Emma's First Day

We survived!  Our first day of preschool at home went really well, and Emma and I both enjoyed ourselves.  Here's a little peek at Emma's very first day of school.  (If you want the short version, just scroll down through the pictures.  They pretty much tell the story.)

I had to take the classic first day of school picture on the front steps.  (Okay, so my child wasn't actually going anywhere - or even wearing shoes for that matter - but I think it's still a special memory.)

We started off with singing.  (Emma kept insisting that singing is not part of school.  Thanks, expert preschooler.)  After that we read a camping story together (Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night).  

There's a place in the story where Henry's mom builds a campfire, so Em and I used sticks collected from the yard to make our own campfire.  Emma even pulled out her play food and cooked some plastic sausage in one of our campfire cookers.  Emma was more excited about cooking than making letters with the sticks, but she did a little bit of that too.  Here she is making an "I".

I wanted to set aside a few minutes for Emma to read/look at books on her own.  She's not the best at staying focused when she's reading on her own (as in, not good at reading for more than 3.7 seconds).  I thought we could start with five minutes of quiet reading and go from there.  

We went in the tent and each read our own books.  The timer rang after five minutes, and Emma didn't want to stop reading.  She looked at books (especially the Henry and Mudge book) for more than twenty minutes.  I was totally surprised and thrilled.  If a love of reading is the only thing Emma takes away from our school time together, I will be completely satisfied.

When Em was done with her books, we read a poem about fireflies together.  Emma used a pointer to find the title and several letters in the poem.  (She loves her "hand thing" as she calls it.)  We also turned the lights off, closed the windows, and clicked flashlights on and off as we read about fireflies clicking their lights on and off again.

For math practice, Emma counted out frogs onto pond mats.  Numbers have been more difficult for her to master than letters.  We're focusing on 1-5 this month; she's got 1, 2, and 3, but she's not quite there with 4 and 5.  (If you have some fun ideas for practicing numbers, please send them my way!)

By the time we finished math, Emma was ready for a snack break.  She counted out the ingredients to make friendship trail mix.  Here she is with chocolate on her face and all the super healthy yummy ingredients in the background.

We finished up with "The Hungry Bear Game".  I think this was Emma favorite part of the day.  We set out a checkered tablecloth with several camping-related items on it (mug, cooler, flashlight, etc.).  Emma closed her eyes and pretended to sleep in the tent.  While she was sleeping, a hungry bear (a.k.a. Mommy) dragged off one of the items.  When Emma woke up, it was her job to figure out which item had been stolen.  Then it was Em's turn to be the bear.  I think she would have played this game all day long.

For the science portion of our camping unit, we're talking about ponds.  Today we took a mini field trip to a nearby pond.  Emma used her binoculars to look for wildlife.  We actually saw turtles, a frog, and a killdeer.  Check out my little biologist.

After visiting the pond, we headed to a friend's house.  My friend asked Emma what she'd learned during school.  Emma's response was, "We played a game, and a bear stole stuff."  

Okay, so clearly my OCD lesson plans haven't turned my child into a genius overnight.  But it was fun.  And I got to spend lots of time with my sweet girl.  Total success in my book.