You just got schooled!

What?

That title just popped into my head.
Did I get that from somewhere or did I make that up?

Anyway, I spent the better part of today playing school...so school's on the brain. Growing up, I was a big time 'wanna-be teacher.' I loved playing school. I dreamed of becoming a teacher and having a classroom all to myself. Take me into a teacher's store...oh man, I was in heaven. My best friend's mom opened a teacher supply store and just going in that place made me crazy. I would look at everything and make a mental supply list of all the things I would buy if I was a teacher (haha, clearly I wasn't aware of that teacher budget thing). So...I minored in education in college, got my certification, became a teacher, had a classroom all to myself, got to buy all of those things that I just 'had to have,' and now I have the dream child of a wanna-be teacher.

I know I've mentioned it before, but I've got a little girl who is into school in a big way. We passed another school bus today and I got to hear all about when she is going to ride the bus, and then answered 101 questions about where the kids were going, if their moms were with them, when were they going home, were they alone, do they wear seatbelts....you get the idea.

So we came home and played school. It helps that Isabella got one of these from Aunt Kelly and Uncle Taylor for Christmas:

Oh yeah, it's the big time. Initials and all. And she has it jam packed full of workbooks, pencils, crayons, story books, lip gloss and those other things that you just have to have for school.

Today we worked on patterns. Which she calls pannerns. And which she has no concept of. It was pretty funny actually. I set up a pattern with her beads and told her what the pattern was. She repeated it back. Then I said "make a pattern with your beads." She said "okay. pink, yellow, pannern, pannern, green, blue, pannern..." We'll keep practicing.

Then we moved onto the workbooks. Girl loves her workbooks. We did a little Kindergarten SOL prep...seriously, that was the workbook. Anyway, she actually did really well. Matching words to pictures. Circling big, bigger, and biggest pictures and all those other really important things.

But her "thing" is writing her words. She really, and I mean really, wants to read. We're working on it, but she is determined to read. So I told her we should work on the writing of the letters as well. She loves to trace her letters, recognizes almost all of them, and is now getting the hang of copying. So, in my proud mommy moment, I was thrilled that she did this all by herself:

I wrote her name and left her to her own devices. She copied it all by herself. Her 'W' looks like an 'M' but that's because all W's are M's to her.

Speaking of patterns, Quinn's calling.... and she's showing a definite pattern: go to sleep at 8:00....wake back up at 9:00, smile really big, realize her siblings are asleep, and her coos just scream "party time!"