Week 2, P is for Potato

I love ringing the school bell. It always brings such a smile to both our faces each time I ring it whether it is in welcome or for farewell.
Something I realize though, is that on those first couple days, my smile is a little different from hers. Mine is because I am laughing at myself , and the idea of doing this preschool. Sometimes it feels ridiculous, and I wonder if I am crazy for doing it. However, just looking at my daughter's face keeps me in line. There is no joke to her smile. Upon entering or leaving the dining room (now referred to as the classroom) for our class, her face shows nothing but pure excitement for what is to come or what has taken place. This learning is very serious to her, and she keeps me serious, too, giving me the confidence to keep going with this teaching thing.
I notice that even my husband is always close by and listening in, for I often hear him chuckling in the background.
For two people out of work, this preschool is giving us something to do and focus on. It is causing a lot of happiness to our days, and that is very serious in itself in light of how negative our moods could be, and as to how far we could actually let ourselves fall into a despair if we wanted to.
One last thing that I have been worried about is being able to keep Alex in the dining room. I assume that she will probably want to run off to the living room or her bedroom to play, and I will have to coax her back or even yell at her to come back. But so far, not once has she ventured off to any other room in the house, or even looked away in boredom as if she wanted to be somewhere else.


For our greeting today, Alex is on cue with my name. She never slips back either by mistakenly calling me "Mom". I am teacher the entire time of class. I love how she looks me right in the eye to get my attention, "You are teacher now, right?". I remain serious, but have to turn away quickly to smile over this.
Alex remembers the month, and I can't help but give a "woo hoo!" to this.
We do the apple tree song for exercise, and she is doing the motions before I do.
Show and tell starts with a quick look again through The Important Book. I flip through the book fast and ask Alex, from each page, what do we know about this item? I am surprised because she knows exactly what makes each thing important, as discussed in the book. For example, in the book the words are "The important thing about grass is that it is green. It grows, and is tender, with a sweet grassy smell. But the important thing about grass is that it is green". I don't even care what she says really, just that she is learning how to describe things, which will help her when she does her show and tell time. I ask her for grass, "So what do we know about grass?" Alex picks the one word mentioned in the book that makes it important for each item, almost every time. I comment on this and praise her. But she looks back at me like she is smarter than me, like I should know what the important thing is, too about all these items. She raises her hand palm up, as if to say "green, of course". Does the author and my child know something about the importance of things that I don't? Either that, or my daughter is one good listener. And for later on, in her own life, maybe this is a good sign that she will remember all the important things , just like she remembers all the important parts of these things in the book.
All three of us take turns at the Teacher chair showing our baby picture. Both girls are full of giggles over their baby days. We describe the faces in the picture, which of course, are both happy (because as every mother knows, you have the happiest baby). P is for picture and that leads us to our letter of the day.

Activity time 1
P has a lot of words with it. I spend a lot of time over the weekend stressing over which P words to use. I mean HOURS. So, I pick P for potato and it really works today because it's P for Mr. Potato Head along with a game of hot potato. Over the weekend, I find a coloring book that is Mr. Potato Head which has been shoved to the bottom of the pile, not used once. I can understand really, I think Mr. Potato Head is quite ugly, and even when we describe and hold some potatoes, Alex's face is grimacing. There are blank potato heads and stickers for faces in the book. Once again, she is very detailed in making her face. I forget about the ears, but she does not and her little brown spud is even sporting a mustache above the nose, but hey, a lot of people have hair in weird places, right? A lot of time goes by in her choosing of stickers. Sometimes I do walk away when she is working on her pages, but I notice she does not like it. She calls for "Teacher!" while I try to sneak in the living room to fold a pile of laundry. So for now I make sure that I am standing in our classroom, otherwise it breaks the "spell" of it being "school".

