Preschool Field Trip

I finished up teaching my 10th and final year of preschool (over the span of 13 years). I took a few years off in between boys because my boys are all 3 grades apart. It was a bittersweet decision, but one that felt right. Our final field trip of the year was to a farm. I pulled Austin out of school so he could join us.

Feeding the animals

Pony ride

Train ride

Preschool

I bit on more than I could chew this year with teaching preschool to 10 kids (including Bryson--and he definitely counts as another student!). I was grateful to have a mom of one of the girls come in and help me do centers most days to make sure that time was very productive. These last two years were more challenging than the first two years I taught due to certain personalities in the class, but amazingly the kids made just as much progress if not further progress than my first group of students that I taught my first two years. I'm so proud of all of them! They are all great readers, able to solve addition/subtraction problems, count to 100, and write all their lower and uppercase letters. They are definitely more than ready for Kindergarten.

I enjoy teaching, but I'm looking forward to having a year off before I start up with Bryson's age. I'll be able to focus on the new baby and other projects that I've neglected (mainly catching up on my blog books/family journals). I'll miss these kiddos but am excited for them to begin a new schooling adventure in the fall!

Busy

I just realized that it's been a few weeks since I've posted. My free time has dwindled with the start of preschool this year. I have 8 fun kids in my class--5 girls and 3 boys. The first two weeks went well, and I am anticipating a wonderful year. It's a lot of work though when I don't have a sister to divide up the work-load with this year. It's fun to plan all the fun activities/field trips we'll do this year though. I love teaching Caleb especially and seeing him learn and socialize. Carter does pretty well while I teach. I just make sure to have an extra carpet square and activities for him as he wants to do everything right along with the rest of the class. Sometimes he proves to be a distraction, but the kids are learning to ignore him. I'll plan something more post-worthy for next time!

P.S. Right now any free time I have is spent reading Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's a page-turner and reminds me a lot of Hunger Games, which I quite enjoyed. Check it out if you're in the need of a good futuristic book.

Year One: Check

My last day teaching preschool was this past Thursday. We had a water party, which was a lot of fun. It will be nice to have the summer break from teaching (and have my house back!), but I loved teaching this last year. I loved that 6 hours a week was not too demanding, and I loved seeing the kids get into whatever theme we were learning about and their progress throughout the year. I'm apprehensive about next year because I won't have my sister to lean on and share the workload with, and I have a lot of work to do this summer putting together a new curriculum of themes etc. It's a little overwhelming at this point, but I have 3 months to figure it all out. :o) I sure am going to miss these kiddos over the summer though!

Preschool Field Trip

We have been learning about bugs this month in preschool, so we did a field trip to the Butterfly Museum. The kids were so excited about going and talked about it for 2 weeks. I was really excited about going because it was my first time to use my new camera! Our Christmas present to ourselves was supposed to be a new camera (our old one was literally falling apart), but we decided to hold out for a sale. We now have a Canon G12 PowerShot that we're really enjoying using and experimenting with. I haven't read the manual yet (it's on the to-do list), but I can already tell a difference in the quality of pictures. Anyway, here's a slideshow of our trip:

Preschool

I've been missing in action from the blogging world for some time now. Between teaching preschool, a new church calling, and my running (plus all my daily "Mommy-duties"), I've had to cut some things from my life in order to stay sane! It's amazing how much more time I had in my day/night when I cut T.V., reading, and blogging. I'm feeling that things are getting more manageable now and that I can find a good balance.

Just under a year ago, my sister and I started toying with the idea of teaching a preschool class instead of doing a rotating preschool like we had been doing. A few mothers had approached Ariane with interest, and with time, Ariane convinced me to jump on board. For the past 8 months or so before we started teaching, we have worked feverishly to put together a curriculum and do as much as the planning/preparations as we could so that this new adventure wouldn't take too much time away from our families. We are almost one month into teaching, and I am loving it! Including our boys, we have 9 children that we teach for 6 hours a week. This first month has been a lot of trial and error, but I think we are smoothing out all the wrinkles now and really enjoying it. We have also perfected the art of multi-tasking as we have our two babies' schedules that we work around as well. We rotate teaching the different sections (i.e. circle time, centers, music time, art) while the other person is on baby duty and setting up the next activity. My main motivation for doing this is to provide a quality learning experience for my son where he can also socialize with peers his age. What wouldn't I do for this little boy? I love him so much!

Even though it's not the middle school-age that I was teaching a few years ago, it is so fun to be teaching again!

3 Sweet Boys

I've been meaning to post these pictures for awhile. Here are the boys in the rotating preschool I participated in on their last day of preschool together. They have their baker's hats on as we had worked on the nursery rhyme 'Pat A Cake'. They were so much fun to teach. I'm getting excited for doing more preschool teaching come end of August.

Butterfly Exhibit

The boys (Dallin, Caleb, and Samuel) have been learning about bugs this month in preschool, so it was time to take a visit to the Butterfly Museum downtown. It was so exciting to see all the bugs and have butterflies fly all around us!

Dallin, Sydney, Caleb, Samuel
Caleb and Dallin looking at the roaches (ewww)

Some of the butterflies that were flying all around us.

My one attempt at a picture with Caleb...there were too many fun things to see for Caleb to stand still for a picture!

Preschool Field Trip

We took a field trip to a botanical garden for preschool last week. Caleb and Dallin enjoyed all the beautiful flowers and butterflies that we saw. We talked about colors, smells, and staying on the path. They had a lot of fun.

Caleb looking for fish in the pond

Our one attempt at a picture together. Caleb wasn't being very cooperative.