During my break I had the God given opportunity to take a preschool class (even though that's not what my certification is in). That class totally has changed my view of teaching Ryan here at home. It gave me tons of resources and ideas to use this coming year. Along with that I have been doing some major research on "Tot school" for Scott. Trying to teach Ryan with a 2 year old throwing crayons across the room has been a challenge and disheartening at times. I knew something needed to change and I didn't want to miss valuable time with Scott while I was pre-schooling Ryan. After thinking, researching, planning, and lots of learning I am ready to go for the summer.
My reasoning for doing school in the summer is to keep the kids active, mentally engaged in something fun, and have new and exciting experiences for the three of us together. It really isn't for academic purposes although that will be a side benefit.
I am doing school with the kiddos 3 days out of the week. More than that is just too much. For those 3 days we will have a fun theme that the boys have an interest in already. This past weeks theme was camping. We had a blast! All of the phonics games, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, songs, number sense activities, science etc. all revolved around camping. Here are some pictures from our week!
Here are Scott's tot trays I set up for the week. The goal is for the trays to be fun and engaging for him. NOT forced or pushed. This has been different for me since I am use to teaching school aged children. Today, when we were doing these Scott totally peaced out and said, "Bye bye, I'm going to work. I'll be back later." My initial reaction was to say, "Come here! We aren't done! - But instead I just said, "Ok, see you later!" and he came back in a few minutes. He can graze through the trays that he's interested in and I can initiate meaningful and educational conversations with him through the manipulatives.
Smore phonics with Ryan. Matching the picture to the beginning letter sound.
Fine motor skills with mini marshmallows
Handprint camp fire
Smores ofcourse!
Yum!
Mosquito tracing!
Print awareness - Cheerio puzzle
Beans to pour into different containers and explore. They soooo didn't stay in the tray!
Tangram fun! Ryan loves these!
Positional word coloring with tents.
Camp fire snack with grapes, pretzels, and cheese! They liked this so much we did it again the next day!
Then we had to set our tent up!
And of course we needed a camp fire with marshmallows to roast!
Yum!
They loved pretending that they were real! They also pretended to go fishing with their fishing rods and kill a deer with their guns for dinner!
This was a beautiful moment. They both played with Legos for like 30 minutes while I was prepping something. So rare!
Ran out of time and didn't get to this activity. Was going to have them hop from one letter to the next while music was on and then stop the music and have them freeze and tell me what letter they are on. (Scott can tell me the color, not the letter yet).
This is Scott's book corner. It has only tot books in it.
This is our calendar area. I did have a table there, but got rid of it and put the bean bag there instead so they can reach everything on the wall. I love it! The room has a built in ledge which I always thought was weird, but now it serves as a perfect pre-school book shelf!
I definitely still have a lot to learn about how to teach a 4 year old and a toddler and things weren't always smooth and as I had planned (there were some tears along the way that weren't caught on camera!), but we all had a fun 3 days learning about camping! Next theme is Dinosaurs!
