Artists are a good example of this. Someone who is an artist sees the world in a different way, and their identity is found in their art. They might make no money from the art portion of their day, and they might be employed as someone at a grocery store, just to make money, but that doesn't change the fact that they are an artist.
This month marks six months since I last taught in a classroom. Thanks to my daughter, and soon enough, my son, it will be a while before I bring in any income under that title again. But I have been thinking a lot lately about how I still identify myself as a teacher.
I was a teacher long before I went to school for it or got a job. I taught Sunday school, but I also taught at Sunday school. As in, I didn't just teach the lesson and the craft, and then have the kids play, even when we were playing with the kids, I was teaching. They were eating their snack, and I talked about how many goldfish crackers they had as they ate each one. Or they were playing with magnets, and I was teaching how to spell words. It was those experiences that made me decide I wanted to make teaching my job as well.
My friend Erin noticed this about me a long time ago too- I would come over for a play date, and while we were doing something fun with the kids, I was teaching too- making letters out of the cookie dough or writing words with our pictures in chalk. Like an artist looks at life through the lens of art, I see opportunities to teach kids no matter what we are doing.
Kids like me, I'm not boring or strict as I have these impromptu lessons and since I know we aren't in school, as soon as they are over it, so am I, so there is no frustration. But unlike Blake, I have a really hard time just playing, with no purpose or ulterior motive.
With Grace, besides her occupational/speech therapy stuff, for a long time I tried to be like Blake during the day, and just let her play, with no purpose, no teaching, just fun. But it wasn't good. I was bored, and I think she was too, but more than that, my boredom made me less than an epic mom by the end of the day, because I was just ready to hand her off.
A few weeks ago, for a variety of reasons, my thinking changed. I decided to embrace who I am, and let that just be a part of how I parent. She can still have Blake for the fun, but I now approach our weeks like a teacher. I started with a few simple goals- each week we would make something together in the kitchen and do an art project.
It has made my days more fun, and I think she enjoys the variety too. Plus, she is learning kitchen skills early that can benefit her later in life. With the art, I get to have toddler abstract art masterpieces, and something to hang on the fridge. The weeks also go by faster.
This week, I decided to expand on this idea, and I will be working off themes. My teacher side likes themes, as it adds direction and structure to my thoughts about what we do that week. I decided to base the themes off of the Bible story for the week that I read to her.
For example, next week we will be reading about God's promise to Abraham that he would have more descendants than the stars, so the week is themed around stars. I was so excited about this theme, that I decided to start early. Yesterday, we made dog biscuits (cooking for the week) in the shape of stars, and today we finished a take off on Starry Night by Van Gogh. I will probably have us do more variations of that next week, as well as other star projects. We checked out books from the library about stars too.
(construction paper for the tree on the left, glue and sand for the stars and chalk for the rest)
It brings me a lot of pleasure to have "lessons" to plan for as the weeks go by, and doing the projects with her. I may feel obligated to state my current profession as stay at home mom when people ask, but I am a teacher, and whether I have one student or thirty, that is where I find my identity and my purpose.
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According to certain family members, no post is complete without a bunch of Grace pictures, so here are some of my favorites since the last time I posted:
More mobile Grace getting into cupboards
Beautiful picture of her in one of her 18 month old dresses that now fits. On a random note, I have had to retire some 12 month old clothes recently too, and though I know it is a good thing, it still makes me sad.
I think this one is hilarious, she looks like she is yelling at her shoe. That's not quite the case. She is yelling because she wants us to put the shoe back on. But still... turned out funny.
Watercolors
Look at that smile!
Grace playing the piano
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