God's Little Explorers - Week 1

Week One is Done!  It was Fun!  We learned a Ton!  (This is Dumb.)

We had a great first week of preschool.  We spent four days doing in-home school and one day on a field trip.

I am learning things already, as a teacher.  This is my thought after one week:  I'm not going to worry about whether or not my children grasp the concepts or absorb the things we talk about.  Not Going To Worry.  Here is my list of goals:


1.  Have fun.  Learning MUST be fun, or I will destroy any desire they might have to do so.

2.  Surround my kids in educational and brain-growth fostering activities.  They will absorb a huge amount, and whatever they don't absorb will just pass harmlessly over them.  Constant exposure will create a permeable surface, of this I am convinced.

3.  Be patient and accept that they are very young.  Squirming, asking totally non-relevant questions, and checking to see what happens when they put the new cardboard spyglass in the swimming pool are to be expected.

4.  It's all about getting excited about learning.  Any actual learning is just a bonus at this point.

There.  That's it. 

Our letter of the week was X.  I thought that learning to write x's would be a breeze.  For one thing, a small x looks exactly the same as a big X, other than that it's...well...smaller.  And for another, there are no curves or precise lines that are needed for writing an x.  So I really didn't think it would even have to be "learned."  I was wrong.  Turns out, Kyla wrote all x's like over-sized plus signs (+).  It was very difficult to grasp the idea of two diagonal lines criss-crossing each other.  Man!  This whole letter-writing thing might be a challenge.

Well, here's a look at our week.  We made a large treasure map to which pieces will be added as we go through our year.  I had the bright idea to burn the edges of the map to make it look old and authentic.  This was cool until the fire got a little out of control and sent burning bits of paper all over the place, one of which landed on Kyla and made her scream (but didn't leave a mark, thankfully).  Had I become a public school teacher, I would have lost my job on...Day 3.  For.  Sure. Anyhow, after that little mishap, the rest of the week progressed smoothly.  We had another treasure hunt, this time for gold coins.  Having a spyglass comes in handy when you're looking for gold coins.  We also made a treasure chest in which to store the gold coins.  Kyla did a great job cutting out the large X - she did that all by herself with no help from me whatsoever.  And our trip to the apple orchard was great fun - totally irrelevant to the curriculum, but we were invited by another mom of a preschooler.