Community Helpers - Day 1, Mail Carrier

This month we are going to be learning all about Community Helpers.  Day 1 we learned about Mail Carriers.  We started our day by making our own Mail Bag.  The material Mother Goose Time provided was so great.  A big sheet of card stock with the US Mail emblem on it, yarn to sew it together and ribbon to staple on for the strap.

Even thought the materials were neat and the topic was great, I had a hard time getting Lachlan involved.  Lachlan is getting older and along with that he is developing a deeper set of emotions and understanding of the world around him.  All wonderful, except I am noticing a little more attitude coming along with it as well.  Lord, help me.  Any tips on this are welcome, by the way.  Because of this new development it seems like our school day, has, more than ever, morphed into multiple days.  So far this month it is November 12th as I write this and we are just getting started on Day 4.  I guess I just want to write all that out as an encouragement to those who may be worrying about not getting a Day of curriculum done every 24hrs.  Going along with your child's pace is okay.  Sure I feel guilty about it now and then, but that's when I reach out to other homeschoolers and quickly realize, I am not alone.  Besides, learning hard lessons, like how to deal with these new emotions nicely, are VERY important as well.

It even took me quite a while to get Peter and Lucy intrigued by the making of the Mail Bag.  Which surprised me, because all kids love the concept of mail and the Mail Carrier.  Finally, we got started.  Lachlan, still not interested.  Honestly, I just decided to make his for him.  Normally, if he didn't want to do the art we could just skip it.  But the Mail Bag was worked into the next lesson, of which I knew he would love.  He did, however, color his post cards and cut them apart.

For the next lesson Deliver the Mail, MGT provided us with 4 places to deliver our mail to - a school, a hospital, a restaurant, and a fire station.  They then delivered their mail to the right location, which I had set in different places around the room.

We also played the Fragile Package game.  I put together the shape cube.  We sat in a circle and talked about the shape on the cube. This month's shape is the star and all of them knew it right away.  But it was fun to go through the different things that are star shaped.  Next we sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and passed the cube around like it was a fragile package.  The child that had it in their hands when the song was over got to open up the cube to get the star out and hang it on the wall.  When we were done Lachlan said "I don't want to do anymore school."  "Oh, I didn't think we were doing school, I thought we were just playing games." I responded.

It helps to introduce lessons in different ways.  Next time there is another game to play, I need to remember to call it just that.