Life is Beautiful: Preschool Learning

It's been a while since we did some intentional learning so this morning we kept pretty busy. Our Anika has a hard time with counting and patterns so I focused mostly on those. Letter sounds and rhyming comes pretty easy to her, but we can always practice some basic writing and fine motor skills. I am so not a crafty person even though I like to paint so unless a kids' craft is really simple and doesn't involve a million different craft supplies I won't do it. But I like doing things like this (see pictures below) with the kids that teach them colors, shapes, math, letters and so on. It is simple and they're learning so much. The girls also love playing with play dough and paint so we do that almost every day. Puzzles are becoming their favorite game too so we pulled those out. Kason wants to keep up with the girls so bad but he can't quite do the harder puzzles and gets pretty frustrated. I have a feeling we'll be doing a lot more of the inside games and learning for a while because the weather doesn't seem to be getting any warmer.

It's really nice to browse through some creative blogs and get simple ideas I can do at home. Well, that's if everyone cooperates and we stay on schedule. :) My 2 babies usually take good morning naps so I have to rush to get things done before their nap and then I have about an hour I can devote to the 3 little preschoolers. We can still do puzzles, legos and blocks after the babies are up. Then as it gets closer to lunch it is my crazy time of the day, trying to make lunch, feed everyone and get the 4 of them ready for naps. I usually have a good chunk in the afternoon for me and for Ani and that's when I can do preschool curriculum books with her. I take it very casually this year because she still has a whole next year of preschool and is almost getting to be ready for kindergarten now so I don't want to push her too hard. She loves the idea of school and having "projects" to work on so I know she is going to love preschool next year. After the kids wake up from the naps, it gets a bit crazy again because the 2 second graders come home from school and want to play wild. I don't blame them, they're just boys but it's just not a good time for me to try to teach any preschool stuff. So that about sums up my typical day during the week although some are better than others. The best week is if nobody is sick, there are no runny noses and crabby babies. Here are some pictures of our activities today. It was a very fun morning for them and I love seeing them all excited about an activity we're going to do together.