Real Life Lessons From The Mommy Calling Blogger

I was following “Mekmommy” on Instagram and saw this fun, illustrated picture:

The Mommy Teacher that I am had to know the play-by-play and story behind this authentic, on-the-spot mini lesson.  Krista (this particular mommy teacher) is a mommy of three and the blogger behind “The Mommy Calling.”

So, here is the story shared by Krista that I hope inspires you the way that it inspired me:

“It all started b/c Maddox ran inside freaking out because our yard was full of spider webs. Of course, living in the country cobwebs will always be there, so I had to figure out a way to help him understand. It actually turned into a lesson about counting, adding, habitats, the food chain, a ton of things!

I tore some paper off of the butcher roll and drew a spider. As I drew it, we talked about how it has 2 parts to its body, the head and the body, setting up for a later conversation about the difference between insects and arachnids. Then we counted out the 8 legs as I drew them and talked about how there are 4 on each side and how 4+4=8.

I used a different color crayon to draw the “silk”. I drew some in the spider’s belly, and drew a line coming from the spider and as I drew a random “web” pattern I explained that as the spider moves with the silk behind him it makes the web. After I drew the web I talked about the uses of the web. I broke it down by first drawing the spider in the web telling Maddox that the spider lives in his web. Then I drew an egg sac and explained that this is where the spider lays its eggs and they hatch. I drew a bug flying on the outside of the web and a dotted line leading to the web explaining that as the bug is flying it gets caught in the web because it is so sticky. I explained that the sticky web is how the spiders catch their food to eat. I drew an arrow from the spider to the bug and explained how the spider will then eat the bug. I then asked him if he remembered what the web was for and we broke it down into living, laying eggs, and eating.

Maddox then got his own crayon to copy what I drew and he explained it back to me while I reinforced that there were 2 body parts and counting and adding of the legs (making sure he drew 4 on each side rather than just drawing out 8 random legs so he could visually see the 4+4=8). We didn’t go into the details of the web again, but again we discussed the live, lay eggs, eat. All-in-all it was about 15 minutes and he was so proud that he spent the next 15 minutes talking about it over and over and hung his picture up and called his daddy to tell him about it. In 30 minutes he learned so much about so many things. And it wasn’t anything that was hard to explain or too over his head. It was such a great reminder of how many important things they can learn without a classroom and without making it a boring ‘lesson.'”