Preschool Week 4, day 5

Day 5.
{A small recap over our last month, and where we are now.}
Well it took me about a month to get to this point, but I decided we'll take off Fridays. Given the fact that we haven't really been entirely consistent in a 5 day week anyways, I was encouraged to do this because of a couple reasons. One, it's preschool, it's not high pressure in any way and doesn't need to be 5 days a week, two a chance to have days for free time and field trips is great! I can use the day to do something special like picnics at parks, lunch visits to daddy at work, or special trips to museums, zoo's or visiting a fire station (we are planning that in an upcoming week, although it isn't on a Friday).
I know a few homeschool mom's that do a regular 4 day week with Friday's off. They are reserved for family days. I love this and feel it will be great for us too.
I love how each week I learn things that work and don't work for our schooling methods.
I love watching Oliver teach me new things about himself, about how he learns, what he gets excited about, how he follows direction, listens in story times, and comprehends what we are talking about. I have been able to ask him in depth questions about what we are reading/learning and his responses are blowing me away. His memory is also amazing. I believe he takes after Jonah in this area, I'm not sure. I've never had a 3 year old, so I'm not sure what they are capable of memorizing, but really, I'm so impressed with his memory! I feel that I should encourage this as he gets older and I'm praying for wisdom with what I should do in this area.
I pray over our boys to be able to encourage them in areas they are gifted in, and strengthen and help them in areas they are weak in. I love seeing glimpses of who this wee man is becoming. What an incredible blessing it is to be a mom, but to be able to teach daily is also a new experience that is SO rewarding. I know it's also a responsibility as God instructs us in the Bible, but He leads and provides what you need if you keep relying on Him.
It's been a good month, and I'm excited to look ahead at our calendar and think about all the things we can learn together, things we can make together, holidays and seasons we can prepare for, ways we can grow in character as we look to serve others. There are just so many things to learn. Not even for our little 3 year old. For me too.
Homeschooling. Is it really for the kids after all?
Ah makes me think.
Well, back to our Friday. I took the boys to a park and museum, and we ended our outing having lunch with their daddy at work. Such a great day, with beautiful fall weather! A very good end to our week!
(Also we picked up a flag for Oliver, and he was thrilled. He held it so high and watched it wave in the car the entire drive to see his daddy.)

Preschool Week 2, day 3

On this day, Oliver wanted to wear his Melissa and Doug construction vest down for school time. He had his hammers too at the table! I think he had three or four at one point but was content with the two (one for each hand) while working. We went outside for our weather check and I love this shot of him gleefully looking up into the sky at the sunshine. Oh sweet boy!
He then counted to 11 back inside and proudly found the number 11 on the calendar (that wasn't the date, but anything that encourages counting is great!)

We were working on day 5 of creation, fish and birds. I spent some time the night before going through magazines for pictures of birds and fish. I cut them out, and on a big sheet of construction paper wrote "fish" and "birds" on separate halves with a line drawn down the middle (I added in clouds and water lines later to help Oliver understand what went where). Oliver sorted through the pictures and places them on the right sides. He loves to search for things and complete puzzles, so this was a lot of fun for him.
A side note: I like to save the materials I make, even though they are so simple (um, also I need to get a laminator for these things) so that I can either use again later, or re-purpose. I thought that I could even use these images for sequencing later, having him sort the size from smallest to largest.

After sorting, we did a little painting with watercolors. I drew day five with fishes and birds for him on a piece of paper with the number 5 on it and he painted it in his choice of paint colors. Lots of green going on here!

After paints we worked on color finding. Oliver already knows his colors so I thought a recognition game would be fun for him. While I was searching for fish and bird pictures I cut out pictures that were just pretty or interesting with color in them. I laid these out and gave Oliver one color of felt pom poms (I picked up a bag of assorted colors at the dollar store) and had him find that color in the pictures. It was a good searching game for him to look at details and take his time. Some pictures only had a little bit of that color so he had to focus on it. He liked this game a lot! We ended the day with some more writing practice with his dry erase marker and worksheets. It was a good school day, we seemed to get a lot in!