Monday, August 25, 2014

Entertaining The Littles

We started back to school on August 4th.  We haven’t done school every day, but we’re slowly easing back into our routine.  I opted to start only Alex, saving Max’s MFW K to begin after Labor Day.

But Max and Jensyn need to keep busy while I’m working with Alex.  They’re not interested in staying in a bedroom with busy boxes this year.  If I don’t find ways to keep their minds and hands busy, then Max is jumping off of chairs, interrupting us with silly questions, and pestering us all.  Jensyn is sitting my lap coloring on my teacher’s guide with a purple glue stick.  (True story, sadly.)

Max’s favorite so far has been to spend up to 30 minutes playing with our pattern blocks.  We have the Melissa and Doug pattern block set, and we have a few pattern block workbooks as well.  The one pictured below is my favorite for a 5 year old to get started working with shapes and spatial relations.  It’s hard enough to make Max think, yet easy enough for him to do independently.

Here’s the snowman he made last week.  He had to stop and think hard in order to fill in some of these spots, but in the end, he did a great job.  He was SUPER proud of his end results!

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busy thinking about how to complete the Melissa & Doug pattern blocks puzzles

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I realized recently that Jensyn LOVES tracing letters, and she loves using our ‘dot magnets’.  I printed a princess preschool pack for her and she’s stayed busy with markers, magnets, and tracing.  She loves to use the magnets to make hearts on the cookie sheet.

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Max is also working on Rod & Staff preschool workbook pages. 
Here, he’s doing a color by number page. 
He took this very seriously, and he sat and worked on it for almost 45 minutes!
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Once we begin MFW K in September, both Max & Jensyn will have new things to keep them busy, but we’ve enjoyed these simple ways to keep their minds and hands busy while we get back into the swing of things around here!

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