Preschool Week 3

I'm starting to realize that in the world of homeschooling, days and weeks must be flexible. There's rarely such a thing as a 'normal' day or week. Thankfully I scheduled one  day a week as a 'free' day, and we've been using that day to either catch up or to just relax and recover from a busy week.

 This week we listened to lots of Shel Silverstein poems and Dr. Seuss stories, both from books and on CDs in the car. Because of all the nonsense the boys have been hearing, they've been making up some really silly poems of their own. The only one I remembered to write down was one of Ben's:

Napkin a day

Napkin a day

Where are you,

Napkin a day?

Practicing reading with Bob books. We've been keeping our lessons to only 5 or 10 minutes long. After ten minutes he starts to get frustrated and antsy and he's simply done. But the more we do, the more excited he is the next time to read his Bob books. 

The boys learned to clean their bathroom. Ben is on mirror duty here. My goal is one day to be able to say "Hey boys, go clean your bathroom" and they go off and do it. Talk about a dream come true.

Mark and I had to go to the sheriff's office to get our fingerprints scanned as part of our foster care application. Before our appointment, we talked to the kids about fingerprints: what they looked like and how every person has a unique print. Then the boys and I made pictures with our fingerprints using our jumbo stamp pads. None of this was planned, by the way - I just made it up as we went along. Then it was time to go to the sheriff's office and the boys watched the big computer screen as we got our prints scanned. Community field trip: check.

Free play: brothers drawing pictures for each other and coloring them. Earlier in the day Tommy asked me to draw him a picture of a lion so he could color it. Then he got the idea to draw pictures for Ben so he could color them. 

Free play: The boys built this "machine" out of bits of things they found around the yard. It's hard to tell from the picture, but there's a sprinkler attached to a hose inside the overturned black bucket. There are ropes winding inside and  around all the different objects. I can't remember the purpose of this machine, but it sounded very complex from their explanation. 

Our field trip of the week: the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Here they're in the aviary watching the indoor 'sandy shore'.

Other things not pictured:
- Lunch picnic in our backyard on the grass. Laid on a blanket reading more Falling Up.

- Tommy was really into writing this week. He wrote a card for Mark's birthday (which isn't for another two months) and wrote signs for around the house. The funny thing about young children's writing is that they have no concept of spaces between words, so his sentences all run together. Must remember to work on that. :)

- We finally finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle and have moved on to James and the Giant Peach. I've been excited to read this with the boys because it was one of my favorite books as a child and was my 'gateway' book into the world of Roald Dahl.