Home Schooling

Alma seems to be at the age now where she wants more than simply to be entertained.  She wants to be a part of every process and to learn how things are done.  The shift from watching to doing is exciting, but also means more work on my part as her daytime caregiver.  To put my head and daily schedule in the right place, I've started thinking about treating our days together as school days.  This both provides some structure, but also makes me intentional about the lessons we are doing together.  So far, our schedule consists of reading (before breakfast), kitchen time (after breakfast), coloring (after lunch) and crafting/building (when we need a change of activities at any point in the day).  I find that when we don't have an activity, she resorts to hugging my legs, crying and/or asking me to nurse her.  I call those our zombie times. 

My favorite is kitchen time, when Alma helps me bake something simple like scones or a boxed cake.  With assistance, she can stir, watches the items cook in the oven and taste-tests most of the ingredients.  This kitchen time also has chores like emptying the dishwasher -- she puts the silverware into a large mixing bowl -- drying the dishes and sorting the recycling.  When there is a lull in the baby-inclusive action, she works on ladling pinto beans from one bowl to another.  She is far from independent or accomplished at any of these tasks, but it's fun to watch her experiment with the process.  Plus, I'm not afraid of a mess so the end results are often comical. 

Here she is using a whisk to mash the batter into submission for Grandpa's birthday cake. 

Building has mostly been putting together Ikea furniture and random shelves that we still have not assembled since moving to this house.  Recently, as I have been putting together the guest bedroom/library, she hands me books from the moving boxes which I then put on the shelf.  It is slow work, but it is a nice way to work together on projects.  I would estimate that we have done this for at least half an hour a day for the last three weeks.  Crafting is a little hands-off at this point -- I have her roam my craft room and play with all the fun treasures (ribbons, fabrics, pipe cleaners) while I quilt on the sewing machine. 

I cannot wait until the weather gets warmer and we can spend time working in the yard in the vegetable and flower gardens!