Daddy goes to Preschool

Tomorrow I have to attend my college graduation rehearsal during our normal preschool hours. Since I'm a stay at home mom I had to ask my husband if he would mind taking the morning off to take care of Avin. He eagerly agreed to take off! Then when we started discussing the plans for the day I realized that his eagerness to take off was because he had planned on taking Avin and going to all his favorite video game and thrift stores while I attended rehearsal. When I pointed out that if he did that Avin would miss preschool he was bummed but readily agreed to do preschool instead. So tomorrow Daddy is off to his first day of preschool with Avin! Luckily class is being held just across the street. I've already warned the mom's that Derek will be there in my place. It will be quite an experience for him- not only participating in the lesson but keeping Avin out of all the temptations a new house brings. Say a little prayer that he survives the sea of moms and toddlers!

Preschool Field Trips

I am getting so excited about our preschool field trips! I've been looking into places and events that are preschooler friendly and have been pleasantly surprised to find several things in our local area. I always hesitated to attend "events" by myself with my son because I was afraid he would act out, be loud, or otherwise "bother" other attendee's but planning to take a group has been quite liberating. Somehow I feel if there is a group of us with kids of similar ages that my kid might not stand out as much. On Monday we will be going to our local fire station to tour the station and see a firet ruck up close and personal. If you've never done a fire station tour with your kids I highly recommend it. The kids love meeting real firefighters and getting to climb in the firetrucks. In our area the tour is free and the firefighters are great with the kids. I think it is also good for them to view the fire fighters as their "friends" so that in the case of an emergency they aren't scared of them and try to hide.

Some other events that we will be participating in are "School House Rock- Live!" and the live production of "Goodnight Moon and the Runaway Bunny". Both are being put on by local theatres. I would have never guessed they had such awesome things going on for the Pre-K crowd but a friend saw the listing and shared it with me. What are some awesome kid friendly field trip ideas that you have done with your kids?

I'm back!!!

Having a two year old makes things like blogging a distant dream most days but I'm feeling ready to try to tackle it again- from a totally different angle! I will no longer be doing product reviews (unless I fall in love with something) and will be randomly blogging about our preschool experiences.  I'm part of a really ecclectic groups of mom's known as Mindful Mothers.  Together these women practice gentle parenting of their kids.  Each mom's personal style of parenting varies and at any given meeting you might see a mom's bare breast as she nurses her baby or toddler, a mom changing a baby wearing a cloth diaper, a baby or toddler running around naked from the waist down because his family practices EC (eliminate communication), a mom wearing her baby on her body, and all types of chaos as kids run around playing and interacting with each other and the moms.  It is an amazing group!  Well these ladies inspired me to step outside the box and start a homeschool pre-school co-op.  I'm not really sure what the textbook definition might be for that but for us it means that we get together twice a week in someone's home and do "preschool" for our kids who are between 2 and 4.   Our preschool co-op group is made up of mom's and kids who's educational experiences run the gammit from traditional public school, to homeschool, to unschoolers.  Every "class" is totally different and filled with awesome ideas and projects designed to let our kids explore the world and learn something new.  We aren't traditional but we are a lot of fun and so far the kids love it!

I'll be blogging about our experiences, our projects, and our results!  I can't wait to share my excitement with you all.  If any of you have experience with this type of preschool group I'd love to hear from you about your ideas and experiences.