An Honest Check In On How It Went
This weekend, I got excited about writing a couple of blogs that brought me back to my teaching days. In fact, I was feeling darn good about the fact that I pulled together ideas from many places to produce a Monday through Friday list of plans all broken down, loosely, by Multiple Intelligences. I was thinking “Wow! You still have it, girlfriend.” And so then, I took yesterday off. It was Sunday after all – the day to rest.
But Then…
Monday morning, I leisurely opened up my previous blog post so that I could simply download the little worksheets, check the art project link from Pinterest and enjoy a cup of coffee before they arrived.
I opened the first document. Selected “Print” and then looked at the sample. It was all wrong! Luckily I have the original so I quickly opened that one and printed it successfully. But my heart was racing. I didn’t save a lot of time for prep! I opened the next document and it too was showing up wrong. That one was supposed to be a sheet filled with raindrops that just needed to be cut out. Unfortunately, I had to simply freehand those. Thank god, they were just raindrops. They were, however, looking a little like teardrops by the time I cut out 24 of them! Then I went to the Pinterest link to just look at the umbrella project..Wait, more to prepare? Sure enough, I had to draw up two umbrellas and two handles – both freehand because I didn’t have time to see if they had included a free template.
Ok, ok, I had everything cut out and ready with just a little time to spare. I had forgotten that the written plan is just step one. Step two is prep! Don’t forget the prep! And prep is no joke, especially with little ones. Luckily, my basement has an art table already covered with a drop cloth and the paints were on the table from a project last week.
And Then They Arrived
In came two precious little ones but the mama already looked exhausted. The oldest one didn’t want to get dressed so she was in her pajamas but then at the last minute she wanted to add one of her princess costumes complete with a cape, tutu, a crown, and her magic wand.
And her little sister apparently completely lost it because she did not want to take of her fireman pajamas. Unfortunately, they were wet so she didn’t have the option to keep her’s on.
Then, the umbrellas both came as I’d asked but one was broken and they wanted to immediately open them up and play with them even though my “plan” was to have that as a great activity for later.
So Be Flexible Went Into Place
And then seconds later, they simply wanted to play with the toys at grandma’s house. Time to just take a breath and let them just be.
After some time of free play, I called them over to see the book/video that I wanted them to watch. Anything that has to do with technology has them stop whatever they’re doing and run. So that was a grandma win.
Finally ready for the art project
By this time, they were ready to go to the basement where I had all the things ready to do a “fun” project.
They, however, had other ideas when they saw the downstairs toys. So, relax grandma. It’s all good.
Finally, I got them over to the table and was quickly reminded of the rule of keeping everything out of reach until they were ready to do the first task. And, of course, I was the one to dump some paint.
We actually got through one project, kind of successfully, and that was it! They just wanted to play then and grandma was done!!!
So, we completed about 2.5 things on the overall plan for the day
Yup, that’s it. We played a little bean bag toss, watched the video about rain, and did one project. But the best part is, we can just continue the activities tomorrow and I followed my rules of:
S -imple is best
M – ake it fun
I -llustrate but…
L – et them lead
E -njoy this time with them.
And we did that! Smile after smile after smile!
Days With Grandma 