How Not to Rush a Toddler

I'm slowly learning the importance of allowing toddlers to explore materials and learning activities at their own pace.  As a highly Type-A personality, this is highly difficult for me!  As I type, Sweet Pea is supposed to be sorting the Teddy Bear Counters by colour.  Some of them are going in the correct bowl, however, a lot of time is spent making the Teddy Bears dance in their boxes and having them visit the bear families of other colours.  However, as I am consistent about praising the ones that go into the correct bowl, she is showing me that she understands colours and the concept of sorting!  I think we can move on to patterning now, but I still need to remember that we'll need to take a long time to play along the way.  I read somewhere that the surest way to kill a toddler's interest in school is to force them to do it like a drill seargeant.  If I allow these children to "work" (and it is work, at this age!) at their own pace, they will continue to amaze me with what they understand, and how much they can teach themselves (and me!).  Have a blessed day!

Jennifer

Star Theme!!

Last week, we completed our Star Theme!  I really enjoyed this unit, it was a fun one!!  Here are some of the highlights!

Our Learning Poster:

Our vocabulary word for the week was "Twinkle", we learned / reviewed the Star Shape, worked on the letter T, the number 20 (or recognizing the number 2 and the number 0) and the poem Star Light, Star Bright.  We sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star every day!

Our Read Alouds:

Our Stars and the Big Dipper (Let's Read and Find Out Science) were especially good!  Goodnight Moon is always a classic, and Berenstain Bears On the Moon seemed to hold their attention really well!!  The Magic School Bus books have so much information in them, I feel like I only skim the surface with them!! 

Amazon Links for the Read Alouds:



Our Craft Projects:

Create your own Star Picture

Glitter Stars (I especially liked Sweet Pea's glitter stars in the above picture!)

We also hauled out a bunch of gems, buttons, stick on jewels, and more and decorated star templates cut out of light blue card stock.  Princess is doing a great job developing her scissors skills!! 

Another "craft" project that we did this week was creating a picture of the Big Dipper by printing out the template at this site and sticking on a star sticker on every dot.  This was a great activity for Honey Bee and she did a pretty good job following directions, once she understood what she needed to do!

Letter T Activities

We created pages for their letter books that have Large Outline Letter Ts glued on construction paper stamped with a Teddy Bear stamp.  We stuck teddy bear stickers on the letter T to remember that T says /t/ /t/ /t/ like Teddy Bear! 

Princess is starting to grasp the concept that words are made up of sounds.  When I first asked her, what sound do we hear at the beginning of the word Tree, she would say "Tree" "Tree" "Tree"!  Now 2 out of 5 times, she gets the right sound, without saying the entire word!! I count this as a major victory!!  Hopefully, the letter activities we're doing should expose the others to the idea that words are made up of sounds pretty early so  it shouldn't be a problem!!

Fun (& Funny) Moments of the Week

Sweet Pea decided one day that we would play library!  She set out all of the Board Books on the floor, and we "signed some books out" and read 1 or 2 of them, but she wouldn't let me read all of them because the needed to go right back to the library!!

Another Sweet Pea moment: we were working on sorting some stickers by shape and when she started to get bored, she told me that she couldn't do anymore because, "Her elbows were tired!"... Ahh... excuses, excuses!!  Needless to say, we moved on to another activity (however excuse didn't hold water when it was time for clean up!!)

A final Sweet Pea memory:  at one time during the day, I caught her singing to herself, "This is the day that the Lord has made for me because I'm special!"  Too right you are, Sweet Pea!!

That was a brief look at our week! Princess, Sweet Pea and I spent some time reviewing circles, squares, and triangles using Lick and Stick shape seals from Roylco (but I just found a great recipe at I Can Teach My Child for make your own lick and stick stickers!)  Hope you enjoyed hearing about our week!!  

Jennifer 

Amazing!! It Worked!!

