This past weekend was the reptile fest at the Science Museum. Sweet Pea loved looking at all the animals that people brought to show. He was not scared at all of the snakes or little creepy crawlers. He was most impressed with the turtles, which is awesome because I would much rather get him a pet turtle than a snake.

Here he is looking at the little snakes:

Examining a turtle shell:

Feeling a snake:

Taking a walk with a turtle:

A “little” turtle:

They had arts and crafts and this station was making a turtle out of a paper plate:

Since we were at the museum he HAD to play in the dinosaur pit. Here he is trying to figure out what dad is doing:

Ahhh! The camera!

While Sweet Pea and I were at my parents house a few weeks ago, my dad came up to Sweet Pea and asked if he wanted to help him feed the dog. He looked a little confused and he kept looking from the dog, to my dad, to the dog food bowl. After a few seconds he walked over to the dog food bowl, picked up a stray piece of dog food from an earlier feeding, and threw it at the dog. Of course we all laughed and my dad took his hand and properly showed him how to feed the dog and we moved on to the next thing.

After thinking about it here is what strikes me about the situation. Because we don’t have pets, Sweet Pea had no idea what was involved in feeding a dog. But he took what he did know and “fed” the dog by throwing the stray piece of food to him. At what point in childhood do we lose the ability to think like that? I did multiple internships where students as young as second grade had already lost the ability to take prior knowledge to try to figure something out. The just wanted me to tell them the answer without having to do any work. Hopefully over the next few years I can nurture this ability in Sweet Pea rather than hinder it.

Today Daddy had the day off and we decided to spend the morning at the Children’s Museum! We actually spent some of our Christmas money to get a yearly membership and after spending all morning there we realized it was totally worth the money! Sweet Pea and I will probably end up spending at least one morning a week there. The whole museum was split up into different rooms and I was very impressed with each. Each room was designed to enhance some aspect of a child’s learning. 

The first place we stopped was the sand pit. Here the kids could dig for dinasour bones. As you can see from the picture Sweet Pea was not at all interested in going in. He put one foot in the sand before he decided that the feeling was to weird and insisted that we move on to the next thing.

The next room was designed specifically for ages 0-2. Sweet Pea fits right into this age range and climbed on everything. As you can see the equiptment was the perfect height.  

This room also had aquariums filled with fish and various reptiles.

The next room was the fire station room. The fire engine had wheels to drive and a slide down the back. Off to the side there was a closet filled with fire hats and jackets. Just perfect for pretend play.

The next room was a farm. The kids could take bags and fill them with produce then “sell” them at the farmer’s market. There was also a pretend cow to milk and play horses to ride. 

We ended the day with a yummy smoothie!! It was so much fun and we can’t wait to go back!

As Sweet Pea gets older, I am recognizing more and more pretend play. He loves to try to sooth his stuffed animals with his pacifier or try to sweep his room with the broom. Here is something that he did while we were visiting my parents over Thanksgiving.

He came up to me with his stuffed Mickey Mouse and acted like he wanted to get in his high chair. It took me a while to figure out that he wanted the tray off the high chair so he could strap in Mickey. Then we put the tray back on and he went to the pantry, grabbed some cheerios, and put them on the tray for Mickey to eat.  It was so cute! Not once did he try to eat Mickey’s cheerios. It was all a story that he had come up with and was now acting out.

This has inspired me to try to come up with more ways to set up his room to encourage pretend play. Any ideas?

Today was a hard day. We decided to start Sweet Pea one day a week (not even a full day) at our church’s preschool. This decision was made mainly because I have been having a hard time lately and Sweet Pea and I were both going a little stir crazy spending all day every day at home. I thought I would be jumping for joy when the day came I could send little Sweet Pea away for a few hours and get some time to myself. It’s what every stay at home mom wants, right?

I didn’t like the feeling that leaving him gave me and I know he had a hard time with it also. My head tells me that he will be okay. I know the director of the school and I trust her and the people she hires. But my heart is leading me in another direction. It is such an inner struggle because I know that I will be a better mother and wife having a few hours to myself every week. I still have the other 163 hours of the week to enjoy him. Even knowing this I still struggle with what to do. I guess I will give it a few more weeks and then decide if it is a good fit for us.

