Preschool Activities.......

  A few weeks ago Josiah had his pre-Kindergarden screening with our church Academy's Kindergarden teacher. It was before Wednesday evenings service so I dropped him off at her classroom and waited nervously upstairs for 20 minutes. I was sure that he'd do well BUT I was curious what she was asking him and definetly what his responses were! LOL! Of course he knew his alphabet...can count to 20... spell and write his name...colors..shapes...knows his address...can say all 50 states.....knows every states flower...ha, ha, got ya! Anyways they finally came up and she let me know that he passed and that he can start in the fall! Wow! My firstborn is going to school???!!! Where did the time go? *Sniffle, sniffle* I am so proud of him and am just as excited as he is......one less kid during the day to cause mischief....Whoops. did I write that?! They are definetly bittersweet tears.....all kidding aside I thought that this summer should include at least a couple days of extra pre-school activities. I have been burdened to make sure they learn their basics from me so this is an adventure to say the least. I am not a teacher so I am just taking advice, gleaning from others and hoping the kids have FUN and that this time of teaching will be profitable. Even if they grasp a bit it will be worth it all. Josiah and Elijah are excited to learn NEW things and love crafting! They are creative and have awesome imaginations! Without further anticipation- here is what we learned this week. Cousin Abigail was over when we did our first activity. We had alot of fun.... I laughed and cried. Laughed VERY hard watching Elijah learning to cut as you will see AND cried as I was yelling for them not to cut their fingers off...glue the papers to the table...color on the table ....I found I NEED more patience! (BTW...The pics are in black and white and vivid color as I am exploring my new camera with its many options!)

Elijah tracing the letter "C".......

Josiah and Abigail doing the same....with a few scribbles here and there!

Elijah glued pictures of "C" items (that I had pre-cut from old magazines) to his construction paper.

Next, I gave the children whole pictures to cut out the individual "C" item themselves.....this part was a blast to watch!

We talked about HOW the scissors work...close......then open!

"Elijah, ONLY one hand is supposed to open and close the scissors!"  

"ELIIIIJAH!" What did you cut? Where is your picture?! LOL!

Josiah is VERY proud of himself.....he already cut the cats feet off! Later the poor cat had no ears...tail or feet! I was in stitches everytime he said..."Look Mama, I did it!"

Abigail cutting her "C"ANDY!

All thats left of the "C"andy.......he he, ha ha!

Josiah's Masterpiece!

Elijah's Masterpiece!

     Later in the week I had my 3 older boys working on their motor skills. I bought an awesome preschool 'Learning How to Cut' book. It starts with cutting straight lines, then zig zag lines followed by wavy lines. I guess I should've done this activity first! Zech was napping during the first pre-school lesson. This time he was awake and I worked on his colors! He favors blue, orange and purple! Obadiah has been working on his reading in case you all were wondering what he does during our activity time!

Learning to CUT.....straight, zig zag and wavy!

Zechariah's COLOR page.....I wrote the color, said the color's name and then hand him that color. I then would take his hand and scribble around that exact color. Confusing?! He enjoyed it though!

Obadiah reading away while blowing bubbles! Maybe he's PREACHING!