Preschool

Holden loves school.
It makes me laugh when he tries to make Guy play rug time with him. I laugh because I did the same thing to my siblings, and they loved it (pure sarcasm here...).

Ive tried jumping on this love of school bug Holden has before, and honestly felt totally lost. Even with great material, print outs, and lesson plans I still felt a little over whelmed and lost.

Then we found ABC Mouse.

I just had to pry Holden off it.

He loves it.
Not only is the program age friendly (it goes from toddler time - kindergarten) but its has a track that your child activities are set on. You have the option to just do what ever activity you want, coloring, numbers, letters, songs, puzzles, etc. I personally like the track. I know Holden would do the same activity over and over if he could.

What is great about the activities is they are all quick. With a very active moving little boy, getting him to sit still was something I was very worried about. Very worried...... Thankfully the activities are great for small time periods, but still are full of great lessons. The added bonus to quick lessons, I can sit with Holden while he "plays". I can sit and keep and eye on him while finishing a cup of coffee, or do my own quiet time. I can see this working well even after Scarlet gets here.

I think this is great for every kid, even if they are in a preschool class. Its hard for one teacher to give every kid their full attention, so this really helps. Plus you can try it for a free month! Really, click here and get a free month to try it out. Its a great way to really get into the program and see if it works for you.

I'm so excited to see how Holden takes to the program, and excited to have some direction in helping him be ready for kindergarten.

Now excuse me while I cry thinking about my kid going to kindergarten.

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A is for Apple

Yesterday I shared about this nutty adventure I was starting with our Baby Man. Sunday night I laid in bed wide awake for hours, almost like I was the one starting school! Needless to say Baby Man loved it.

Our plan was to have school from 10:00-12:00 while Little Guy was asleep. I chose this time for two reason. I wanted us all to be up, feed, and dress. I knew that with the boys getting up around 6:30-7 most mornings and Little Guy still not sleeping through the night 10 as the earliest that we could even thing about functioning. Plus it gave me a few hours to get a couple cups of coffee in.

The biggest thing I learned yesterday, was this is not going to go the way I planned! For example, I made apple oatmeal for breakfast to keep with our A theme, and Baby Man wanted grits. After spending 20 minutes trying to explain to him that we are having apple oatmeal for school, which he just started at me like I was crazy, I gave him and gave him grits. It was also funny to see what he loved to work on and what he hated. He was over coloring sheets quickly, but scissors and glue he could have played with all day! The biggest surprise for me was the lacing A card. He loved it! I did not expect that. Baby Man laced that card in so many different ways, and wanted to show Mr Pate when he got home from work!

Yesterday was a lot of fun. Baby Man was really great for the rest of the day, listened well, and wanted to "do scoool" last night. I'm going to have to find some more creative things to do with him, he would keep going all day if I let him.

Here is the "schedule" we are using:

 6:30-7 wake

8 breakfast

8:30-10 get dress, a little tv time
(We watch Super Why, Dinosaur Train, all the leap frog shows and Mighty Machines)

 10-11 Letter

(Coloring pages, puzzles, lacing card, numbers ect. When Baby Man gets bored we move on)

11 Snack

11:15-12 Verse

(Currently we are working through creation. There is a coloring sheet to work on, we also go over his memory verse for the week)

12 Lunch

12:30-1 Room Time

(Baby Man plays in his room by himself.)

1-3:30 or 4 Nap

4-5:30 Movie

(Us Pates don't wake up well, we all need a little time to get going)

6ish- Dinner

7- Bath time with Mr Pate.

8- Bed time.

(At bed time we have been reading Baby Man the Creation story and going over his verse with him. We have multiple children bibles so we read a different one a night! Plus I grabbed a cute Creation board book from the dollar store.)

