Joy School Intro

Besides the fact that instead of getting "books" and I have to download all the materials, there were a lot of other preparations I needed to do. I like having paper copies, so I print it all out and had Staples bind it together. Also, I need to make family puppets. The orange puppet is the brother, the pink patterned one is the sister. The dad has the tie and the mom has a weird vest or collar.

And I made three different charts that we will be using everyday. Here's our school house so that Hailey can open her window when she's ready for school. This is meant to also be a tool to control behavior but our windows don't stay open. Also Hailey is very excited about Joy School so that eliminates behavior problems.

Here's our weather "clock" as Hailey calls it. She's been interested in the weather recently so this is great that we can visually describe the weather.

Finally, we have the calender. I don't think Hailey is ready for this concept yet, so I'm going to focus more on the days of the weeks before I try to explain what a month is.

So on Sunday, I had most things ready. After Hailey's timer went off for quiet time. I told her I had a surprise for her. Since Hailey doesn't understand waiting or time, I generally don't tell her future plans. So she had no idea Hailey School was starting again.

Hailey came downstairs and saw the posters in our kitchen and was excited. I explained what they were and then continued with the introductory lesson Joy School provided. The lesson main purpose was to get the kids used to each other and a school environment. So we went over some finger plays and songs.

There's a little part where a puppet talks to the class and tries to get the kids to introduce themselves. I feel strange about using puppets. We used the sister puppet and called her Sally. Hailey was very shy and wouldn't really talk to the puppet. However, after Joy School, Hailey grabbed Sally and asked me the questions I asked her earlier.

Then we talked about Joy School Rules and went through the first three. We learned the song about the rules.

The craft was meant to show how crayons follow rules too. "When crayons get hot, they melt." So, I shaved the crayons and we made pretty designs on one side of the paper. Then I melt it with an iron. It was a very cool craft. Hailey liked it a lot.

This is Hailey's.
This is the one I did.

We did Joy School for about an hour maybe even an hour and a half. It was a good experience and I know things will run more smoothly once I get use to the flow of things and learn the music.