Pre-School Craziness

I don't know how it is where you live, but here people get a little crazy about pre-school. I remember going to someone's house for dinner when the boys were about one and a half and getting on the discussion of preschool. I hadn't thought much about it at the time. The hostess told me I was a moron and that I should already have them on a waiting list if I really loved them, which I clearly didn't. I'm paraphrasing only slightly. I also found out that night that some people pay almost as much for a month at one of the really good pre-schools in our area as what I paid for a semester in college.

I've been trying not to freak out, I mean, I never went to preschool. And neither did Zach, which is a better comparison, because I'm not really doing a whole lot with my degree right now, except pretending to be cooler than I am.

So, I'm trying to spend the time creating an educational environment, but, I'm not great at this kinda thing without some kind of outside force that I can let down to motivate me. Because I'm the kind of person who spends an hour or so working on a new blog banner, just to post it, chicken out, because I used an image with a watermark on it that I bypassed, and then spend another half hour coming up with another, though less cool one. This is all during the time that I was planning on using to prepare some kind of preschool activity. Luckily, I found one in the process. But what are the chances of that happening every time?

Anyway, here is Attempt #1 at some kind of pre-schooly thing.

We glued some of the fallen leaves onto the tree trunk and I talked to the boys about autumn and seasons a little bit.

Ben and Sam were actually pretty interested for about ten minutes. They really enjoyed using the glue, which they'd never used before. But of course, I only had one, and that caused a few problems. But it actually went pretty well, I'd say.

I hear that the part that really matters with kids at this age is the process, not the completed work. Which is great for us. Because they tore all the leaves off the paper once they were dry. So, no pictures of completed works. Sorry.

Glues sticks and leaves, classic childhood

So, hopefully, somehow my darling children won't be scarred by not being in some kind of pre-school we can't afford or for not having a more put-together type mom. But, if all else fails, at least we'll have these beautiful projects. Oh, wait. Ben tore them up when he was done.

Huh.

Happy May Day!

...after the fact, of course.

In honor of May Day it rained. And so, thought I, what better day to make that rain stick that I've had planned for a while now? None, was my answer.

I've been trying to do more hands on activities with the boys. They keep themselves entertained wonderfully, but often the activities they choose are less than desirable. Also, I'm trying to incorporated these activities because I am planning on doing a at-home, coopt type pre-school thing after the summer. Something along the lines of a Montessori pre-school, but we won't have to take out a loan to do it. Before I offend someone, I'd like to state that I have nothing against sending your kids to preschool. At all. I think it's spiffy if you can afford to do it. But, as I may have mentioned before, things are a little pricey here. And I've always thought, with most things in life you don't need to invest a lot of money if you are willing to invest your time. And I'm applying this to the boys. Hopefully it will pan out. Also, I'm definitely open to any ideas anyone has about more play/learning projects for us, so let me know if you've got them.

And we move on.

I read about making your own rain sticks out of mailing tubes one day and the next I found a badmitton birdie tube out in the recycling (right on the top, by the way, I wasn't rooting around in there or anything) (Not that I'm not capable of it).

What we started out with

My original plan was to help the boys to use the hammer. I tried this with Ben. Then I realized that I had been on crack and went and found the little mallet in the boy's toy stash. Success reigned and eyeballs stayed in sockets.

I had marked several spots on the tube for the nails, but we got pretty liberal with our placing of the nails. I got the nail started with the hammer and then the boys would finish up with the mallet.

Ben, whistling "If I had a hammer..."

Sam hammering in the nails.

Wow. Look at that cute little body.

After we got all the nails in Sam poured in some little white beans. It didn't quite make the sound I wanted, so I dumped those into a bowl and got some bigger navy beans. Ben poured those in.

We ended up dumping them out and pouring them back in several times with a mixture of big and small beans. Then I sealed up the ends and Sam and I wrapped up the tube with electrical tape to keep the nails from slipping out in case of overuse.

Ben taking his turn pouring in the beans.

Then we moved on to playing with the rain stick, playing around with the beans and pouring them in and out of bowls. I think Dr. Montessori would be fairly pleased.

And don't worry, that one bean that Ben stuck up his nose came out without too much trouble. (**Mental Note** - Use the bigger beans for these projects).