My Approach for 3 year old Preschool

Last year was my first year doing this sort of thing. I have to admit, it does not come easy to me. Despite that I used others pre-created things and ideas, it took me A LONG TIME to pull it all together. I was over-thinking what we should be doing; Learning myself about how/what to prepare and teach; etc.  There are so many great ideas, things to learn, activities to do.... It was a bit overwhelming in that I wanted to do and teach it all.

This year, I'm doing things differently. I've assessed my goals. Turbo turned 3 at the end of June. This very well maybe my last year with him full time. Next year, he'll likely go to a local Preschool, then it's off to Kindergarten and then....well, the time just flies.  *sniff* I get a little sad just thinking of it. 

So my goals for this year are very simple, but keep me grounded in my planning.

1. Have Fun!
2. Explore
3. Learn New Things
4. Play Outside  *note: we play outside everyday, but I'm talking about taking the learning outside and playing in different ways and places then we would normally.

That's it. No goals for him to write his name, count to 100 or anything like that. I'll work that into our learning of course and he likely will do that, but really it's not my main focus.

Main Elements of our Preschool
We're doing Themes and I'm super EXCITED about it!  There are so many things Turbo is interested in doing and learning. This is a great way to explore these areas in more depth. 

- Activites - Our Preschool time will be interactive with a lot of hands-on type activities. We'll touch it, take it apart, put it together, make it, break it etc.  He's that kind of a boy!

- Outings - We will do outings related to the theme we're doing.  (This is my favorite part!)

The Second key element are what I call the Weekly Extras - These are the tray type activities that we'll work in when we have time or he needs something to do and I'm otherwise busy.  I'm planning 6 trays per week - they'll be letter of the week worksheets, Playdough, word games, puzzels etc.

Lastly, we'll play a different game for several days each week. These could be board games, card games and such.

There are other things I want to incorporate - like country studies, Raising Rock Stars Preschool, Artist studies and more. If I have time, we'll work them in. If not, then no worries, I have the basics planned!

There you have it! My approach for the year.   I'm planning less things (although it still takes me a long time) and allowing more time to complete them. What if we get it all done early? Then we'll do them again! Preschoolers love repetition!

Start of Preschool 2010!

WooHoo, the fall schedules are coming back.  While I love summer, there's something magical and exciting about the coming of fall that I really enjoy. Here in California, there's such a mild transition, that it's often it's just the joy of being outside all day since it's not so blazing hot.  Settling in to routines and the anticipation of the holidays that will fast approach.  Ah, I love fall!

We had our first two days of preschool and they were great! I'm more excited about doing Preschool with Turbo than ever.  There are these moments - where he realizes something new, where he puts two things together that were once apart in his mind, where he's concentrating so hard to do it 'just right', the laughter, his excitement ~ that really make it a true joy.  This is a wondrous time and I'm thrilled to be along side sharing those moments with him.

I'm super busy this weekend and won't get a chance to post our week until early next week. However, I couldn't wait to tell everyone how excited we are about this year.

Stay tuned next week for a post about my approach for 2010/2011.

Little Sweetie's first birthday

Here they are! Some pictures of Lil' Sweetie's first birthday party. It was her first piece of cake and she had NO problem getting her hands into it right away!

Notice the SIZE of that piece of cake!

 Many of these later....

It was GONE! Seriously, I still can't believe she ate the whole thing. At one point I tried to take it away. There was much squawking and the start of some crying. Of course I put it right back down.

So pleased with her self! (either that or the huge sugar rush that had to be happening!)

 In case you thought it might have ended up on the floor. Nope, not much to speak of!

Something tells me this look is going to be trouble in the future

Tiny Talk Tuesday (almost)

I almost made it. Maybe we can pretend that I'm posting from Hawaii and it's only 10pm on Tuesday.

About the pear he picked off the tree...

"I winned it. I winned it off the tree. I win all sorts of things - animals, food, bunnies"  We'd recently been to a carnival where he'd won a stuffed animal and a toy bunny.

Over the past several months, my little guy has had an imaginary dog that scares occasionally.

T: A dog is coming.

M: what's the dog's name?

T: "Baahoo The Scary"

Me telling Turbo he needed to share with his sister. 

T: "Mommy, is today Monday or Saturday?" 

M: "Today is Friday"

T: "I don't share on Friday. I only share on Saturday."

Fastforward to Saturday

M: Turbo, share with Lil Sweetie

T: "Is today Monday or Friday?"

M: Today is Saturday.