On a cuter note, here are some pictures of Sweet Pea on his first official day of school. Overall, I think he had a good time. The teacher said it didn’t take to long for him to calm down after I left. Once he got used to his surroundings he laughed and played the rest of the morning. It also helped calm my nerves knowing that my friend, the director of the school, checked on him every now and then and called me to let me know how he was doing.

He had to take a lunch so here is his very first packed school lunch:

Here he is carrying his lunch box around the house:

Here he is checking out his classroom and the other kids:

Here he is sitting at is place at the table:

There has been a lot of hype lately about whether or not parents should be able to home school their children. In the August issue of Parenting magazine there’s a poll, called “Mom Debate”.  This month’s question was: “Is homeschooling good for kids?”  Only 38% said yes. A whopping 62% say that homeschooling is not good for kids. The reasoning against home schooling is ridiculous.  Here were some of the reasons:

“Kids must be exposed to other children so they can develop the social skills they need. And kids have to get a break from the house!”

“Many parents don’t have the knowledge or expertise necessary to properly educate their children. it can be done, but it’s very hard.”

The first quote just makes me laugh. Does this mom think that all kids that are home schooled are shut in the house all day forced to speak to no one but mom and other siblings and do their school work by candlelight? I know many home schooled children that have better social skills that than those of their public school peers. This could be for a number of reasons. There are many home school groups out there where kids can get together with other kids their own age to play and learn. Also, many parents who home school have the opportunity to take their children to places like nursing homes therefore making their children better able to talk to adults. I always just smile and shake my head when I hear people say that home schooled kids can’t develop social skills. This shows a great deal of ignorance about homeschooling.

The second quote can also be said about teachers in public schools. Many just read straight out of the book and then give the pre-made test questions. Unfortunately I suffered through a few of those in my public school days. I thought I was just unlucky, until recently.

I have been majoring in education for the past few years and I have to admit that each time I step onto the university campus and into the classroom I am more and more sure that I NEVER want my children in the public school system. All around me are women who say they want to be teachers, yet they can’t string a proper sentence together! Once we were doing an exercise in partners and my partner was convinced that a hexagon had five sides. Sometimes I wonder how these people even make it to upper level college courses.

Right now I am taking an online Health and Nutrition class. Each week we are to write a paragraph about the topic the professor gives. A soon to be teacher in upper level college courses would be able to write a good paragraph, right? Last week we were to research immunizations and argue whether or not we thought the public school should require them for admission. I am not going to address the vaccination issue with you right now (that will come in a later post), but I am going to show you some of the responses these soon to be teachers gave (try not to look at the vaccine info – I am more looking at sentence structure and grammar).

“you make lots of good points
I can tell you believe in what you are saying
I do believe in parents rights but I think this is important to do”

“I believe all chldren should have to get immunizations
the risk are so much higher of gettig the dieases than the conquences some parents feel might happen.
All you have to do is turn on the television and see all the children that are dying in the other countries because they did not get the protection.”

So the assignment was to write a paragraph to defend your position. Do those look like paragraphs to you? There is no structure and there is no research. These answers were obviously rushed. I for one do not want my kids to be taught sentence structure, spelling, and paragraphs by the people who wrote the above “paragraphs”.  While there are some really good teachers out there they seem to be few and far between. Even from my public school days I can only remember two teachers that really stand out as far as nurturing my love for learning.

I want my children to grow up knowing that learning is fun and exciting. If the public school system happens to be able to do that for them then that is where they will go. But chances are it will be full of teachers that are tired and pass out lots of worksheets and focus on standardized tests. That is not the learning environment that I would like my child to be raised in. I want to see his eyes light up when he learns something new or figures out a hard problem. These days, as kids go through public school it seems like there eyes start out lit up but grow dimmer as the years go by.

If we are so convinced that public school is the place for our kids then we need to take a serious look at who we are letting become teachers and how the children are being taught. Too many parents put their kids on a bus every morning and wouldn’t be able to tell you what they are going to be doing that day or their teacher’s names.

All I can say is if things do not change, my kids will be homeschooled.