one down, three more to go

I am hosting preschool this week for our small preschool co-op. My oldest was so definitely ready for something but New York expenses being what they are, I went the less costly route where the amount I spend is minimal for supplies plus teaching four days a semester. This is a pretty good deal. Except that I have never considered myself great with kids, despite being numero uno of eleven. Teaching a bunch of three and four year-olds doesn't sound horrible due to my status of oldest-of-many, except I am not sure how to keep them entertained for two and a half hours. However, I think I do better with this age group than say, teenagers. I can be happy and kind and consoling to the poor child who is having trama about using my toilet because it is blue, not white, and how is it possible that one can go potty in a blue toilet? Everything just looks wrong! Based on past experience, teenagers probably think I'm nerdy and not fun enough, which is true, so what can you do?

Anyway, today we learned about the letter G. We talked about gardens. We read a Frog and Toad story about gardens. Frog and Toad stories are pretty dang funny. If you ever need to be amused while reading to your child, I suggest any Winnie-the-Pooh story (I mean the original A.A. Milne, here) with Eeyore, or Frog and Toad. We looked at vegetables that come from gardens. We made our own paper gardens. It wasn't too bad. But there are still three more classes to go.

The real kicker is the craft portion of the day. A fun activity that is more than simply coloring a page of objects whose only relation is that the words that represent them all start with the same letter and not so complicated or bulky that a) I go crazy trying to administer the project or b) the parents go crazy trying to figure out how to gracefully remove said project from the home, because truth be told, it's not that great looking and you don't want it laying around!

I am fortunate that next week one of my classes is on Halloween, and that's just about as good as picking up a Get Out of Jail Free card. Especially because our next letter is, indeed, H, so that will all work out very nicely. Except I still need to plan out a lesson. Hmmm.