Operation: Keep Us Busy

Ok, so this summer has been grand because we’ve had no real schedule, nothing major going on, do whatever we want kinda days.  But that’s wearing on me now.  It was nice for awhile, but I tend to like to be more scheduled.  Come fall, besides having a new baby and figuring all that out, we are very scheduled.  Our weeks usually go like this:

Monday – MDO

Tuesday – Play date

Wednesday – Bible Study

Thursday – MDO

Friday - (open) sometimes a Play day

I love that!  This summer has been nothing like that.  While we’ve had fun, yesterday was enough for me.  I’m “one of those moms".  That’s you’re forewarning.  I am in no way opposed to T.V.  I actually love that she will sit there for a good 30 minutes and watch a show.  But after a period of time, I feel guilty about it.  I am in no way saying that stops us, haha.  We definitely watch T.V. everyday, but I really do try to limit it.  She is obsessed with two shows from the Noggin channel right now – Little Bear and Little Bill. 

I had to tell her no Little Bill yesterday because she was deliberately disobeying me.  (As I typed that, in my head I heard Mufasa say to Simba “You deliberately disobeyed me.”  Anybody remember that part?)  Meltdown city!  I didn’t give in, though.  And ohmigosh, she actually had to play with the thousands of toys she owns.  What a tragedy!  And it was in that moment I decided…we need activities.

I got online (and the dork-ish side of me was really excited about this!).  I found this website with all kinds of preschool type lessons and templates.  So yesterday, for about an hour and half I got busy and planned our day.  I had to cut things out, buy her own kid scissors, stick glue, and construction paper.

The lesson combines all kinds of different things.  Shapes, colors, matching, coloring…and she got so excited about it when I told her last night.  I even made us a schedule, and this is what it looks like:

1.  Wake-up:  A prayer to get us started (we had a rocky start yesterday, so this part will help us get started in the right direction)

2.  Get Dressed, Eat breakfast, Brush teeth/make beds

3.  Reading time.  She got to pick 5 books that I would read to her.

4.  Move & Groove/Music Time (our VBS cd and I found YouTube videos of The Hokey Pokey, The Wheels on the Bus, Apples and Bananas, Old McDonald Had a Farm, etc.)

5.  Coloring, learning, and tracing the letter H.  Coloring a house. 

6.  Memorizing a scripture.  Granted this will take a while, but I learned this when I taught 1st grade Sunday school.  Take index cards, and write one word per card that reads out the whole scripture.  We started with Colossians 3:20 (in the NIrV version) “Children, obey your parents in everything.  That pleases the Lord.”  haha perfect starting, don’t you think?  Since she can’t actually read the words, I put numbers on the back of each card.  I hid the cards around the room, she found them, then had to put them in number order.  There were just 11 words in this particular scripture, and lucky for me she can count to 15, so that worked out perfect :)

We’re about to leave for the library because we’re going to check out the book “The Shape of Things” that apparently goes along with this lesson.

When we get back there are a few crafts we’ll be working on that deal with all different shapes. 

For example:  showing how a panda can be made out of circles or hearts. (This is just my Key to look at.  I’ve cut out all the pieces for her to make these.) Matching shapes and gluing – most of these shapes she knows, but I through in on a different activity a hexagon and a parallelogram.  I’m also getting cotton balls for this one she she can have clouds above the balloon.

These are just pieces cut out.  I’ll give it to her not put together, and she’ll have to figure out how to make the shapes look like this house.  And I have so many stickers, so I’m going to get out my flower ones for her to put wherever.  This girl LOVES stickers!

For the house coloring sheet, I just put a little color in each of the spots to have her follow through with the color I chose.  I think she did pretty good – I could tell she got a bit tired of it by the trees.  But I’m so excited about her roof and windows.  She’s usually more of a scribbler.

My excited student!

Diligently coloring!

I’m excited to see how her crafts turn out later!!