Toompas Preschool

I have 100% absolutely nothing interesting to blog about so I shall bore you with my monotonous life.

I give you:
"Homeschool; Toompas Style"

"T is for tea time, my favorite part of the day."

Since the holidays I have had a terrible time not just getting into our routine (or even some form of it) I can't even remember all we used to do!!

I finally got myself organized and set the kids to work on some school.

Lucy is getting pretty far behind with her language skills. She has a speech evaluation coming up some time here and then hopefully they will start some speech therapy. For now I have been letting her watch Baby Einstein (she just loves to repeat them!) and when I have the opportunity to play with her, chock it full of "play/learning"

"Tigers! Raaaaaaaaw!"

I start my day the same way.
I collect the laundry from the house.
start laundry, bring dryer clothes to the table to be folded.
Make breakfast for the girls and Joe.
Make and chug tea.
Make a second cup to sip.
check my e-mail and facebook while the kids eat.

After that there is a variation to the day. Sometimes we have emergency bath time - like if someone wet the bed or if breakfast ended up in their ears. These are the kind of things one cannot anticipate.

Usually the kids get toys down from the toy shelf and play a bit. Here they are seen in their natural habitat with the animal basket and the doll house furniture.

I fold the laundry and put it away.
We start chores.
Joe feeds the cat (Ninja has been awol for almost a month now!)
The kids clean their rooms.
I do the dishes and take out the garbage.
Iris goes down for nap #1 at 9:30 and Lucy follows at 10:00AM.

As soon as the girls are down we start book work.
First we do bible. I have turned into my mother and force my children to read the dreaded 360 day bible. The bane of my 13 year old self. Why couldn't I just read the bible for 30 minutes!? WHY!? It was soooo boring. Kudos to my mother who lived through me being a teenager. I don't know how she did it, but I would like to think I have quite a few scripture floating around in the ol' noggin because of her... sooo... errr....Thanks Mom.

After that we do cutting or play dough. It's fun and they have no idea they are strengthening their hands for writing. Sam, who has appalling handwriting hates play dough and cutting and couldn't cut a straight line if his life depended on it. Joe loves the cutting book we have (Kumon brand) and pretends "real life". Like his turtle that he is cutting out is trying to escape from the dreaded paper monster.

Math is next. Joe is loving math. I admit that I was SHOCKED at how well he did with his math paper. He was quick and understood how to do it really well and he was sooo proud of himself. And I was sooo proud of him for being excited about it!

Molly makes patterns for math. Recognizing color patterns and design patterns. Go Molly. She loves to sing, 'Pattern power!" from team Umi Zoomi.

Joe works on his reading words from Kindergarten.
They are working on site words;
With
Look
See
They
You

And Joe is reading the BOB books.

Molly starts on her tracing. Perfect work for pre-writing.

She knows all of her letters, what they say, all of her colors, and about 6 shapes. She will start Kindergarten at the primary school in Sep. 2013 and by then she will definitely be reading. Seems we have another smarty pants on our hands. I love sending the kids to school with this store of knowledge. It just makes me feel giddy!

We have lunch and I get Lucy up. The girls take baths then Molly crawls into bed for nap time. Iris wakes up around 1  and she gets a bath and then plays toys while I cruise pintrest/plan scout meetings/facebook/read blogs. Joe has quiet time in his room where he is usually coloring, playing legos or dressing up as a jedi... or all of the above.

We have one last bout of school randomly. The kids do their reading book with either Jerry or me, depending on who's home and who has patience enough. Usually Jerry.

That's my school day so far. Pretty fun and relaxed. I mix it up a lot. stamps, coloring pages, poems, songs, felt board... etc. Sometimes we spend the whole day cooking or some days we cuddle on the couch and watch endless episodes of my little pony or strawberry shortcake. Heck, sometimes we have a tea party completely dressed up and they can practice their manners. The last few weeks we haven't been doing much of anything... or just... anything.

I love learning through play. I have only recently introduced the kids to "book work" (as they call it) which is mostly pencil holding, following instruction type of things. I am all about montessori, learn through experience. yada yada yada. Yoda. (had to) I am hoping sometime soon it'll be warm enough to get outside more often. I just love our property in the spring!!!

I had to include this funny picture. It's called, "Proverbs Flash Cards". I found them on a classical education homeschool website and I laughed and laughed. I may even have it printed off as a canvas for our school room.

Or my favorite:

And with that I bid you adieu.