We also discuss P for Princess. Alex and Amy put together a Princess Potato head (how convenient to have this in our "toy stock" for our letter P) and color princess pictures. P is also for pretty (see what I mean? There are a lot of P words), and we want to look pretty so we don princess crowns on our heads as well. We are focusing on opposite words, so I put out some big and little potatoes for her to line up in order appropriately. Let me say here, that Allen and I did receive a couple of stares at the grocery store, as we were in a highly engaged conversation, okay, I will say it. It was a fight... over what bag had a wide assortment of big and little ones. I also grab a sweet potato, and we discuss the colors brown and orange to tie in.

Handwriting is easy. I was not expecting her to catch onto P so quickly. I do a "sing-song" to help her figure out the correct order to write it. "Start at the top, go down, back to the top, and around". Otherwise, she just traces it however she likes.


Hot potato takes about three games for Alex to catch on. She doesn't know why the heck I keep giving her the potato back, even though the music is on. I also thought I was being clever by heating up the potato for a minute in the microwave so that it was "hot" as the song goes. But I blow it here, because it is pretty hot, and Amy will have nothing to do with it. So our game is down to just us two, and I call Allen in for backup. Once she understands the concept, which I agree is a little bit bewildering, I mean why pass a hot potato anyway...but she absolutely loves it and is whipping it between Allen and I, and I mean really throwing it, and Allen is caught unaware a couple of painful times before we calm her down.


The weather is cloudy and rainy (as Alex has again chosen correctly), not to mention pretty darn cold, but we venture outside anyway for our lesson on opposite words as we look for tall and short trees, like our workbook page earlier. ...as well as birds up in the trees and down on the ground. P is for pinecone and our hunt is very successful, along with wet and muddy, and ten minutes later even Alex is ready to go back indoors. The pinecones and birds tie in with our continued tree theme this week. I love how Alex picks and chooses her pinecones carefully. She has all the time in the world, while I am scurrying around just grabbing the wet, muddy things. She slows me down, and I notice her eye for beauty and art, as she shows me one that she is studying. It really is quite striking with pine needles carefully threaded through it.


Snack time is all about potato, with potato chips and (color orange)sweet potato fries . While eating we also, differentiate between big and little pinecones.

Craft time continues with our other P word for the day. I have bought Nutter Butter cookies and peanuts in the shell to help our description talk. As we munch, I tell them they aren't the only ones who like peanut butter. So we spread peanut butter on our pinecones for the birds, and cover them with seed. Playing in the seed is way too much fun for them, and I turn into Mom here, as I notice the floor covered in sticky clumps of peanut butter seeds. Sorry to say, but craft time ends abruptly.





Activity 2 begins with more learining on opposite words, and the girls build tall and short towers of blocks. We follow with the number song. Alex is now counting backwards perfectly. She says the numbers fast and with confidence. Instead of the acorn game, we now change it up and use peanuts. This time I add in some opposite words to the game, so that in addition to counting the peanuts and putting the correct number on each strip, she also has to tell me which "peanut line" is long or short. We end with a very fun book and game. The Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard is the story of a bird who is so grumpy he is walking down ( I get to use our opposite words again for this book) on the ground, but by the end of the story he is so happy that he is up in the sky flying. He gets in a better mood, because other animals begin to follow him and do whatever he does. Hence, a perfect opportunity to learn what it means to walk in a line and Follow the Leader. Allen joins us and this is great fun, as we each take turns being the leader and doing different things like stopping, holding up one leg, or raising an arm, all at different points as we walk in a line.

For the closing prayer, I have found one that I take parts of to use with easy hand motions - "Now, before I run to play, let me not forget to pray, to God Who kept me through the night, and waked me with the morning light. Be with me, God, through the day."

Today was a busy day, and I can't believe we did all this, but we end almost on time. It is just after noon.
One other moment to mention as we start this week - the next day, Alex and I attend preschool story time at our library. During craft time, one mother decides to write her child's name on his drawing. The child traces it. I can't help myself and tell Alex to write her name. Everyone is still, watching my little girl. Alex writes the most beautiful A you ever saw, and looks up at me with proud eyes and an "I did it." smile. How's that for one proud student and teacher? Or should I say one proud child and parent...We definitely are doing the letter L soon.