My Love for Teaching

Since I was young girl, I've always loved working with other children.  In high school, I started giving swim lessons as a summer job and LOVED it!  I also had a strong passion to work with children with disabilities.  Maybe God knew I was going to have a child with special needs and was preparing me? 
For the longest time I wanted to be a pediatric nurse but when I had to go to Riley Hospital and saw where my sister had her last days, I couldn't.  My heart broke for all the sick kids I saw while I was there and I didn't know if I could handle that pain on a daily basis.  So, that is when I decided to become a Special Education Teacher.  I only taught for 5 years before deciding to stay at home with my kids but I can't hold back my love for teaching! 
This past summer I decided that I would do home school preschool with Ella.  (I'm blaming it on the pregnancy hormones.)  The first week felt like a complete disaster but now that I look back on it, we did a lot of fun activities, and I feel like Ella did learn something.  If you know Ella, you know she is one of a kind.  She is a strong willed, impulsive, stubborn little girl!  By Day 2, I was calling public preschools and put her on a waiting list for the same preschool she went to last year, Calvary.  She will only be going 2 mornings a week and I still plan on doing activities at home.  I feel like a failure but at the same time, I have to realize that she will learn more if she isn't being taught by her mom.  We are too much alike and I remember being the same way when I was her age.
I wanted to share some of our activities from last week.  I didn't even think to get my camera out amidst the chaos so I don't have any "action" shots.  I got all of my ideas from the following websites:
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/letter-of-the-week
http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/index.html
http://totallytots.blogspot.com/

Brian created this space so I can display all the kids work.  Our letter of the week was O for Ocean since that was our theme. The kids colored an ocean and made fish out of paper plates.  The kids glued pieces of paper on their fish.

 Here are some of the books and activities we did.  We also went to the Library, played in our sensory bin, played with the felt board, had a dance party, made sea creature out of playdoh and toothpicks, looked at our pictures from our family vacation to the beach, and spent a ton of time outside!

 Every morning we start with calendar time which is really basic.  We sing the Days of the Week song, talk about the date, count to the date, and do the weather.  We then sing the ABC's and a song to go with our weekly theme.  This week's song was I'm A Little Fishy.  We then read, and they usually want me to read all the books at once. :-)

This week our theme is Camping and I'm doing a much better job of capturing the activities.  Ella starts preschool next week and I plan on continuing a weekly theme with a lot of fun activities.  At least that is my plan. :-)