Since Governor Wolf declared a few days ago that Pennsylvania schools will be closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, I know I have experienced an array of emotions, ranging from relief that our kids will not be returning to germ-infested classrooms to horror that - gasp - now I'm responsible for their education!!! Something tells me that other parents may be feeling the same way, too! We are blessed to live in a district that has hit the ground running with distance learning, providing all students with one-to-one technology and providing quality instruction and support from day one. With respect to our older, school-aged children, I'm not concerned. It's my soon-to-be-5-year-old who will be entering Kindergarten (hopefully!) in the fall that I'm worried about!
Since schools first began to close a month ago, I have been in awe of all of the online and virtual resources that are available for our children. It truly is amazing how our community has come together to support kids at this time. However, it's also a bit overwhelming! Where do you even begin? I've been trying to organize live virtual events in the Events section of our Macaroni Kid website to help make it more manageable, but virtual activities don't replace instruction. From day one, I knew I needed to come up with a plan. I saw the rather embarrassing "resources" and "learning activities" that my son's preschool was providing, and I decided to figure it out myself. Let me be clear about one thing: I am not an early education or elementary school teacher. However, I was an English teacher, RELA curriculum supervisor, and assistant principal for 18 years, so I have some context for how to at least approach this daunting task. So, if you are a certified early elementary teacher or have worked in a preschool environment, do your thing! And if you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them! But, if like many other parents and caregivers, that isn't your background and you just wish someone would help you come up with a manageable plan that will help you connect with your child, have fun, and help them learn something along the way, then hopefully this resource will prove to be helpful for you!
Each week, I prepare rudimentary lesson plans for what I affectionately call Mommy School. We start at 9 am, and we typically work until about 11 am (with some necessary breaks thrown in!) I'm not following a set curriculum or learning plan; I'm simply focusing on the areas that I know my son needs to improve (specifically, letters and numbers), and I'm spending lots of time on Pinterest and Googling ways to help him in those areas. Very little of what I'm doing is original, but I'm curating it in a way that helps provide my son with a cohesive approach to learning while encouraging those classroom behaviors that I know will serve him well next year in public school. Perhaps the best part is that I'm trying to harness my son's unique interests and incorporate them in our learning. Just like many of you, I'm figuring this out as I go. I've already started to make tweaks and timing revisions based on our household and my son's attention span.
Starting next week and each Sunday for the remainder of the school year, I will publish my weekly lesson plans. Use them if they're helpful; ignore them if they're not. If you think another mom would appreciate this resource, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe so they, too, can receive them weekly. Together, we can do this! Stay strong and stay safe!
XO,
Traci