T: (a pause as it sinks in) I only share food on Saturday. Sometimes I share toys, but mostly I don't.

He was belly down, sliding off our hearth head first....

"Look Mommy, I'm coming out of my egg"

Tiny Talk Tuesday is hosted over at Not Before 7

Tiny Talk Tuesday

I'm not really back to blogging yet until September when we start our Apples and Trees units. I'm so excited about these! In the mean time, I'm linking up to Tiny Tot Tuesday. Here's some funny quotes from Turbo these past couple weeks.

"Mommy, smell me. I smell like cherries"  after taking his vitamin (guess it was cherry flavored)

Couple weeks after we had our carpets cleaned, I was wiping up a spill on the carpet

"Thank you for being Stanley Steamer Mommy!"

Speaking of his sister, while she was following him around the play kitchen...

"I'm pretending she's garbage. What happens if we throw her in the trash can"

While sitting on the potty, he put the lid on his back

"Look Mommy, I'm a turtle."

There's so many more as with all our kids. These are just the ones I remember right now!

My Little Girl is 1!

HOORAY! Our littlest baby has turned 1.  I don't have pictures of her family birthday party as they're on my hubby's computer and he's traveling.  But I didn't want to wait on my post!


Sweet Pea /Lil' Sweetie (Turbo's nickname for her), is such a joyous addition to our family.  She's happy, curious, easy going and such a terrific sleeper (Mommy really appreciates that!). She loves to imitate, be tickled and play with any of us, but especially big brother. 

Here she was just one short year ago.

Stay tuned for the 1 year birthday pictures over the weekend!

My Baby Turned 3!

Last weekend my sweet little boy turned 3!!  There has been so much wonderment in watching him grow and develop.
These 3 years have been full of amazement, laughter, tears, fun, challenges, excitement and mostly love. I love that little boy more than words could ever express.

He is a sweet, busy, energetic, funny, sensitive and loving little boy. I'm so proud of him and to be his Mommy.

Bird Cards

Here they are!  If you're interested in using the bird cards we used during our Birds/Nests week, here's a link to the download.  I printed, laminated then cut them out.  If you don't have a laminator, print on cardstock or just plain paper. They won't be as sturdy, but hey, it will be good practice in teaching Practical Life skills that sometimes we have to be gentle with our activities.

I like to leave it in a MS Word document so you can modify it for the birds in your area, but that means the formating can be off sometimes.  Please drop me an email or leave a comment if the file doesn't work perfectly for you.  (of course I'd love a comment either way!)

Download Bird cards 

While you're here, be sure to visit my giveaway! 

Another cool giveaway

Shannon over at Welcome to our Wonderland has reviewed and is hosting a giveaway for a very beautiful book and game for our kids!

Go check it out

Hurry, it ends on Thursday!

Birds & Nests Week

Turbo is 34 months

Sweet Pea is 8 months

Be sure to check out my very first GIVE-A-WAY! I know so many families will love this as we do.

This week was birds and Turbo loved learning about them!! 

Learning Aid: Bird Cards
Since the zoo cards were such a hit with Turbo, I decided to do a similar thing for bird week.   I selected 7 common birds to our area: Scrub Jay, Crow, Sparrow, Robin, Morning Dove, Mockingbird and Hummingbird; printed up picture cards and laminated them.  They really facilitated our activities and he was able to refer and play with them as he thought about it.

 We started each day with one of the birds. We talked about the bird, it's colors, the different body parts and how we thought the bird would talk/sing. Then we looked at some YouTube videos to see and hear the bird. I'll put some links to some videos we liked at the end of the post.

Sensory Tub: Bird Seed (of course!)
He loved swirlling the bird seed around the bowl. A cup, a funnel and he was lovin' it!

Build a Bird Nest
We gathered materials in our yard and mud from last weeks' sensory table and made our own birds nest. Turbo was again not very excited about touching the mud, so I helped him through the first stage. He enjoyed adding the twigs, leaves and bark to make it look real. Then we got out our rubber ducks and pretended it was their nest.

Math - Count the 'eggs'
Cupcake papers, muffin tin and playdough. Fun and super fast. I'd help him create a bunch of 'eggs' and then he'd put the correct number in each tin. Turbo asked for this several times during the week.

Patterns - I don't think he really grasps patterns yet, especially creating them. It's something high on my list to work with him. Do-A-Dot markers and some lacing beads.  He seemed to know exactly what I wanted him to do. He then turned the paper upside down and did the pattern the other way. Then he was done.   If you have any tips ~ please leave them as a comment!!

