Creative Parenting

Last week marked the end of the class that I took with Michael, Creative Parenting. It was a fun little pre-preschool...for ages 18 months to 3 years...an hour filled with arts and crafts, play time, circle time, snack, and songs. It is amazing how much the teacher fit into an hour class...and equally amazing how it matched the attention span of the children.

Here's Michael waiting for class to begin.

First you do arts and crafts. Michael was the speed champion in this area. If there was no paint for him to smear his hands in, (liquid glue would also appeal as a second best) he wanted little to do with the craft. The one on this day had those paint dot thingies. He took about 2 minutes and then ran to the next room to play.

This is the second step...the toy room. There are toddler toys strewn about the room for the kids to play with. A kitchen set, a doll house, cars, building blocks, puzzles, light-up noisy toys, you name it. When the time is up, all the kids have to clear the room of toys...because this is where we have circle time/snack time/the rest of the class. It is an amazing thing to watch 8 two year olds clean a room of toys with little to no tantruming.

One of the toys is a little mailbox. At the beginning of the year, Michael would bring me a letter and I would "open" it and read it. It always read, "Dear Mommy. It is time to tickle Michael." And then I would tickle him. And he would run off and find another little plastic letter and bring it back to me to read..."Dear Mommy. It is time to kiss Michael on the ear." Etc etc. A few weeks ago, Michael started reading the letters to ME. Nothing cuter than hearing his little voice, "Sccccooo sccccchooo (ripping open the letter)...Dear Michael, Tie to tickle Mommy. Tickle tickle tickle." Love him.

After we cleaned up the toys, it was circle time. We recited rhymes and sang songs. Here the kids are gathering with Miss Maryanne to sing 5 Little Monkeys. After the song is done, they each get a little finger puppet monkey to bring back to Mommy's lap and exercise with. Very well done.

Here's Michael and his two "teachers"...they had a mock graduation from the class since it was the last day.

Here's the whole class. No way could anyone have gotten a shot where everyone was facing forward. Can you find Michael?

He really has changed so much since we started this class in September. I think he's going to have a lot of fun in pre-school next year. He's just really acting like a kid lately. For example...

Yesterday morning, I was talking to my mom on the phone while Michael ate breakfast. He all of a sudden called out, "Mom? May nee tah to me." (Memere needs to talk to me). I of course handed the phone to him and he proceeded to tell her about our stink bug problem and what he was eating for breakfast. Very cute. What can we say? Memere needed to talk to him ;)