First day of HomePreschool

This morning began a new chapter in our family. HomePreschool (yes, I'm typing it this way on purpose). I thought about calling it "One-Day-at-a-Time" school... so, we'll see how it goes. But today was pretty good.

We started out talking about preschool at breakfast, where we spent half of our time making elephant noises.




(trying)


"I'll show you, Naomi!"


Give me a moment!


(Naomi's elephant noise face)

We went up stairs and got ready (including shoes, which stumped Gideon). Then we headed down stairs for our first-day-of-HomePreschool pics.





Gideon grabbed Naomi's hand while I was taking their pictures.


Class Picture:


After pictures we started out with circle time where I greeted them and told them how excited I was to begin preschool with them. Gideon asked if I was his teacher. When he found out I was, he started referring to me as "Teacher". I explained how the day was going to go, and then we kicked off our first activity.

SORTING BOXES:

I have put together 4 different sorting games. Each unit can be played in multiple ways. Gideon's first task was to separate his fluff-balls (for lack of a better term) by color.





Naomi's first task was to get the pipe-cleaners into the holes punched in the lid of the Pringles can. She loves this game.







Gideon's next task was to line up the fluff-balls from biggest to smallest.



Naomi's next game was to sort the glass pebbles into the right jar by color. She did an EXCELLENT job at this.



The kids, hard at work... (G is separating out all the blue fluff-balls)





She how she has put all of the pebbles in the right jar all by herself!?

For our transition times, we had "Book Time".


I let them read by themselves while I tidied up from our Sorting Boxes, and then they both picked out books that I read out loud to them.

Then, when our timer (which I was using to help me regulate our schedule) went off, it was off to our next "center": Color Hunt!

The color we are concentrating on this week is Blue. (Gideon's favorite color. And N even calls it "Didden's cudder".)


(during the hunt)



After we picked this up, we headed back down-stairs for book time. While the kids were reading, I fixed them a little snack.

Post snack-time, they had 20 min. of free play.

Our next "center" was supposed to be Alphabet Time. However, I wasn't quite as on top of my game as I wished to be. So we hooked the computer up to the tv to play some alphabet games on www.pbskids.org. Which turned out to be kind of frustrating since some of the games wouldn't load for us. Be we kept moving on. (hey, the kids didn't know that I had loftier goals)

Next we got bundled up to head outside for recess. (they were both so excited) Gideon is really good at riding his scooter. It is really cold here (below freezing), and there is a biting wind. So I bundled up my Florida babies well and we walked all over campus until JR got out of class.







And thus ended our first day of HomePreschool.

So far, it's do-able. I'm learning as I go, and we've got more academic-y things planned during the week. We will do preschool Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Stay tuned for all the fun.