Songs and Music
We do circle time almost every day. We start with songs, then read a story, then do some songs again. Then it naturally transitions into an "activity" as I call our TotSchool.   We added "Two Little Blackbirds" to our songs this week and I cut some blackbirds and a hill out of felt so we could pretend to be Jack and Jill.  This was highly anticipated each morning.

Bird Feeder
I found one from the dollar store, but couldn't find a great place to hang it outside where we could see it well. So we used an old piece of baguette to make our own.  Turbo smoothed on peanut butter and sprinkled the bird seed.  We placed it on our patio table and got to see a lot of different birds come to partake.

Of course we sprinkled birdseed on our walks too.

Make a Bird
Got the idea from here to use a TP roll tube, paint, google eyes and construction paper to a make a cute little bird.  So fun!

Bird Seed Cookie
Cute idea from here to make a cookie to hang off a tree in the yard. It was not successful for us as it completely fell apart. Could be that I didn't have corn syrup so I used Molasses. Oh well, we had fun making it!

Letter of the Week ~ N n - Nest
Turbo was very perplexed that we were doing N instead of B this week. It was cute how he was always reminding me that 'birds' starts with a b.  As you may know, I use Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week resources. It saves me a ton of time and are super cute.  We did the usual letter tracing, number sequencing, puzzle, letter sorting, cutting, do-a-dot pages etc. He enjoys these and it's nice to have similar activities from week to week.  Instead of cutting the color cards to make them matching puzzles, I placed them around the hearth and we called out a color and an action (purple & hop) - then do the action and race to get the card.

Additional Bird activities ~ We didn't get around to these, but they were on my idea list.
Bird Graphing
I was planning to do a bird graph to track the birds and quantities that we saw throughout the week. We just didn't get to it.  But we'll definitely do it the next time around.

Edible Bird Nest 
I found this cute little recipe for a rice crispy edible birds nest.  We still might do these this week as I have some leftover Peeps and jellybeans from Easter.

Egg Carton Bird Feeder
Can't find the idea link, but it's basically attaching some twine to the corners of the bottom half of an egg carton, filling the carton with bird seed and hanging it in your yard.

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Funny picture of the week
I've mentioned before that Turbo is obsessed with types of cars. He knows them all! He's always checking out cars to see what kind they are. He asks everyone that comes around "What car do you have". He has no concept that one kind might be 'nicer' than another. Here he's 'shining' his bike and tells me "Mommy, I'm cleaning my Jaguar".  I just about died laughing - so unexpected! 

Some good YOUTUBE Videos I remembered to bookmark while we were watching.
Scrub Jay's Taking a Bath (Turbo's favorite!)
Western Scrub Jay
Scrub jay Sings
Cackle of Scrub Jay

Crow Cawing
Northern Mockingbird Calling

Ok, I have to go to bed.  I'll post my Bird Card learning aid as a file to download this week. If you'd like me to email you when I post it, just leave me a comment below.

GIVE-A-WAY!

I'm so excited to be hosting my first give-a-way!  While this is not an educational item, it certainly facilitates the PLAY factor in my house, so I thought you all would love it too.

A few weeks ago, I found and purchased a terrific solution to screen off my back door called "Bug Off Instant Screen" and blogged about it. The manufacturer read it and offered to give a screen away to one of my lucky readers!  Since we really love ours, I'm sure this will be a great fit for many other families!

FEATURES
The screen is a high-quality mesh, there are two panels that close together with magnets to enable hands-free use. It opens easily and snaps closed behind you. There are weights in the bottom to prevent it from blowing all around, even in my windy area. It hangs from a tension rod in your door frame and leaves no marks or damage if you remove it. The price - terrific! When I purchased mine, I received it quickly and put it up in 3 minutes!
We love ours. I have my back door open almost all day. The fresh air and breeze is so wonderful. Turbo is able to play outside and easily come in/out without letting in all the flies!! My sanity is preserved by not having to even once say "close the screen door" and there's no cringing waiting for the slam either. We really like the Bug Off Instant Screen!!!!

There are many great benefits of the BUG OFF INSTANT SCREEN and they're all detailed on the website, however, I'll list my favorite here ~
**NO flies or other bugs in my house

**NO yelling - close the screen door

**NO damages - by either kids running into a screen or to your door frame

**NO slamming/banging - when it closes

**NO pinched fingers

**NO high costs

** For you dog owners, this is a terrific option for a pet door!

~~ WIN IT ~~ One lucky reader will win a standard single door screen in 30", 32" or 36" width in either of their standard height options.  (This give-away is not for the larger widths, french or sliding door screens.  If you have questions about the product or the item for the giveaway, just ask!)

