So on to the title of my post. Today was the boys' first big boy gymnastics class. They have done the parent and tot class since they were 15 months old, but as the name implies, we were always with them. Today they started the 3 year old class and they did it by themselves. I was such a nervous wreck! So on the way I grabbed two lattes for myself and my friend Heather who works at the gym so we could sit together and she could try to help me through this! Of course the boys were fantastic. They marched right out to Ms. Leah (the second most wonderful preschool gymnastics teacher in the world!) and started their class without looking back. I peered at them through the window of the office while Heather and I drank our coffee together. It was wonderful... I was so proud of my big boys and I was enjoying 45 minutes of adult only time with someone other than my husband! Well. 30 minutes. A half hour into the class Caleb started to cry for me. Ms. Leah gave him hugs and redirected him towards something fun. I hid behind the door so he couldn't see me. But he continued to unravel and soon Ms. Leah was carrying him around while the other kids played. Including Matthew who was apparently oblivious to his brother's suffering! Every time he looked towards the office where he knew I was, I hid. I knew if he saw me it would be all over. It was really tough. On one hand, I have taught that 3 year old gymnastics with the first-time-leaving-mommy little kids class a million times. The teacher in me knows to just keep the kids busy and they will forget about their separation fears. But I wasn't the teacher this time, I was the mom!!!! And I just wanted to go scoop up my baby and hug him! But I didn't. Heather cheered me on for the last five minutes and Caleb finished the class. Except that he never stopped crying. He screamed for the half hour ride home and then another 20 minutes after that. Then he finally said his ear hurt and sure enough he had fluid pouring out of the tube his left ear. The poor kid had an ear infection. All of the flipping upside down in class must have caused him so much pain! He wasn't having separation issues, he was hurting! So a dose of Motrin and a trip to the pediatrician's later, I was ready to accept my Mother of the Year award! Even the doctor laughed!
Anyways- this is why we did preschool in the afternoon today. The boys definitely had a harder time staying focused and our activities were much shorter than they were yesterday. But we still got some good work done. I found this amazingly fantastic handwriting website where you can generate your own handwriting worksheets (http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/) . You can type in the letters or words you want and customize the size, the type of writing, etc. So we started focusing on the letter A today. The boys each had two worksheets- one for capital A's and one for lowercase. Then we worked on cutting up some tissue paper pieces to continue working on our scissor skills. With all of the scraps they cut up, we made a big letter A by sticking the scraps onto a letter A made out of glue. The boys really enjoyed this one!!! Then we finished with a color mixing lesson. We took some paint and mixed the colors on a homemade worksheet to discover what new colors you can make from the primary colors. Super fun!!! After the boys did their own discovery, we read Mouse Paint by Ellen Walsh- a super cute story about three white mice who find three jars of paint and discover that they can mix the colors by dancing in the puddles. (I found a super cheap cheap copy of MousePaint here- http://www.cdsbooksdvds.com/product.jhtm?sku=UBM9780547333328 ) The boys were extra excited when they knew what colors the mice had created before I even turned the page!
Caleb working on his uppercase A's
Matthew working on his uppercase A's
Making a letter A
Caleb's A
Matthew's A
Color mixing worksheet
Tada!
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