Way to go Mother Goose!

I have been meaning to post all week about my first week of teaching our little home preschool group. But first let me explain. In the spring, I started to look into putting Jell in a preschool and was struck quite speechless at the ridiculous prices. I could hardly find a program under $100 a month! Ouch. Tad ridiculous if you ask me. I wasn't looking for day care, just a fun program that would help her learn but mostly just give her new experiences, and good interaction with other kids. My mom had done this home preschool thing, called Joy School, a hundred years ago when I was preschool age so I looked into it. There are these fantastic programs, such as Mother Goose Time, which we chose, that send you a full curriculum, with complete lesson plans, prepared visuals, pre-planned and prepared art projects, books, music, etc. for a crazy low price of like $12 a month. So, a number of women in the ward and I started our little Mother Goose Time preschool. There are five of us and we rotate teaching, so one week in five, we are in charge. We have just got started. This was our second week, and my first time. And what a fantastic program! I think it is so great and the girls are way too cute. They were hilarious their first day showing off their backpacks to each other, and pulling out all the contents to show the "teacher." I was pretty nervous about my first week, and sure, we still have some things to get used to (like getting myself and my girls ready for the day by 9:30, and the class used to not wandering off to play), things to learn (our understanding of the whole "s" is for star type of concept is not at all there yet), but we haven't had any ballet breakdowns (by the way, we dropped that class), and Jenelle talks about her school ALL the time. She even makes Meri play school, sitting on their little rugs and everything. So cute. Anyway, here are a few cute pictures from Tuesday. I wanted to take dozens and videotape too, but I kind of had my hands full. Hopefully next time!
Here's the girls sitting nicely on their rug squares (with Meri, the spy, sitting in):
The painting project was a hit! It's funny how different the girls are, even at such a young age. One girl was crazy meticulous, very slow and deliberate and so far, in every project is "Not done yet!" Another worked hard at using every color. Jenelle honestly didn't have much method, but seemed to do it for the joy of painting. And the other little girl stayed mostly in the lines and actually painted matching pairs of socks (there were socks drawn on part of the project). I love it
And getting slightly distracted by a friendly squirrel two feet away on the other side of the glass (to the right of Jell's piggies)
Anyways, we did tons of fun stuff like make homemade applesauce in my ancient victoria strainer, measure our long jumps, play bingo, pretend to be weathermen, match socks, find "s" things and "l" things, take potty breaks, eat snacks, learn hand motions to songs, practice cutting on a line, etc. We even are taking our first field trip this week to an apple orchard, which is pretty exciting. Hopefully, it continues to go great and I'll have more pics to add next time!