Why We Don't Call it School

As I mentioned before, Nolan is doing preschool with me at home.  On the second day of school, he completed an "About Me" project.  He not only asked me to color his twin, but we measured him and weighed him.  I also filled out another sheet where he got to tell me a little bit about himself and what his interests are as a four year old.  We had a lot of fun doing it together. 

BUT... I accidentally asked him about his school paper (oops, I said the word school), and this is the look that he gave me...

Yes, I need to remember to stay silent when it comes to actually calling it "school".  

But when we're just playing together he loves to cut and paste and add letters to his alphabet tree.  We make up songs about the sounds that the letters make and this week we are reading "Mike Milligan and the Steam Shovel" and doing some fun things that go along with that story.

And this boy loves to help me make laundry soap, so we even did that this week.  He counts how many bars of soap we use and then helps me remember to add equal amounts of borax and baking soda to our mixture.  You can learn from anything, right?

'Just don't call it "learning" while you're doing it!!  LOL

This Boy...

Nolan's mind of his own + Nolan in preschool at home with me = Some Crazy Times!!

Seriously, we are having so much fun working through some great preschool activities when this little man feels like doing what I ask him to do.  If he thinks he wants to do something else though, then I have to quickly be flexible and switch gears...and remember that there's more than one way to learn!!  And he's doing a super job learning - he knows all of the shapes and colors and even all the numbers. Now we're just working on the letters of the alphabet and saying them in order.  (He can identify them when he sees them in a book or something, he just doesn't remember how to say them from memory).

This past week the girls were working on Creation Books and Nolan wanted to work on one too.   I quickly grabbed more supplies and laid it all out in front of him.  Morgan went over to help him get started and he suddenly "turned" on her and walked away.  He simply said, "I tired of that now".  Then he just took all of the stickers away from the girls and made up his own Sticker Book instead.  

He did end up coming back later in the day and making Day 1, with the help of his sisters.

 Ironically, he had just learned about God making night and day the previous week in Sunday School so he was able to tell me all about it as he glued all of his pieces together.  

Another day I read the book "A Visitor for Bear" to him.  He loved the book and had me read it several times over and over while he laughed and copied the voices of the characters.

Since I knew he enjoyed the book so much, I printed off and made up puppets using a mouse and two bears.  One of the bears was happy and the other bear was grouchy.  (Just like the characters in the book).  I was planning a great puppet show together and excitedly showed him my creations.  Boy was I surprised when he said that he didn't like them because these paper cut outs didn't look anything like the ones in the book.  (See picture above...)  He's so observant and wanted them to look exactly the same!!  LOL  Morgan and I just picked up the puppets and started in on our own puppet show as I read the book.  That's all it took to convince him and pretty soon he was asking to have the puppets too so he could act out the book, even copying the voices.

We ended up having a lot of fun with it and he was able to describe the book to Noel later on that afternoon, even showing him the puppets and telling him why each bear looked either happy or grouchy.   

 Just wait until next week when I show him the cowboys I made for him...  LOL