I can help my family !

I searched for a definition of family and this is the best one I could come up with.

Families are who you love. Our families all “look” different and it’s always been so. Afamily caregiving unit might consist of a couple; a mother, father and children; a single parent and child; grandparent and grandchildren; a sibling group; a circle of friends; or however that family defines itself.

Families are people you love.

You have families at home.  You also have a preschool family here at our home.

Gages grand-mom and grand-dad came to spend time with our class today . Mary read a story about a grandmother  and related things she liked to do with Gage.  She also read a story about grand-dads and told stories of Gage playing with his grand- dad.    After the stories Gages grandpa is a musician and he played a few songs for us and sang along.  Sadly Gage wasnt feeling well today and missed this special day.  We wish him well.  We really enjoyed having Mary and Ron Jeffries here.  Mary is a retired school teacher so I am sure she felt right at home reading in front of a large group of children.  I think my favorite part was listening to her say that she and Jude have have two day a week that they do something special. One day is donuts and chocolate milk.  You dont realize how important traditions are until you are older.  I am sure when Gage is 50 he will walk in a donut shop and remember all the days he spent with his grand mom in a donut shop when he was a small boy.  Do you have traditions in your family ?

Mother nature played a trick on us last night.   For the past few weeks we have been talking about how the leaves change from green to yellow or red or orange and fall to the ground in the fall.  Our beautiful tired old trees got tired of holding on to their leaves last night and let them all fall to the ground.  Our playground was covered in a beautiful green layer of leaves.  We did go outside for about 30 minutes and it actually wasnt too terribly cold. I dont think one child complained.  I tried to take pictures of all the children individually but I am not sure I did.  :/ Its hard to catch them all and remember whos picture you already took.

We read books about moms today and  talked about how we can help them.  Sometimes kids want to help but just dont know how. Preschoolers are still egocentric so sometimes they need prompting to think about what a good choice would be.   I asked them questions like :

Your mom is setting the table.  What can you do to be helpful ?

Your baby brother just threw his toys all over the floor . What can you do to be helpful ?

It is time for bed. What can you do to be helpful ?

We use the term helpful a lot.  Helpful hands and eyes looking for ways to be helpful are heard a lot in our classroom.

Then we drew a picture of our mom.

We had another exciting event today at preschool. EDEN LOST A TOOTH !!!   As Gages grand- dad was singing she just  said ” here” and handed me a tooth.  🙂