There are only 6 days left of preschool. Hooray. I’m trying to get excited about it. Since I’m a telecommuter, I work at home and my hours are somewhat flexible, but I still have to put in a 40 hour week. Leah Rose is a chatterbox and she pretty much demands constant attention.

I’ve had this idea rolling around in my head for the past couple of weeks about what I can do to include both of us in an activity for the day, but then allow myself some time to get my work done too. Today, I decided to start putting my idea on paper, and the more I think about it, the bigger the project becomes. I may have become too ambitous. I’m not really a spur of the moment creative type mom, I need to think about things and plan them. I’m also on a very tight budget, so I’m having to work with items I already have. Granted, Leah Rose has lots of things to play with, but I guess part of the idea is to schedule my time with the activity so that I can gear myself up for it. I don’t play well with children and I feel like I have neglected playing with Leah. Quite frankly, it’s a boring activity for me. So part of this idea is to try to teach myself to play with her, and a purely selfish objective is to try to watch less TV this summer.

Leah Rose is finally at the age where she can follow directions well and has an understanding of what might be accomplished. When she was younger, she was a difficult child to teach things to, at least, from my standpoint. Therapists and teachers don’t seem to have a problem, but with me, she has never been accepting of my trying to teach her or show her something. I’m hoping that if I create a routine similar to what she has experienced the last 2 years in preschool, then it might work for us and, ultimately create some fun memories.

I attended the Kindergarten Resource Informational last week and there were a couple things that caught my attention that really helped spur the idea along. Two things the State of Georgia is implementing for the new Kindergarteners this year is sending home a list of recommended reading during the summer and a list of the 100 words for Kindergarten. We are to record the books we read in a log and turn it in to the Kindergarten teacher when school starts in the Fall. The 100 words is the list of words that the Kindergarteners will be studying during the school year. I like the idea of having a goal to work towards… like turning in a reading list.

My bright idea is to prepare an activity choices box for Leah to choose from for 1 activity for us to complete every day. I’m dividing the activities into categories… cooking, arts & crafts, indoor play activities, ourdoor play activities, workbooks, gameboy/nintendo (I know, I know, but it is a great co0rdination & thinking tool), activities away from home, board games, housecleaning, computer/internet games, and research. I have created quite a list and I’m hoping that we will be able to accomplish all the things on the list. We might have a morning activity and an evening activity, who knows, we’ll just have to see how it works out. I just need to stick to the plan.

I think the one idea that I’m the most excited about is teaching her to write in a daily journal. In Kindergarten, one of the activities that they will start doing is writing a story, or a poem. Even if it is only 1 or 2 sentences. Leah loves to write and draw. So I thought it would be good for us to start a journal recording the date, the weather forecast, our planned activity (such as “We are going to bake cupcakes today”), and our planned lunch meal for the day. These were things that she has been learning in preschool… we are going to, we are learning about, we went to, we learned about… and I think it would be a good idea to incorporate them in the journal. Then at night we could record in the journal what the weather was like, about our activity and maybe include a picture, and whether we had a good day, bad day, or a fun day. I would also like to include something that we learned during the day. Such as the birds we see in the yard or the flowers in our garden, taking pictures, looking them up on the internet, and writing about them. I thought maybe she would like to look up different things she is interested in… like horses.

Now that I’ve pretty much got it all down on paper and I’ve taken photos of most of the activities, all I’ve got to do is start organizing. Okay, so maybe I’m a little excited about the summer. 

Current Mood: Happy

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