My Unofficial Early Childhood Certification:
A Pandemic Love Story
It was 2020. The Pandemic.
We all remember getting the news on our social media feed.
A virus from the other side of the world, people getting sick, and dying.
People were scared and anxious of all the unknowns:
How contagious was it?
Who is the most vulnerable group?
How long were we going to have to quarantine?
Will we have enough supplies for our family?
It was a wild time to be alive. The last time something happened remotely close to this was The Spanish Flu in 1918.
We had just sold our home and were on the hunt for a new one, so in the meantime, we were living in a two bedroom-one bathroom duplex.
(Let me reiterate: ONE BATHROOM for a family of 4!)
Two things that I am super grateful for as far as timing goes.
- I left teaching in 2019 to be with my kids more and help my husband manage our properties.
- My husband and I got married in at the beginning of 2020. (for some reason I was adamant about getting married in January 🤷♀️)
I had to quarantine in very tight quarters with my small children for my honeymoon. 😆
Quarantine Certification
So, here I was with a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old. Ready to try my hand at being an “early childhood” teacher.
There I was on Pinterest and Teacher Pay Teachers, getting “Quarantined Certified” in early childhood education.
In true teacher fashion: I gathered my materials.
Whether it was going through the house for things we already had, to ordering a few things on Amazon or my local grocery store curbside service, to printing materials I would need for activities.
Btw: Magnatiles were a game changer!
I even told my kids to call me Ms. Lewis during the day. It was important to set the tone; mommy was off duty from 9am – 3pm. I even wrote out our schedule of daily activities.
Breakfast
Math, Science, or Geography
Morning Break- Outside
Phonics, Reading
Lunch/Recess
Art/Music
Storytime
Snack Break-Outside
The kids were excited to go to “Mommy’s School”! We were off to a strong start. I was back into teacher mode.
For my daughter’s lessons we did things like labeling body parts, solar system, studying the continents, math problems, and phonics with an “ABC Scavenger Hunt”.
(Later, her school would send some things for her to do. Which meant driving to her school and pick up packets left outside in buckets.)
Simultaneously, I had to keep my son entertained with sensory games like finding toys in a bowl of rice, coloring pages, reading stories, and learning colors with a “Vehicle Scavenger Hunt”.
Fortunately, my son would take an afternoon nap, so my daughter and I would get quite a few things done while he was napping.
That was a challenge. Trying to run two activities at the same time, while both of them needed your help. 😩
I would rearrange the activities according to difficulty and how long I thought it would keep them engaged before a meltdown or both of them just totally checking out.
I learned that you only had a short span of maybe 10 minutes (toddler) or 20 minutes (kindergartener) before they were ready to release the Kraken.
Did it run smoothly? Occasionally.
Did we stick to our schedule? For about a month or so. Then I went full survival mode aka Bad Teacher mode. TV time magically made the schedule at this point.
All educators know when the month of May comes, it’s time to start wrapping up. Even the items I was getting from my daughter’s school were getting sparse. We all were checking out.
Here’s what I learned:
Mind you, I was used to teaching teenagers, but I learned teenagers and toddlers have the same social habits.
They both get upset when they don’t understand something quickly.
They lose interest quickly if your activity doesn’t keep them engaged.
A snack break goes a long way!
The major differences:
My sarcasm was very beneficial in building a rapport with my teenage students. That does not really go over well with toddlers. 😄
You have to be gentle and nurturing to little ones.
And, although you have to keep your eye on teenagers, you REALLY have to watch toddlers. They are basically trying to reach a quota of the number of times they can hurt themselves.
I fully support all early childhood teachers in needing to wear clothes that allow you to squat, kneel, or even DIVE. (yes, I did a dive to prevent a choking incident 🙄)
The Love Story Part
Didn’t you say this was a love story?
Yes, I did.
And I did fall in love.
I fell in love with teaching little kids.
Me, the sarcastic, middle school English teacher. That vowed NEVER to teach little kids. Dumbfounded why anyone would take on that daily torture.
I fell in love with the innocence of how little kids learn. They are so raw with their emotions. When they have fun, they really have fun. When they hurt, they aren’t afraid to show it and have no problem letting you comfort them.
They walk around with an untarnished curiosity that is intoxicating. It makes you, as an adult, stop and wonder about things that you stopped noticing or never gave a second thought.
(I enjoyed teaching little kids so much, I volunteered to be the unit leader of the kindergarten age girls in my daughter’s girl troop a couple of years later.)
I also fell in love with my kids all over again.
This time for the students they were.
As parents, we all love our kids, but to fall in love with them as your students is special. It’s a gift that for most of us only happened due to being forced in to quarantine.
We experienced things that, honestly, I’m not sure we would’ve outside of quarantine.
We did YouTube yoga, we ran around an empty city park, we drove through our local zoo in our car, and had zoom meetings with their classmates to check in on everyone. (Toddlers on a zoom call was hilarious!)
My daughter graduated Kindergarten in May of 2020.
We did a drive through graduation. We drove slowly around the parking lot honking and cheering for the graduating class. The teachers were all spread out and saying goodbye to their students.
I cried.
I cried for my baby girl leaving kindergarten. She’s growing up.They both are.
I cried because I felt I helped in a small way. I contributed to her kindergarten year. Unless you are a homeschool mom, you don’t get to experience that first hand.
I get it now, even if it’s a small glimpse. I can see the rewarding experience of homeschool and understand why people may choose that route.
This experience was beautiful, exhausting, and trying, but I’m a believer that anything that’s worth it, usually is.