Learning Time!

School has become part of our daily routine at the Davis house. And we've been busy with it! I've been trying to do a weekly theme, for example this week is transportation. It is a lot of fun and keeps us out of trouble.

Our day starts with morning routine and chores, then "School Time!" as Jman puts it. I created a big posterboard calendar that has velcro add ons (date, names of the days, month, year, birthdays, etc). The boys help me put on the new date every day and it literally takes about 30 seconds from beginning to end. But we do it every day and the repetition is what counts. Next, we look out the window and decide on what the weather is like. I have yet to laminate my weather cards, but I plan on adding those to my velcro add ons for the calendar so we can track what the weather is like. Then, we tell the time. After reading The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle, Jman has been pretty good at telling the time. So, we do it every day as well. Finally, we finish off our school intro with flashcards. We're working on sight words. They are mostly words in our routine (like 'bed', 'brush teeth', 'breakfast', etc) and the theme of our week. So far we've done 'Bird', 'Bug', 'Ocean', 'Me', 'Dinosaur' and 'Transportation'. I just added color words after my mother-in-law asked if Jman knew them. It's amazing how fast he can learn them. (He already knows 'red' and 'blue' and 'me' without hesitation...some of his favorites of course!)

Then comes a little playtime, while I get the books together for reading time. We read and then do our art project. Jman is really good at sitting and listening for books, while BG likes to explore during reading time. When we start our art project is when BG gets interested. They have a little playtime after art, then we do an activity, cooking or a science/math project and then they play some more. If there is any other activity or science project we've missed, we do it after playtime. And by science/math, I mean that they are counting cars, matching pictures, looking at flashcards, etc. During our week of birds, we put an egg in a jar, filled the jar with white vinegar just covering the egg and let it sit for a few days. It was fun to check on it every day and finally to take it out and examine it. The boys enjoyed it a lot. We're usually done by lunch. Our afternoons consist of playing, our bible time, sometimes followed by a coordinating Veggie Tales movie if we have one, quiet time and then dinner.

School time is short, but fun and they are learning. We get in lots of playtime too, so it doesn't get boring to them. There are days where doing school activities just don't sound like fun to the boys. We just play a little and when they get out of their funk (usually after 30 minutes or so) we start it again. Jman is 3, almost 4 and BG is only 19 months old. They are still really young, so I just focus on making this time fun. I want them to enjoy learning throughout their lives!