This summer I had a grand time doing projects with my little ones. I'm a teacher at heart not just through occupation, so it was right up my alley to have mini preschool in our home this summer. We had a blast doing activities for alphabet letters, from A to.... U. That's right, U. I had intended on finishing up the last letters after school started, because we couldn't quite cram in the last 5 letters with the first 21 in the time I was off from school. But it just didn't happen. Did you notice that my alphabet activity posts stopped after U?
A reality check made me realize quickly that not only did I not have time to collect ideas and prep projects for Sam and Anna while working over 40 hours a week, but we didn't have enough time to do any of them with our school days schedule. They love having time when getting home from daycare to just play independently (or with each other) with all the toys they didn't have access to during the day. Forcing them to do a structured activity with me instead would be just that- forcing them. Since the main point of any project is having fun, forcing them would definitely be the opposite of my goal. Plus, our new awesome daycare provider wanted to start doing letter activities with them, and I thought it would be just fine for them to start back at A, rather than pick up from where we left off. (Repeated exposure and all that. I knew she'd do different things than when we did too.)
But I miss it. I miss doing those project-y type things and creating with them. There are so many fun fall-ish, halloweenie things that I would love to do with Sam and Anna. It's hard for me to be making apples, fall leaves, pumpkins, bats, spiders and skeletons with the kindergartners in my class but not have time to do something similar with my own children when I really want to. I do give our daycare person ideas, and she does do some fun things with them. However, it is about the process for me- the having fun together to create something, not just the end result to hang on my fridge. I just don't know how to squeeze more time out of our daily life to do any of it.
1 comment:
I know you miss doing those activities. I could tell from your posts that you were enjoying the activites as much as Sam and Anna were. And I totally get the free play needs - I hate to deprive Carder of free play with his own toys when we come home on day care days...
I know that you weekends are already jam-packed, but perhaps you could do an activity or two each weekend? Maybe that would make you feel like you weren't missing out on these things.
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