Monday, September 17, 2012

Mommy Preschool

When Mason and Hailey leave for school that's when "Mommy Preschool" starts. All our kids have schedules/lists that they should accomplish daily. 
So Lily and Ducati will hurry and start on their morning list. Making their bed, brushing their hair and teeth, getting dress, and meet me at the table for some school work. 

Every day we'll have story time. Which is pretty simple since we do weekly library visits. Afterwards I'll give the girls a worksheet. Today is was a word search. 
 When I said a word, such as Lily, she had to find it and circle it on her paper. Lily aced her's.
 Ducati on the other hand...just circled everything and drew a few doodles on her paper.
 I thought this would be easy since their so close in age. NOT THE CASE! I'm finding it alittle difficult to teach Lily when Ducati just wants to either color or eat her paper. Thankfully we only do 1 worksheet.
 Each word on this page is color coded. I read an article that stated when you just try to memorize a word it takes alot longer to remember. However if you add an action to it ( like the coloring) or an association to it (the word bed is pink) it helps your brain remember a lot faster. And for Lily it really works for her. She was able to remember all 8 new words. I think she's up to around 14. Not bad for 2 weeks.
 After that we'll play a game to help with their skills of taking turns, patience, following instructions, and problem solving. Today I made this flashcard game using the words from the worksheet. It's so fun to watch these 2 girls. Lily will memorize a word and just doesn't care to learn the phonics of it. And Ducati; she loves to hear the sounds of each letter. C-A-T is all she kept saying. I haven't figured this one out yet but oh well....they're learning :-)
 She was really proud of herself for finding the first match. And then there's my playful Cati putting the cards on her eyes.

Afterwards we'll have a snack and start our afternoon chores. Take a bath, put clothes in drawers, they have to put their dirty clothes into the washer which is fun for me to watch since we have a top load washer. Afterwards we'll do a craft and practice Lily's name in sign language. She thinks it's the coolest thing that she's learning to spell her name with her fingers. After lunch is nap; which means I get a chance to clean up, make Mason and Hailey their after school snack, and prepare for when they wake up. And afterwards it's pretty low key-they either want to play outside some more, build something with their legos, chase Pinkie, color a picture for Mike, or read more books.

I've enjoyed this special time with my littlest girls. Mike and I really want our girls to grasp onto the love of learning and have a passion for reading. So starting early is always the best.

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