Well, I'm feeling quite technologically adept!! I got the Amazon Associates book link to post, and it only took me 2 attempts!!  (I didn't read the instructions carefully enough to realize that I needed to post the Amazon link into the HTML code, instead of just onto the blog!)  Following instructions has never been my strong suit!! Here are the links to the rest of the L.M. Montgomery journals!

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume II (1910 - 1921)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume III (1921 - 1929)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume IV (1929- 1935)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume V (1935 - 1942)


There, I must say, I'm quite proud of myself!!  Now that I've figured this out, I'm sure you'll see A LOT more book recommendations on this blog!!    I should be posting a bit later today, after we wrap up our Star Theme week... wow, 3 posts in 1 day!  I'm turning into a blogaholic!! Have a wonderful day!

Jennifer

An Experiment

So, I signed up a long time ago for Amazon Associates, a program where I get a percentage of every item purchased through my link.  I've never actually posted anything anywhere, but I wanted to start, so I figured that I'd use this blog (and my website... coming soon) to start trying to generate some Amazon.ca sales... Anyway, here a a couple of links to the L.M. Montgomery Journals I was talking about in a previous post.

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume I (1889 - 1910)



Okay, as this is just a test, I'll only do one for now... the rest will come in the next post (if this works!!)

Jennifer

Latest Reading List Update

Well, I've been in a bit of a funk in my readings lately.  I had 5 books out of the library for 3 weeks and renewed them for an additional 3 weeks and still only managed to read 3 of them.  The first one I read was called Touchstone by Laurie R. King which was supposed to be a gripping FBI investigation story, but which I could not really get into.  The second book was called Beyond the Blue by Andrea MacPherson.  This is the story of a woman and her 2 daughters living in Scotland during WWI and working in the mills.  It was unimportant, though poignant, fluff.  The last book I read was Return to Harmony by Janette Oke and T. Davis Bunn.  Speaking of fluff... but this was such a delightful 2 hr read about friendship and forgiveness.  I made sure that my best friend got her hands on a copy in our church library, because I thought of her all through this book.  After all this fluffery, I wanted something more meaningful, so I picked up a copy of Volume 2 of L.M. Montgomery's journals that I had on my shelves since the library book sale last year.  These journals cover the period from 1910 - 1921, so tie in nicely to my WWI readings.  During this time of her life Maud got married, had a son, lost her second son during childbirth, had another son, agonized over WWI, recovered from Spanish flu, lost her only dear friend to pneumonia, and suffered through her husband's mental illness.  The strength of this woman!  I like to think that she could have counted me as one of the "race that knows Joseph", but maybe I would have been relegated to the ranks of the uninteresting chuch women her status as minister's wife forced her to visit, much to her annoyance!  I laughed and cried my way through her books and am now off to re-read the Emily series, although these are not my favourite of L.M. Montgomery's works.  I've added Volumes 1, 3, 4, & 5 of her journals to my wish list for future reading.  A remarkable woman writing during a remarkable season of Canada's history.  I just wanted to write and update my own readings, so you'd know that I didn't spend ALL my time reading Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny... which I also love to do!

Jennifer

Snow Theme (from last week)

Well, last week was our Snow theme... but I think for next year, if I'm on the Letter S at the end of March, I'll do a Spring theme.  That would correspond better to the weather, I think!!!  I only had munchkins on Monday, Thursday, and Friday this week and I was supply teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday.  A new little person has started at Precepts Academy.  I'm going to call her Honey Bee.  She is four years old, but because of complications due to an illness when she was born, she's roughly at a two year old development level.  Honey Bee was here by herself for her first day, and I think that was a good thing because it gave her a chance to get used to some of the rules here.  One of her favourite activities was matching up coloured plastic Easter Eggs and opening them to find the foam snowflake I had hidden inside.  Another activity that we did that was great for fine motor skills was Stickers!!  I peeled all the extra paper off the sheet and left just the stickers, then she peeled off the stickers and stuck them to a page.  This took quite a bit of focus. 

I cut out the circles and she helped me to arrange them from biggest to smallest to make the snowman.  

