Preschool

Pumpkin Masks! They glued the mouth, nose and 'hair' or leaves :)

About at the same time that my Mom came to visit, my friends and I started doing preschool with our kids.  We thought we just do our five kids.  The ages are (when we started) an 18 month old, 3 two year olds and a three year old.  Michelle talked to her mother-in-law, who taught preschool for 10 years, about a calendar/ lesson plan.  It was decided that we'd cover one color, shape, nursery rhyme and a range of numbers each month and a specific letter each week.  Sounds like a lot, but it really wasn't too bad.  What I thought was really brilliant was the montly placement of said letters, colors, etc.  Example: In October our color was orange, the shape was an oval and we covered A,P,W,H (apples, autumn, Pumpkins, witches,webs, halloween, harvest, you get the idea).  This obviously helped for retention and making connections to the world around them.  

Snack time with Orange food  and Orange juice!

We decided to hold preschool from 9:30a to 11:45a on Tuesdays and Fridays.  It took a few weeks for the kids to get used to the group and being away from their moms.  It was amazing for me to see the changes in K1.  Honestly, going into this, I figured preschool would just be a glorified play group and didn't have any expectations as far as K1 learning/retaining anything.  For one, his attention span went way up and his behavior at home improved (meaning his daily tantrum count almost disappeared for a time).  In November he could count to 10 consecutively with no mistakes or prompts (he can't right now, because preschool recessed for a month [Christmas break]).  K1's verbal skills improved (I think) because he was around other kids who can speak a little better than he does.  All in all it's been a huge blessing in disguise.  I plan on doing something like this for all my young kids as I can see a benefit.  I hope I can put K1 in a more formal preschool when he's 4 so I can do home-preschool for Sister.  We'll see...

Let's be honest, no one ate the orange bell pepper, but I thought I'd try..