The Perils of Preschool

Mommy, can we do ‘preschool?’

This 4.5 year old of mine wants special time with me, just as his brothers get during their spelling and math lessons…

As any of you know who have been around for any length of time, I’m pretty passionate about not pushing academics in the early years.  I’ve collected articles and resources to share with you on this very subject.  I’ve explained how their brains are simply wired differently than ours…   And how we should be reading to them A LOT!!!  Cultivating play and experiential learning are great ways to make learning concrete!  Character training, especially in the area of obedience, is so very important in these early years. In my series on Including Little One’s, I also talked about the importance of carving out a bit of one-on-one time for your little ones…

All that to say that when they ask for more, I give it to them as long as they keep asking…  Lately, he’s been begging to learn how to write.  And so we’ve started with some gross-motor work.  I love our Cursive First program because of the ideas it’s given me to make handwriting a gross-motor activity.  At this age, many kids {boys especially} simply don’t have the fine motor skills developed yet to handle a lot of pencil work.  So we focus on the mechanics of correct letter formation in order to ingrain the good habits from the get-go before we move onto pencil work.  This will help not only with the quality of his penmanship down the road, but also his ability to write with less muscle fatigue.  win-win!

With the older boys, we made a nameplate and used glue and sand to make sandpaper letter names. Now I’m hooked on using glitter glue!!!!  No stray sand littering the table {and by extension the floor} anymore.

I’m all about less mess when possible!

We love the glitter glue so much that I even used it when adding ‘sandpaper letters’ to his memory verse/coloring booklet that I recently made for him.

This unpredictable little adventurer of mine has evened out wonderfully this year.  We’ve had no more sharpie incidents or lipstick art all over the carpet.

In fact, I really don’t worry about him at all.

And that, folks, was my undoing.

Last week, we made a trip to the Office of Vital Statistics to get a copy of Greta’s birth certificate.  I was pleased to see that there was only one person in front of us and the boys were excited to see some fun earth science type books in the waiting area.  In no time, I was up at the window handing in my form.  Within a few moments the lady behind the counter had printed off a copy of the certificate and handed it over while I proceeded to pay her $20 for this slip of paper.

Since everything was going so well, I proceeded to ask one more question about a typo on another child’s birth certificate.  In that 30 second window when I asked this question, my newest little hand writer discovered a pen on the counter and a fresh piece of paper and began to leave his mark.  FYI, the Office of Vital Statistics will only hit the print button a second time for an additional $20…

BEWARE: Gross-motor handwriting skills might lead to fine-motor application.

Ahhh, the perils of the preschool years.