This school year marks a big shift for our family since I started working as a teaching intern to complete my Montessori credential requirements. My older daughter is in first grade and my younger daughter is in the toddler program at my school. We survived the first month and look forward to the rest of the school year to learn and grow tremendously in our respective schools. I have really missed the social aspect of having co-teachers and seeing many children play and run around. As lovely homeschooling was for us in the past two years, I feel that going outside the home for school opens up so many opportunities for interaction and personal growth for my daughters and I.

2020 started in Manila, then we flew back to NYC in time for school to start. J and I were both sick. It was post travel fatigue plus multiple kids in my classroom had runny noses for weeks too. That’s when I experienced how quickly germs spread in classrooms. In March covid shut schools down. Montessori training went virtual.

Online toddler classes. It was so tiring, and I have some experience being on camera. It’s tough for everyone. Our school permanently closed after the school year ended. Zoom Montessori training in July. So much zoom. In current events, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so on, BLM protests. The Stop Funding Hate campaign. I was away from Facebook and Instagram for a month.

Setting up a homeschool classroom. Bought more cabinets to accommodate stuff. Looking to form a pod. Too risky. Safe playdate once a week instead.

No playgrounds, just open parks. No outdoor dining for us either. We only leave the apartment to do groceries.

P and I turned 34, and we decided to grow our family. J is turning 4 in July and the window of time before maternal risks increase is narrowing. Luckily I was pregnant before the November elections.

Election anxiety. Can we endure four more years of this administration? Covid mismanagement on the federal, state and city level is depressing.

Halloween was spent outdoors in Central Park, Thanksgiving and Christmas out of town. No Manila trip this time. Biden wins. Still stressful up until inauguration. I’m still in disbelief at the insurrection.

My first trimester was lousy. I had horrible nausea, I couldn’t eat, I was so tired, but I chose to quit drinking coffee (I drank two cups a day) so I had barely any energy.

Second trimester is colliding with SAD. I don’t love winter. J asks for a goldfish. Thank God. I wasn’t too keen on taking on additional responsibilities but it’s great for homeschool. I think it’s good preparation for J to be responsible for baby sister?

I postponed Montessori practicum this schoolyear. I should have been in a classroom this year but covid happened. The bright side is we had time to think about having second child.

Homeschooling has its obvious advantages when I’m trying to avoid Covid-19 exposure. J and I both miss peers and I find that I have to do a lot of work side by side with her since she craves to have classmates around, I’m her only classmate, guide and mom, so those roles can get blurred and I’m wiped out at the end of the day.

Overall I made it through 2020 with my mental, physical, and emotional health in good enough shape to decide to take on the challenge of having another baby, which is something I don’t take lightly. If there’s anything I learned in 2020 it’s that parenting during a global pandemic is relentless but it’s only as complicated as I make it. I’m fortunate to have in-laws nearby who have been amazing at giving P and I a couple of child free nights every once in a while so we can decompress or tackle big projects. I’m lucky that my husband’s job wasn’t negatively affected by the pandemic and I can choose to step away from working outside the home for this time.

I bought a sewing machine in April, one month into the pandemic, anticipating lots of free time at home for more creative pursuits. The last time I used one was in home economics class in high school, but I’ve always been curious, so I asked around for recommendations and ordered a sewing machine right when many retailers were starting to sell out of machines. I’m guessing this was because of global supply chain issues and the surge of home sewists making masks.

I am interested in sewing my own clothes but I’m just learning how to do everything from the start, which I feel is perfect for helping me empathize with my daughter. It’s good for me to feel lost and confused about directions, so I can feel frustrated, then eventually figure it out and be really satisfied that I did it.

This was a long multistep project that took months (I was preoccupied trying not to catch Covid19). There was the research in buying the sewing machine, fabric, pattern, tools. Once the fabric arrived I had to wash and iron it before I could cut it. I got impatient with the sewing part since it was my first time so I could have been more careful with finishing the edges. I had to decide how long I wanted the dress to be before finally hemming it.

I’m glad I found the Envelope Dress pattern from Cris Wood Sews. I wish I could remember exactly how I found Gyasti on Instagram, she’s my new favorite sewing inspiration since we’re close to the same size and she rocks her curly hair too.

I decided to wear it for our family photo day since I’m really proud of making this dress. I used Shoott.com to book a photo session, and I’m happy we were able to get pictures taken before the summer weather ended.

Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.

My first pass at setting up shelves after completing the academic portion of Montessori training. I don’t have enough shelving right now, but this is my initial setup for Sensorial and Math.

