School Days

I intended to send Jack to "school" this year, but many things came up that made me decide against it. At the very top of the list of things that came up was that neither Jack nor I seemed ready. I spent the summer trying to drop Jack off each morning at childcare so I could attend Jazzercise class. The tears got old fast, and I eventually decided it just isn't worth it. I'm convinced that in time Jack will be more comfortable being away from me, but this fall was not our time. 

That doesn't mean that I don't find value in a lot of things they do at "school". Above all, I think it's healthy for preschoolers to have a time when they concentrate on an assigned task and complete it. When I started playing around on Pinterest, I found a bazillion preschool tasks that I could make affordably. I try to spend 30 minutes or so with Jack on one of these activities each day, and I try to make a couple new ones each week so the activities are new and fun for him. 

I bought this oil drip pan at Walmart for $9. John hung it on the wall in our playroom. I had the letter cards and alphabet magnets already. Jack matches the appropriate magnets to the alphabet cards. I hand him each magnet and tell him the letter name. I really like the challenge of looking at a letter and finding its match. It's my hope that eventually he'll learn the letter names and associating it with the picture on the card. That would be the beginning of understanding that each letter makes a sound.

I bought a muffin pan at Target. I like that it has six spots and that the spots are large. I went to Home Depot and picked up some paint chips in the basic colors. I cut the paint chips to fit in the bottom of the muffin pan. Jack sorts objects by color. He's picked up on some of the color names although he doesn't get any colors except green and orange and purple right every time. These objects were foam squares that I found in the dollar bin at Target.

These large buttons that I had leftover from my math teacher days are another object that we've used for sorting in the muffin pan. 

Many of the preschool activities I found dealt with fine motor skills. For this activity, I attached two of the buttons on a piece of ribbon and cut pieces of felt with button holes. Jack slides the felt over the buttons to put them on the ribbon. 

With the rest of the felt, I made this picture. Jack puts the pieces together to make a house, the sun, and a tree. 

Another fine motor activity is putting coins in a slot. Jack really likes this one. He's willing to do all 100 pennies many times. 

A preschool teacher who is a friend suggested a homemade alphabet book. The teacher suggested attaching each letter to a person that Jack knows. I've been working on it for quite awhile, but it's nearly done. I have about five letters left. They are the hard ones like x and y. We don't know anyone whose names start with those letters. I'm also beginning to collect alphabet books. I have a list to get the next time we go to the library. 

This is an alphabet puzzle that Jack really likes to put together because it ends up being a really long train. The boy loves anything transportation related. 

That's what we're doing these days. That and pushing around our younger brother, but that's another post altogether....