I'm planning to do a post once a week for our Tot School as we go through our alphabet learning weeks.  But I'm so excited about it right now that I'm doing this post just for the first day of the letter A.  It really wasn't all that exciting.  "School" lasted about 45 minutes and my initial feeling was that Lydia didn't learn anything.  But we both had fun so I thought it was successful.
A few things of note...I didn't get many good pictures because I was concentrating on being the teacher and what teacher do you know who stops teaching to take pictures every few minutes?   And also, I'm going to have to work on my own time management as we get into schooling.  I usually do my dishes, laundry and cleaning in the mornings but today I used that time with Lydia.  So, I still have a very messy kitchen and a load of laundry to do at 2:00.  That bothers me. But we were also out and about for the rest of the morning today too so that didn't help.  I suppose that instead of writing a blog post I should be doing house work....it might take a little while for me to work out a new schedule for myself (and give up my internet/ "me time" during nap time in the afternoon). :)
I planned (and am planning to continue) to do school during Anna's morning nap.  This will limit our time since the longest Anna sleeps is an hour in the morning but I thought having one-on-one time was best for now as we get started.  It won't be a problem if Anna doesn't sleep, she can just join us, but I won't be as focused.  When she did wake up as we were finishing school this morning Lydia got very excited and said "You want to learn about A too, Anna!?!?!"  :)
So, as Lydia finished up her breakfast this morning I brought her picnic table out into the living room and got out the worksheets I had planned for today as well as our craft supplies.  I put the paint and paper on the table where she was eating and that was the end of breakfast.  "What that, Mama?  What we going to do today, Mama? I all done now. I ready for school now!"  (needless to say she was ready for lunch at 11:15 today, haha)
We started out with worksheets about apples.  As I said before, she doesn't know her lower case letters so we talked about the big A and the little a.  She pointed to the capital A and said "that is the Mama" then to the lower case a and said "that is the baby A".
We did a worksheet to help her pick out the capital and lower case As.  I helped her with the coloring at first (obviously) but she did the last two herself.  ...she really was happy despite the look on her face in the picture. :) 

Then she said "need to write my name on the other side like Mrs Hopp does". (In Sunday school they always write their names on the back of their papers.  Mrs Hopp and Mrs Johnson are her teachers.)  So we worked on writing her name for a little while.

Next we went to the table to do our apple painting craft. As we painted we talked about A is for apple and what sound the letter A makes.  She insisted that "A says a- a Peanut".  I gave up after the eleventh time. ;)
But we had fun with painting!

I didn't really think anything sunk in as far as the letter A but then as we were driving to see Alice this morning she said "A says a, a- apple".   Wow, something got through! :)  But she still thinks A says a-Peanut too.

In non school related photos....Anna ate one of those hard baby biscuits at lunch today and loved it.  It was just a bit of a mess.  But she was happy! :) :)