Professionalism at Home

This month, we as Mother Goose Time bloggers, have been asked to think about professionalism in regards to how it applies to us personally.  Being a homeschool mom, I have a slightly different take on it than a childcare provider or preschool teacher using this curriculum.  For me, I bring professionalism into our home preschool in two ways:  being prepared and understanding the learning process at different age levels.

Being prepared is huge and it can be difficult at times.  It is tempting to just fly by the seat of my pants during lessons, opening the lesson book up to a page and just picking something.  However, I find when I take the time to read through the activities and gather my materials ahead of time, everything goes so much more smoothly.  Miss M is 2.5 and Littlest just turned 1; neither has a very long attention span at this point so if I want to keep their attention, I have to be prepared.  If I look down to read about the activity or go digging through the closet for the materials, they are off on their own adventures and bringing them back to school can be a fight.  That is not what I want for them or myself; I want them to want to engage in the activities so I need to have my stuff together ahead of time.

I find that reading through the lesson book the night before generally works pretty well, although ideally I'd like to be about a week ahead so I can purchase any materials I don't already have at home (this isn't very common since most of the materials are either provided or quite common).  During breakfast I gather all the materials we will need for my chosen activities and prep our circle time area.  After the girls are done with breakfast, they play while I clean up the kitchen (I can't concentrate with dirty trays and dishes sitting on the counter) and I make sure I give them several warnings that we will be having school when I'm done.  If they are in the middle of an imaginary scene when I finish, I let them play through it and then find that they willingly come into the living room for school.

Understanding child development and the learning process helps me know how much to present, what to expect of them and when I should back off and just let them play.  A lot of this information I learned in my undergraduate and graduate studies in speech language pathology and while working in the schools.  My husband and I took a child development/parenting class when I was expecting Miss and I try to read up on current studies.  A lot of it comes from Baby Center and similar sites right now because that's all the time I have but keeping current and following best practices reduces frustration on everyone's part.  I am working my way through "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise and it has been quite helpful.  I'm not going to expect either girl to sit for ten minutes in a chair and practice copying the alphabet.  I can expect them to practice scribbling for a few minutes (maybe longer if I have lots of different supplies to choose from) and maybe work on circles and lines briefly, the precursors to writing.

Above all, I try to stay sensitive to their moods and their needs as really little children.  I know they will learn to read one day but they will never get to be little children again.  The main goal is to build a strong relationship with them, let them play and explore and present information that they may or may not absorb in that moment but will some day.

Here are some pictures from school this past Tuesday.  I let Miss M dictate the length of each activity based on her interest in it and it went really, really well.  Much better than when I decide we are ready to move to another activity.

This "washing" activity was very popular with both girls.  I took our dry erase crayons (if you want to get some, back to school sales are the best time to do that and they are starting now/soon) and wrote numbers on a page protector, then named a number and Miss M got to "wash" it off.  Littlest showed interest in it so I did the same for her but actually wrote her name on a piece of laminated paper.  She had a more difficult time cleaning it off (she wasn't push hard enough) and soon decided shredded the tissue was more fun so Miss M took over and named all the letters as she wiped them off.  I think this could be a fun and easy road trip activity.

Next we did a little sorting activity.  They were supposed to use the ladle to fish out a shape and then we'd talk about what it was.  That lasted two turns before they dumped everything on the carpet so instead of pushing the "rules" of the game, we adapted.  I picked a shape and then Miss M found all the shapes that were the same and the three of us put them in my slipper (it was handy and Littlest loves to put items into things).  Then we counted how many we had and started with a new shape.  They were both very engaged in the activity for over five minutes, until we finished sorting them all.

We also read the "I Wash" book that came with our materials.  I got through it one time before it was taken away so Miss M could read it "all herself", which was fine with me.

Lastly, we did a little mixing experiment with milk, food coloring and dish soap.  Unfortunately all of my food coloring was dried up except blue (a lesson in not being as prepared as I should have been) but Miss M didn't seem to mind.  She got too excited both times and would just stick the q-tip with dish soap right in the blue instead of in the middle the bowl like you were "supposed to" but we still had a fun time watching the dye scatter through the milk.  She loved mixing it thoroughly but I had to put a stop to it when it became a hand printing session on the table and floor.

So that's what being a "professional" homeschool mom looks like to me.