What We've Been Learning

Remember when I said I'm trying out homeschooling this year but we'll see what I actually end up doing since its just preschool?  Well, we've been taking it easy for the past 3 months :)  Not that the kids aren't learning, because they are always learning.  But as informal as I'm doing things, we've been even more informal lately.  So here is some proof that the kids are learning even if I'm being lazy.

Making fossils

Magnification experiments 

Adeline has been working on her art skills.  This is Ursula from the Little Mermaid.

Building a "real" castle with cousins out of the bricks Rob got for his outdoor oven.

Who needs blocks when you can build a tower with real bricks?

Bobby learning about money with his new piggy bank.

I was making something with magnets one day and the kids wanted to play with them so they build magnet cities.

More magnet exploration.

Baking cakes with Adeline's cake making set she got for Christmas.  Adeline was so proud of herself because she made the batter all by herself.  From my experience, cooking is the easiest way to teach fractions!

Eating and decorating their cakes.

A bowl of spaghetti noodles became an impromptu alphabet lesson.

We got the kids some kinetic sand for Christmas and this stuff is amazing (look it up on youtube.  Its really that cool).  The kids love to play with it.  Rob and I love to play with it.  Sensory play for the whole family!

And to make it even more educational, we made patterns on snakes one day.

Rob is building a backyard oven so the kids are observing a lot of new things.  They watched the process of laying a concrete base.

Grandpa Bob and Grandma Sherie got chickens so the kids have been able to see them up close and it didn't even phase them when we ate one a couple weeks ago :)

The base for the oven.  Adeline loved to help Rob by bringing him bricks when he needed them.

They also learned a few things that I didn't catch on camera.  Rob helped Bobby make some alphabet flashcards and he also helped Adeline make a science notebook.  Adeline has a collection of "studying books" that we get from the library and some that we own.  She loves Rob's college biology text book and pretends to study from it all the time.  She also went through a phase where she carried around a big nature book that she got from the library in her backpack at all times!  She even slept with that book.  I pulled out a few of my old teaching worksheets (from when I taught 1st grade) and she can sound out and write simple words (cat, pin, hot, log, etc.) but she loses interest in the pages pretty quickly so I don't push it.  We also set up a new calendar (like the ones they use in school) that we got at the dollar store.  Most mornings during breakfast we talk about what the date is and how to read a calendar.  We also got a clock and Bobby is super interested in it.  He loves to move the hands and ask me what time it is.  So we're learning some basic time telling skills too.  Bobby also got a lot of building toys for Christmas that he has been playing with.

Sometimes I worry that my kids aren't learning as much as they would in a real preschool, but most of the time I don't really care.  I like that we can wake up whenever we want and decide to do whatever we want each day.  We've hardly left the house at all since Christmas, partly because the kids have been sick, and partly because they really just want to stay home all day and play with their new toys.  And I really believe that kids learn a ton from "just" playing, so most days I'm happy with what they're learning and where we're at.