Jen Desmarais

It has been a year (40 weeks) of teaching my Pegasus. It has been rewarding, exhilarating, and exhausting. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the teachers who do this every year with 20+ students.

Things I learned this year:

• I have no patience when he doesn’t try
• He knows how to push my buttons
• I don’t have to do everything by myself
• I know a least a little bit about a lot of different topics
• When he tries, he learns really well
• He has great ideas
• He is really creative
• He’s great at math
• I forgot about the crochet and dance portions a LOT
• I’m incredibly proud of my Pegasus
• It’s a lot easier to do this the second time around, for several reasons:
  • I had a lot of the lesson plans already done
  • I didn’t feel like he had to “keep up” with the virtual kids (because there weren’t any)
  • I knew my triggers better, so when I noticed myself getting frustrated, I was able to pivot to something else
  • When Pegasus resisted doing something, I either didn’t include it in the future, or changed it to be something else, so that led to less fights

Things my Pegasus learned this year:

• How to print all the letters in small caps (he already knew caps) – but he doesn’t like them and will use all caps whenever he can get away with it
• How to play with playdough
• How to use scissors safely and cut semi-on a line
• How to use glue
• The sound of each letter
• The sounds of syllables
• How to count to 100 (in English)
• How to count to 10 (in French)
• What a pattern is and how to make one
• A few French words (although he insists he doesn’t know them)
• The days of the week
• The months of the year
• The seasons of the year
• How to recognize the elements of a fairy tale and put them together into a new one
• How to brainstorm a story, storyboard it, write dialogue, and then put it all together
• How a stop-motion movie works and created two
• How to remove the background from an image in Photopea
• How to insert images in Canva, change their sizes, and move their placements
• How to design and create a mini zine in Canva (from a template)
• That crocheting takes a long time
• How to hold a crochet hook
• How to draw from reference
• How to measure baking ingredients
• How to combine ingredients to follow a recipe
• How to make a spice mix
• How to measure something with a ruler
• He learned to read music – the 9 notes around middle C
• The values of whole, half, quarter and eighth notes
• Can clap and count a line of music using those notes
• Completed several finger exercises and the value of practicing them
• How to play chopsticks
• How to read in English (surprised me!)

Overall, I would call this year of Junior Kindergarten/Maternelle successful, even though the hard part, the learning French part, didn’t go as well as I had hoped. He is very much resisting learning it, which will hopefully change at in-person school next year.

The important thing was that he had fun, and he tells me that he did. He also wants to make another mini zine and write another fairy tale during the summer, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m so very proud of how well my Pegasus did this year.

An image of all the art that Pegasus created this year (that we could find). He learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I’m very proud of him and how hard he tried this year.