Required Entry:  Leave a comment telling me your favorite feature of the Bug Off Instant Screen.
 
Extra Entries: (be sure to leave a separate comment for each additional entry!)
** If you watch the demo video, give yourself an extra entry.
** If you blog about this give-a-way, give yourself two extra entries.
** If you subscribe to my blog in a reader or via email, give yourself an extra entry.
** If you follow this blog, give yourself an extra entry.

This Give-A-Way is open to USA only. (although after this one, I'll have a long over-due giveaway open to everyone, so my friends abroad, stay tuned!)

I will select a winner using Random.org, so be sure you leave a separate comment for each entry.

Contest ENDS 11:59PM PDT May 16, 2010. Winner will be announced here, and emailed. Winner must reply to my email within 48 hours or another winner will be chosen.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
The winner is comment 33 ~ Congratulations welcometoourwonderland!  I'll be in contact with you via email as well. Please respond within 48 hours to confirm your prize!!

If you didn't win ~ the prices for this screen can't be beat starting under $40! Go to Bug Off Screen to get yours today!

Tot School

We did a partial Tot School week last week since we had a playdate every day.  Playdates are always interesting. Some days Turbo plays with the other child and other days he just wants to do his own thing.  Mostly during park playdates or with shy kids he tends to go his own way. When we're at home or when he's with older kids (12-18 months older), he plays much more interactivly with them.   It's very interesting to watch the transition from parallel play to interactive play.  Of course Mommy is his biggest playmate right now, and that's just fine with me. The time will quickly come that I'm just the taxi, so for now, I'll enjoy the attention from him!

Cow Milking ~ As a follow up to our Farm Animal week, we 'milked a cow' using a latex glove.  Just fill a glove with water, tie at the top, prick a little pin hole in the tip of a finger, then squeeze like you're milking a cow. FUN!  This made it real for him and he thought this was a very fun and silly activity. Thanks to my friend Sarah for the gloves!!

Do you remember our sensory table from last week - it was dirt.  Well, it rained and I forgot to cover it. So this week we had....MUD!  Turbo didn't love it.  No mud pies for us. He just used the barn to scoop and pour a bit - then asked to wash his hands. 

Speaking of scooping and pouring, he asked for his dried beans again.  Let me tell you they still work! I get at least 30 minutes - if not 45- of mostly quiet while he plays.  I *heart* dried beans!!

Basket Play ~ I brought down a laundry basket to add to our day. It's always fun to see what he'll do with it. This time he was the band.  I tried to sing along with him - only to be told "Don't sing. You are the story teacher. I'm the song teacher"  HA!

Have I posted about his Strider Running Bike?  I saw this first on a review Carisa did last year and made a note this would be a great Christmas gift for Turbo.  Rick's parents bought it for him and we've had it since February. It is AWESOME!! He rides it every day, all the time! You'd think I'd have a better picture of him balancing, but no. He's usually riding while I'm doing chores and such, so this the picture I have.  I have no idea where his other sock or his pants went.   He gets going quite fast and is able to balance for several seconds without putting his feet down and it's usually just to give himself more momentum.  I've been very impressed at the quality of the bike and how much he loves it.  

Cutting
We're doing a lot of cutting practice. In addition to cutting paper, he cut playdough into small pieces. He still struggles a bit with keeping the scissors in the correct position. I like that it challenges him and yet he still asks to do it. 

Balancing
We're putting things on our head and trying to balance them for a few seconds.  He just likes to goof around with this activity right now. It's actually a lot of fun, good practice and a great opportunity for us to get silly with each other!

That's about it for Tot School last week. This week we're doing 'BIRDS and Nests.  I have some more resources to share so stay tuned for next week's post!


SNEAK PEEK ~  I have a GIVE-A-WAY coming at the end of this week! It's going to be about a Super Cool product I recently found. (hint!). 

Something SUPER cool!

YEA! NO MORE FLIES!!!!

I have a backyard and my son loves to play out there.  He plays well independently outside for a little bit, but really wants to be able to see me or check on me in the house. So we end up leaving the backdoor open. Since I don't have a screen door - that also means we have flies.  One day last summer, we had 6 - SIX - annoying flies buzzing around this house.  UGH.  I know you can relate!-right?

