Mommy School

Although I love summer and the lack of schedules/routines, I really felt we needed a little more structure come this fall--especially Annie. She previously was in preschool/daycare 2 days per week in Connecticut and loved it. She has really missed her "Abiyoyo"--the school where she attended. In addition, I also felt that my relationship with Annie could use some improvement. Not that things were bad, just that I thought they could be alot better. I was finding with two kids, I felt really stretched to my wits end at times and I was resorting to alot more frustration and impatience with Annie than I wanted. Anyways, I was reading a friend's blog one night (A Habitat for Humanity), and she had started holding "Mommy School" with her 4 year old this summer. She described some of the same feelings as me--wanting to have a better relationship with her son and some more structure. Every day during her younger son's nap, she would hold "Mommy School" for her son based on a weekly theme. She found that it made a huge difference in their relationship (read about it here). So I decided I would give it a whirl and see if it would help me and Annie also.

I'm two weeks into this "Mommy School" and I have found it to have made a HUGE difference in our relationship. She loves "Mommy School" and talks about it all the time. My first weekly theme was based on the book "Pinkalicious" by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann. In this story a little girl eats one to many pink cupcakes and subsequently turns pink. In order to turn back to normal she has to eat healthy green food. It is a cute book and is a favorite of Annie's. So I decided to go with it and see what I could come up with. The first day we read the story and then talked all about cooking. I checked out a bunch of kids cookbooks from the library and we looked through the recipes till we found something Annie wanted to make. We also talked about what a recipe was and was ingredients would go into cupcakes. We ended up making a "fruit pizza" which Annie loved (and tasted delicious and relatively healthy).

The next day we continued the cooking theme by talking about Healthy vs. Unhealthy Food. We again read a few books about eating healthy and then Annie cut out pictures of healthy and unhealthy food out of the grocery store ads. We had a snack of celery, peanut butter and raisins with a cold glass of milk. I love how she writes her name!!The next day we talked about other things we can do to stay healthy by reading books about healthy habits and the human body (Annie loves "The Magic School Bus inside the Human Body"). We then went for a walk around the neighborhood (to the library). I haven't held "mommy school" everyday since we have some other activities going on but overall, I like to hold it a few times a week. The best part about it has been that it's a special time for just Annie and I.

We also have started having "preschool" with a friend once a week for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day. We have music time/fingerplays, story time, an activity and a craft of some sort. Again this is centered around a theme. Annie kinda thinks of this as an extension of Mommy School but loves that she has a friend to play with too. Our theme this month has been The Harvest/Fall. For the first week we collected things outside like pinecones, straw, etc and then had the girls make a face with the items. Don't you just love their faces?

This last week we continued talking about The Harvest but extended it to talking about how seeds grow into plants and become the food we eat. I was responsible for the craft this week and we made cute apple bags for their library books or picking apples.

I'm trying to figure out what to do for Mommy school next week--any ideas? (I usually center it around a book and then work from there). Leave a comment below if you have one to suggest!