them. The kids and I took turns putting the plates up to our faces and pretending to be either sad, angry or happy, and then giving the appropriate responses. When Aislin held up the sad face, I asked her what we should do when someone's sad. Her response was, "Make a funny face!" to which she fish-hooked both sides of her mouth and stuck out her tongue. I happily concurred, and also suggested giving that person a hug :)
Afterwards, we made our own happy faces for Art Time.
They enjoyed themselves :)
I hung/clipped them up to dry from our sliding door's curtain rod:
And on day two of this art project, they added colorful hair, wiggly eyes and smiley faces :)
Thus was the end of week 4!
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