First Day of School

Yesterday Ella and I had our first day of "school."  My girl totally freaks out at the mention of doing anything new.  "School" is a new term, and I think her only previous association is of hearing the school bus drive through the neighborhood and asking what it was.  After I told her the bus took the children to school, she got a little nervous when we heard the bus.  "I don't have to go to school, right?"  "No, you're not old enough yet."  Poor girl.


I tried to explain to her yesterday that saying "school" just meant learning about things.  "Well, school is fun for other children but not for me."  This conversation went on and on until I decided to stop trying.  Having "school" is a lot for my sake as well as hers.  I needed some plans and organization for our day, and Ella loves coloring and doing worksheets so I was not trying to make her do something that she wouldn't enjoy.  I also told Ella that there were a lot of other things you got to do at school.

She got excited about writing it all down.

  

So, armed with these categories to organize the day into activities we started with the preschool workbook I bought at Wal-Mart since James was napping, and I could sit down with her.  She wanted me to color with her, so I did, and we had some argument when I wanted to get up and wash dishes while she finished her picture, but I'll just skip all that.

Can you guess who colored which?

There's not a lot of difference.

I also bought her another Color Wonder kit by Crayola because we love them.  This one had some gel paint in it, so that was her art project later in the afternoon.

I think she's getting tired of me taking her picture all the time.

Finished product

In between working on her letters and "art," she ate lunch while watching Lady and the Tramp.  Our music section of the day was spent dancing to the Celtic Woman dvd (which James loves as well).  I made her have some quiet time in her room for 30 minutes when I put James down for his afternoon nap.  He's been grumpy because of teeth coming in and following me around the house whining, "Ma, ma, ma, ma," and I needed some quiet.  She was not happy about being made to go to her room, but I think she'll get used to it.  When her 30 minutes was up she came out and did a workout dvd with me.  She really loves P90X Plyometrics because she loves to jump.  Then she played some computer games later in the afternoon.  She loves PBSKids.org and I do, too!  It's really fun (and crazy) watching her learn to navigate on the computer at such a young age.  They have so many great learning games on their website.

All in all, I was pretty beat by the end of the day.  This is definitely the hardest job on the planet.