This is just an example of how the day tends to go with Baby Man. It doesn't mean it always goes like this, for example its 9 am right now and Little Guy is crying like hes ready to go to bed. Flexibility is a key. If your child isn't interested in something, stop, move on to the next thing, and try that activity later. Also, its not going to be perfect. For example, I was teaching Baby Man how to cut. I thought we would just cut a few cuts into a sheet of paper and move on. Nope. Baby Man cut that paper into as many pieces as he could, so I grabbed a paper plate, drew a quick apple on it, and we glued the pieces on to the plate. Was that part of the plan for yesterday, well no not at all. Baby Man loved it, and he learned something. That's the whole point of teaching, his learning no matter how that looks. 

Now I'm off to drink another cup of coffee and get Pate Preschool up and running. Speaking of coffee check out my guest post today over at Mrs Bonn Bonn about one of my favorite things.... Coffee!

Pate Preschool

The Pate Preschool officially opened today, and off to a great start! For months now the Hubby and I have been chatting about Baby Man. See Baby Man is not a bad kid, not by a long shoot, we both could see a lot of restlessness in him lately. Not in a physical kind of way, but a lack of being challenged mentally.  We talked a lot of wanting to place in him some sort of preschool, but being an one car family preschool wasn't going to work for us.

Over the past few weeks I have been throwing this idea around in my head of doing some sort of preschool at home with Baby Man. I was totally overwhelmed even thinking about this. Where in the world would I start? Do I even want to home school? Is is worth it? He is only 2 and half, is it even time?

A funny thing started happening. Home school starting smacking me in the face. Last week four mommies I know started homeschooling their kiddos, two of the families have little ones that are homeschooling too. That's when I started thinking that maybe I could actually do this. Maybe. Scrolling through blogs upon blogs for ideas and help, I stumbled across so many different things. Some where very helpful, some where life changing, and some where weird & hilarious not my thing.
Finally after hours of reading, two cups of coffee, and my eyes crossing, I found it. The perfect plan for us.

 It is an amazing curriculum created by a home school mom with an degree in early childhood education. There are printables, lesson planning print outs, step by steps, how to's, everything you need to feel confidante and succeed.   My favorite thing is that she focuses more on guided play learning , then "school" for these little ones. As I was clicking around her site I found another great "curriculum". Raising Rock Stars, is a curriculum to teach your children the bible.

Philippians 2:15

so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.

Matthew 7:34

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Just like for Tot School there are step by step ideas, printables, and memory verses. My favorite part, is the memory verses line up with the letter of the week in the Tot School curriculum.  Another great thing about the Raising Rock Stars is she suggest you start your week on Sunday nights with bible reading with Daddy! I don't know about you but the Hubby works a lot so any time we can all do something together like this I'm all in.

Needless to say, I was excited to start. I spent Sunday afternoon printing off the first week's lessons: coloring sheets, cutting sheets, lacing cards, puzzles, all A themed, and the coloring sheets for the story of Creating. Laminating some of the printables. (By the way I might have developed and unhealthy attachment to the laminating machine. It rocks my world. ) After a few hours of printing, cutting, organizing, Pate Preschool was finally set up. I really love my little preschool corner. I can't really say its a whole room but I love it.

I found a lot of things at the dollar store, including the posters. They had so many different types of "educational" posters. Everything from word tenses, colors, shapes, and phonics. I was impressed, plus its two posters for a dollar. Yes please. We also used a lot of chalk board paint and old formula cans for storage which actually work great! Needless to say our preschool nook didn't cost us much. I already had the chalk board paint (which runs around $15 at a home improvement store) the shelf, and the storage boxes (all from Ikea: the boxes where five for $2 and the shelf was $30 with hanging studs for the walls). All the little things I bought for Baby Man at the dollar store totaled right about $20. The most expensive thing I bought was the laminating paper which runs around $40. Total we spent about $60 for everything. By no means do you need to do it this way. The way I am wired I need assigned spaces. It helps me (and I think Baby Man) get in to a school mind set, but more about that tomorrow. I'll be posting about day one of Pate Preschool.