I LOVE Parents as Teachers

Parents as teachers is this really neat program where we get to meet with a child education specialist one on one every month. Right now, our program is free for all military, and they are trying hard to get educators at every post. PAT also has twice monthly playgroups that we try to make it to, but are usually unsuccessful. Anyway right now the program goes from birth to age 5, so Finnigan has been the main benefactor of this program, but soon Seamus will get in on it too.

Once a month we have a specialist come to the house to play with Finnigan, Ms. Kajsa (pronounces Kigh-sa). The neat thing is they try to focus more on "toys" we can make or find around the house, and always somehow focusing on some sort of development or education. We've made puzzles, play dough, finger paints, "sand boxes" etc... We play both gross motor and fine motor games, we focus on activities that work on pre-reading and pre-math skills with out Finn even knowing it. We ALWAYS read new books that she bring with her.

There are two cool things about Parents as Teachers that I just love. The first is that it is one on one, so we get a lot of individualized attention! Kajsa can taper her activities to suit Finnigans preferences. For example, she knows he loves puzzles and books, so she always brings one of each that correlate with the skill we are working on that day. She would also bring a more advanced activity over the summer months when she knew Liam would be home to give him the chance to play too. Secondly, having her visits completely re-energizes me to be a better mother. It reminds me that everything I do can help teach my children. It gives me more ideas of things I can do with my children to fill the sometimes long days. I just find it so helpful to have a new person around every so often watching my kids and helping me along. Being a parent is tough work, I will take all the support I can get! Plus its just so nice to have someone who loves my children watching them and telling me how impressed she is with them and yet she isn't family, she doesn't have to think my children are great at everything they do! She is very affirming and assuring. I don't know how else to explain it. I just know its a wonderful experience, and we just LOVE it!

Today after our visit with Kajsa, Finn and I decided to make cookies. I was energized from our meeting this morning, and Seamus was taking a long nap, so I let Finn get totally involved, he measured, poured, and stirred. We felt the flour vs the sugar, we smelled the vanilla and then tasted it, we tasted the sugar/butter mixture and the flour mixture before adding them together, we dropped the cookies on the tray close together and far apart and saw what happened when they baked. We talked about everything the whole way through, and Finn was so proud to bring daddy a plate of cookies when they were done! So I snapped a few pictures.

sleeping Seamus



stirring the dough

the first batch