Sensorial

Pink cubes by bookshelf

Knobbed Cylinders (4)

Brown Prisms

Brown Cubes

Rough and Smooth Boards

Rough Gradiation Tablets

Fabric Box

Baric Tablets

Goki Feel a Pair game

Color Tablet box 1

Color tablets box 2

KidO Arranging Narrow to wide puzzle

Geometric Plane figures

Knobless Cylinders

Sound Cylinders

Math 

Melissa and Doug Clock puzzle

Leaf nesting puzzle

Hape Stacking blocks 1-4

Wondertoys counting 1-5

Plantoys tiles 1-5

Colored Bead Bars

Number Rods 

Spindle Box

Numbers Magnatab

Cards and Counters

Object to number matching cards

Lakeshore 1-10 Grasshopper picture puzzle

Ecduco Turn and Count Family 1-10 Puzzle 

Where I’ll be compiling homeschool songs.

“Our new conception stresses the importance of movement as a help to the development of the brain, once it is placed in relation to the center. Mental development and even spiritual development can and must be helped by movement. Without movement, there is no progress and no health (mentally speaking). This is a fundamental fact which must be taken into consideration. I might be asked to demonstrate these facts, but they are not ideas, nor even personal experiences. They are demonstrated whenever we observe nature, her facts, and the precision given to this observation comes from watching the development of the child. Watching him, one sees that he develops his mind by using his movements. The development of language, for instance, shows an improvement of understanding accompanied by an ever extending use of the muscles of production. Besides this and other examples the child, scientifically observed, shows that he develops his intelligence generally through movement. Observations made all over the world have shown that the child demonstrates that movement helps psychic development, that development expresses itself in its turn by further movement and action. So it is a cycle, because both psyche and movement belong to the same unity. The senses also help. Without opportunity for sensorial activity the child is less intelligent. That is why the examination of the development of the small child is of such great aid to the whole of education.”

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind.

Whenever I feel like my daughter is moving nonstop and has so much energy, I need to remind myself that she needs all of that movement. Her need for play and active movement is different from mine, but I feel that it’s also important for me to be playful and move in ways that make me feel good.

I sewed a dress for the first time in my life. My stitches are wobbly, it took a long time to cut my fabric, set up my sewing machine, ironing board, iron, and figure out how to follow the pattern. All of these movements are still new to me and I haven’t had a lot of experience doing them, but I finally finished it. I feel so accomplished and happy that I made a dress all by myself. It’s a feeling that children likely have whenever they get to do something for themselves. It’s good for me to keep learning new skills so that I can be constantly reminded of how frustrating it can be in the beginning, and how much time it really takes to master something. It definitely puts what young children are going through in perspective and helps me be more patient in dealing with Joule.

Today, after we sang the days of the week, months of the year and continents songs, I took the “Around the World from A to Z” book out, since that’s where we can see the continents map. I love how the Philippines is represented by the Banaue Rice Terraces. Joule can recognize the continents from her time in the classroom, and we got as far as the letter J today.

Since this book has sandpaper cursive letters, I decided to show her the tactile letters we have at home, along with an object that starts with that sound. I’ll limit it to three objects next time, since she also said that she wanted to stop after the fourth.

I still have a lot of work to do until I can get my Montessori certification- and since I’m not going to be doing my practice teaching year in a school this fall, unless covid magically disappears, I’ll have to do all my practice time here at home.

My daughter turned three on the last day of my Montessori training classes at WSMS-TEP. We started in person during the fall of 2019. It’s a serendipitous coincidence that the first day of my training was on my birthday, and the end was on my daughter’s third birthday. She’s really the catalyst of this whole series of events in my life and with the way this year has turned out, (COVID-19! Social distancing! Trying to stay alive!) I can’t be more grateful for what I’ve been introduced to during the past 10 months. We had the Philosophy and Practical life classes held in person, and rest (Sensorial, Math, Language Arts, Culture) were done via Zoom.

The first lesson in the Geography, Science, and History section is titled the Earth and the Sun, and the photo above is just missing some yarn surrounding the sun to represent the earth’s orbit. I did the activity during her actual birthday on a zoom call with family, and wanted to do it again during her call with her friends, but I saw that she was more interested in talking to people on the screen than walking around carrying planet earth. Hopefully next year I can prepare it better and have her be more involved.

I have a three-year-old now. She was 26 months when we started school- she went into the classroom next to mine and she cried for the first 20 minutes for maybe two weeks. Eventually, she was happily running into her classroom. I’ve been a very attached parent from the start, probably because of her food allergy situation, and being my firstborn. I stayed at home with her full time until I got the job at her school, but now that our school has closed for good, I’m staying home for the rest of 2020. I miss our school community, but I’m grateful for the life-changing experience of assisting in a toddler classroom.