Adventures in Preschool: DInosaurs

For a long while now, I've been wanting to start doing a preschool type deal with Jack. He is at such an impressionable age and he's so smart and picks up things so quickly. I've been kicking myself that I haven't taken advantage of his curiosity sooner. 

I wanted to start preschool with him, not only to teach him things, but to also provide a little more structure to our day. Less tv time is better, but it's sometimes hard to know how to entertain this bundle of energy all day long.

I decided to take a cue from Jack, and thought that I would teach him about things that he is interested in, so that he would have positive associations with "school time". Together we picked dinosaurs as our first unit.

We did lots of fun things including making a dino coloring book, making a fossil out of plaster of paris, gluing "dino bones" (dried noodles) to a dino skeleton, breaking open dinosaur eggs, digging for dinosaurs in the sand, playing with stick puppets, tracing the letter "D" with pudding, sorting dinosaurs, learning dinosaur names, reading dinosaur books from the library, practicing dinosaur matching and prewriting practice, dinosaur cutting practice and sewing practice, learning dinosaur related vocabulary, and watching tons and tons of dinosaur shows on netflix.

Basically, we lived and breathed dinosaurs for those two weeks. It was a lot of fun. Jack really surprised me with his ability to complete complicated assignments, and I was SHOCKED that Jack actually would prefer to watch a documentary about dinosaurs over watching a dinosaur cartoon. He calls them his "real, big dinos".

I've had so much fun doing this with Jack. We had to put things on hold for a little while because of graduation and the move, but now that we are all settled in I'm revving up to get started on our next unit--- transportation. We already took a field trip to the Hill Air Force Base to look at the planes. Posts on that to come...

Crawling

Charlie has been attempting to crawl for a while now... He's really good at going up on his hands and knees, but he hasn't quite figured out how to go forward. Usually he just goes up in a plank position and either does mountain climbers or slides backwards. This has gotten him into some serious predicaments.

When I'm old and gray and have Alzheimer's,  these are the little things that I don't want to forget -- the way that Charlie tried to crawl, or the way he kicks his legs and breathes really fast when he gets excited. This is the stuff that makes life worth living.

Easter

We joined our apartment complex for their annual donut breakfast and Easter egg hunt. Jack had a lot of fun!

Afterward, we tried to go apartment hunting in Indy. Charlie got tired and fell asleep. We ate lunch at Taco Bell and Jack ate THREE tacos and when we got in the car he asked if we could "Do taco bell some more?". 

That night, we had a bon fire dinner with our friends at Yellowood State Forest and we played at the park there. Needless to say, we had a really busy day!

The next morning was Easter morning. We laid out a trail of candy to Jack and Charlie's baskets, and hid some eggs around the apartment too. Jack was excited but confused. All he wanted to do was eat the chocolate. 

I made matching vests and ties for the boys, but failed to get a picture of them together because we had such a busy day. Oh well. Next year right?

We ate Easter dinner at our friend's house. I was in charge of the potatoes and a dessert. I tried a new recipe for the potatoes and they never cooked. It was awful. Luckily, I nailed it with my lemon blueberry angel food cake.

Life Lately

Even though it was almost Easter, we got a really, really big snow storm... so we played and then had some warm up cuddle time.

Charlie has been LOVING to sing in church

We tried potty training for two weeks and it was a big fat miserable failure. It was probably the worst two weeks I've ever had as a parent. Not kidding. 

These brothers love each other...

Took advantage of Taco Bell's Happy hour more than once...

We had a campfire with our friends and played at the Yellowood State Park

I took a drawing class... I did this one during nap time. 

We've enjoyed some time at different parks around town...

I started doing at home preschool with Jack Attack. 

For family home evening one night, we took a walk to the bus station. We spontaneously decided to ride the bus to campus, got off at a frozen yogurt shop, walked around campus, and then rode the bus back home again. It was such a fun evening; one I will remember forever. 

We started packing up our apartment in preparation for our move!

I made a skirt....

Charlie is attempting to crawl... Mostly just planking and sliding backwards right now.

We had Ethan and Benson come over and play! We've been trying to spend a lot of time with our Bloomington friends because our time here is coming to an end.

It finally turned into spring time so we've been playing outside and just loving life.