Preschool

The first week of September, we started a preschool co-op with a few families in the ward, as well as homeschool preschool stuff. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our co-op days, and today was at our house. The kids love seeing their friends and getting to do fun things with them. And I like having a chance to spend time with other women.

On Mondays and Fridays we go over a letter at our house and do activities related to the days theme. I matched up each letter with a superhero, Star Wars character, or other such person that Joseph loves, and that's our theme for those days.

On Wednesdays, we go to the library's preschool program. Joseph goes in the Storytime room for a little class, while Annabelle, Charlie, and I sit at the story circle for reading, songs, and a puppet show. We also always end up taking tons of books home. Our house is becoming overrun with library books.

We missed some preschool while we were in Idaho last month, so the kids and I have been catching up on letters so that we are on track with the co-op. We are doing G and Green Lantern tomorrow instead of going to the library, or maybe we'll do both, I haven't decided.

It's fun planning out ideas and working with the kids to help them learn. I've found that I get easily frustrated, though, so I have to take lots of calming breaks, and I've been using a lot of Citrus Bliss, which is an essential oil blend I love. I love watching the kids learn, but they have very short attention spans, and they usually want to do something else, like playing video games or watching TV. But I think it's been good so far, and I know it will get better if I keep trying and keep praying.

Museum Fun

The kids have been dying to go to the Dinosaur Museum aka BYU's Museum of Paleontology. We were going to take them on Friday, but got there right when the doors were locked, so we promised them we would go on Monday. They were pretty excited today and difficult to contain until we went to the museum. It's a really small museum, but the kids just kept running through it and discovering new things each time. They loved seeing the "baby" dinosaurs and touching different fossils. Annabelle liked standing on the stool to watch a guy working in the back. Joseph had fun finding the dinosaurs that are in Power Rangers. I was even able to get a little video of him saying the dinosaur names like the Power Rangers do, plus a bit of them just looking at things. 

It was a fun learning activity and way to spend time together as a family, which are both things we are trying to incorporate more into our life.

Preschool

A couple weeks ago, I started a preschool for Joseph. He's had two little friends coming and a third will start coming this week. It's been really fun to have and I like planning little lessons and activities. I have a theme for each week based on a book that I have called "Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready." This week's theme is "Up and Down" and we will be reading books about ladders, playing chutes and ladders, and (hopefully) playing on the playground outside.

Tomorrow, I am starting a little playgroup for the 1-year-olds in our ward. The activities will be based on themes from the same book. For this group, the week's theme is "Homes." I built a little fort out of a block/bookshelf type thing that we got from Walmart and the kids are going to play in it.

It's really fun for me to have these things to focus on and plan, especially since I'm not going to school myself.