I've been putting off getting a screen door because I didn't think it would really be the best solution.  Here's what I wanted

NO yelling - close the screen door
NO damages - by running into it
NO slamming/banging - when it closes
No fussing around with the door when my hands are full
NO high costs
NO bugs

Sounds like I need a curtain right? That's what I thought too. Since I know how to sew now, I googled "make screen curtain" to get some patterns.   I didn't find a pattern, but I found a solution!!!

It's a screen curtain! Yep, someone already thought of the idea.  It's better than I could make it for sure.  The screen is a nice mesh, there are two panels that close together with magnets to enable hands-free use and then will close behind you. There are weights in the bottom to prevent it from blowing all around. It comes with the rod to hang. Seriously, this is exactly, exactly what I wanted.  The price - terrific!  I immediately purchased mine (I bought off amazon), received it quickly and put it up in 3 minutes!

from bugoffscreen.com

If you need a quality, inexpensive and easy screen for your door - (tall, short, sliding, french) - take a look at BugOff Instant Screen.  I'm seriously in love with ours.  My house is full of fresh air, we're playing out back and there are no flies in my house! WOO HOO! Just wanted to share this amazing product.

Tot School - Late

TOT SCHOOL

Turbo is 33 months & Sweet Pea is 8 months

Ok, so this is totally late! I didn't have internet since over the weekend. Sheesh! What did people do before computers, the net and blogs! Thank goodness for my iPhone or I would have been so sad!

Rick had to leave on Easter for a business trip and was gone until the following Monday.  While we really missed him, the days went quickly and we had a great time on all of our activities.  I had a full schedule to ensure we didn't go stir crazy!

I totally thought I took more pictures!  It seems I spend a lot of time holding something - a baby, a hand, a bag. The camera is an oft forgotten bystander. 

Here's some Tot School Activities:


Cutting: He's getting SOO much better! We haven't cut for awhile and he surprised me by doing a great job! I had been a little discouraged that he wasn't able to do a great job a couple months ago. Patience was the key here. His coordination, muscles and such just needed a bit more time. 

Letter of the Week activities:  Our letter this week was A for animals, ants etc.  I used Confessions of a Homeschooler's printables for our activities. For some reason I only took this one picture of all the letter activities!! So here's Turbo tracing. He's doing such a great job. We're working on holding the pen - I find that the taller the pen the more space he uses for his hand. I might try putting black electrical tape in two places so he knows where I want him to keep his hand. 

We also did our art from last weeks' letter of the week. Z for Zoo/Zebra.  We had such a great week last week - I wanted to use our pictures as a part of our letter. So we made a Zebra Z then used mini pictures of him at the zoo with his friends, the animals and such to glue around the paper. Voila!

Word Building: We love these Melissa & Doug See & Spell boards. There's 10 or so boards and tons of letters for them to use.  Each board is double sided too! It's all wood pieces and very sturdy. To set things up, I find the right letters for the boards I'm giving him and put them all on his tray along with the boards. At first I let him find and place the letters in the order he wants. Then we do it together placing the letters one at a time in the correct order - Sounding out the word as we go. He LOVES it.  

 
Sensory Tub:  As we're focusing on Animals our sensory table this week is DIRT.  Oh what fun was had with this one. Thankfully the weather cooperated!  We brought out our barn & farm animals (target dollar spot) and created our own farm, pens and lots of other farm pretend activities.  We had been to Little Farm just that morning so it was fresh in his mind.

Still, we continue to play with the Rainbow Rice. Its hard to put that away after just a week or two!! Check out my Rainbow Rice Tutorial  to make your very own!

Art: Our friend's babyshower was this weekend, so we painted her wrapping paper. I buy nice white wrapping paper as our base, then let Turbo paint all over it. I really love this personal touch. It also makes him feel like he was part of the gift too.  He surprised me with wanting to finger/hand paint!! Normally, messy hands are not to his liking!

Outings:
In addition to playdates and other friend activities, we went to the Zoo again and also to Little Farm.  Little Farm seemed to be a large petting zoo. So there wasn't much 'farm' learning. However it was a great place to see farm animals up close and personal! Next week we're going to a real working farm! I'm really looking forward to that! 

Here's my favorite picture of the two kids this week.  Sweet Pea has such a look of happiness, awe and love for her brother. Melts my heart!

A few other things we did:

I posted some cute pictures of Turbo 'nursing' his baby doll.  Seriously sweet!!
Also in my Zoo week post, you can see the Zoo Animals Ring Book I made for Turbo and download a copy for yourself!