Morning with Mom

This week at Liam’s school is “Morning with Mom” (a few weeks ago they had Morning with Dad). Each classroom is assigned a day for the Moms (or Dads) to come in for about 45 minutes, so the children can demonstrate some of the things they have been working on. Yesterday was Liam’s class’s day, so I went in yesterday morning with him so he could show me his work. His teacher handed each mom a sheet of paper that listed the 3 activities the child was going to demonstrate. First on Liam’s list was the continent map. This was a big wooden puzzle, with each continent as a piece of the puzzle. He pulled each one off the map, and named it, before putting it on a mat on the floor. Once he had taken all the continents off the map, he put them back.

Next on his list was Bells. They have these little bells, and he showed me how he taps each one with a small mallet – each one has a different sound going up the scale. Then he went down the second row, and the tones went back down the scale. I was very proud of him for lightly tapping the bells and not banging them for the whole world to hear.

The last thing on his list was the buckle frame. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a wooden frame, with a leather flap on each side, that are connected with 3 buckles. The children use this to learn how to do buckles. They have a button frame, a snap frame, a tie frame…all kinds of fasteners for the children to learn how to use.

The whole event was scheduled for 45 minutes – Liam finished all of this in about 10 minutes, so he decided to show me other things (as they get older, the activities obviously get more advanced, and take more time - but since he's still so young, the activities are pretty quick, since he's not yet capable of sitting & working on the same thing for 20 minutes at a time). He showed me how he can spoon beans from one dish to another, he poured water from a small pitcher into 2 small vases using a small funnel (he spilled a little on this one), he poured rice from one small pitcher to another, he did a fire truck puzzle, he did some stringing beads, he showed me some sound sticks (not sure what they were called, but each one made a different sound, and he had to figure out which ones had sounds that matched), and then he showed me 2 different boxes containing wooden shapes. One box was shaped like a rectangle, and one was shaped like a hexagon. I’m not sure if the point of this exercise was to use the shapes inside the box to try & make a shape that matched the box (so for example, take the pieces & make a rectangle), or if the point was just to match up the sides of the shapes that had a black like and see what they made. He seemed to be doing a little bit of both, so I’m not totally sure what that one was about.

By the time he was done with all of that, I think he had decided it was time for me to go. He announced that he was not going to cry when I left, and that he needed to give me a big hug and a kiss. So sweet! There were a couple of little girls crying when their moms left, but he held it together – he did not cry, and I was so proud of him for being a big boy. I loved getting to go to Morning with Mom and share this fun & special time with him, just the two of us.