We did some Brain Gym activities to get both brain hemispheres working together.  Later, I did some research on developmental delay, and many articles said that spinning is also good for children in this regard.  Currently, Honey Bee doesn't always recognize that I am asking her a question and want to hear her answer, and she'll just repeat the question.  I'm working on having her say "My name is...." when I ask "What's your name?"  We'll get there!!

Princess came on Thursday and Friday morning, and stayed for Lunch on Thursday.  (I thought this would give us some extra activity time, but I ALWAYS forget how slow children eat!!!  Snack is never finished according to my timeline for the day!!  Ahh well, we just cut a few minutes out of playdough time, and it all evens out!!)  We read "I am Snow" and "The Snowy Day" and we worked on learning the poem Snowflakes by Leroy Jackson.  I'm also trying to teach the kids to say "A Child's Prayer for Morning" each day during our Calendar time.  It goes like this:

Now, before I run to play,
Let me not forget to pray
To God who kept me through the night
And waked me with the morning light.
Help me, Lord, to love Thee more
Than I ever loved before,
In my work and in my play
Please be with me through the day.
Amen.

This will take a couple of weeks because I don't have each child every day! 

For our snow crafts, we did some snowflake stamping, using some foam stamps I have.  Added to this, we also glued some white foam snow flakes to our page to make a snow scene, and added some paper punch out snowflakes from a scrapbook punch I have.  The scrapbook punch snowflakes was a great activity, because Princess had to use a lot of strength to punch it all the way through the paper.  Friday's craft was the traditional cutting paper snowflakes.  I folded the paper across the corner to make a square shape and drew as straight line to show where the bottom needed to be cut off and Princess cut across the line with scissors.  Later that day we did some shape cutting activities.  Princess uses scissors all the time, but she is not often required to cut along a line to make a specific shape.  Her favourite cutting activity was this simple Frog Craft from DLTK. 

Our shape for the Snow theme was the Hexagon because it has 6 sides and a snowflake has 6 points.  We started a shape unit for "Math" and Princess is working on consistently recognizing circle, square, and triangle without hints!!  Recognizing circle and square came up on a 2 year old skill checklist that I was researching, and Princess knows them, but can't (or won't) always remember the word "square".  I made up a booklet for her with worksheets and pictures made up of circles, squares, and triangles and she really enjoyed this (mainly because when she finished each sheet she got to put a smelly apple sticker on her page!)  The sheets I used came from Kids Learning Station and KidZone.  Princess especially enjoyed the pictures on the KidZone pages and got to take 1 worksheet home per day (the others are in her folder).  This week, we'll review circle, square, and triangle and add rectangle (and possibly oval, depending on how she's doing!).  Another shape activity that we did was sorting buttons by shape.  This took a bit of explaining, but once she got it it went very quickly!  I used these great new boxes I found at the dollar store, but it was tricky because I didn't have a triangle shape box, so we were putting triangle buttons in the hexagon box... I think this might have confused her.  Anyway, she did great and I finally got her to start saying which shape each button was as she was putting it in the right box.  We used a bowl for all the other buttons, and we didn't use the heart box, because it would have distracted her too much!!!

Anyways, we did some other snow activities and shape activities- dancing like a snowflake, shape sticker sorting and the like, but I did a really bad job of documenting last week!!  I'll try to get more detail about what we are doing this week for our Star Theme.  Hope you enjoyed the post!

Jennifer

Rabbit Week!

We're wrapping up Rabbit Week!  Sweet Pea was here 4 days this week, and Princess (who's 4) was here 2 days.  I also had some other little munchkins wander in during the week, but the primary teaching time was done with these girls. 
Here are some of the read-alouds we did this week:

We also read about rabbits and hares in the Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia. 

For Rabbit Week, we learned the word "Whisker" and made rabbit noses by sewing elastic cord onto felt (I did the sewing, but Sweet Pea picked the thread and learned about needles... thankfully not through experience!!)  When they were done, she only wanted to wear hers as a necklace, not as on her nose, so this was the only picture I captured. 

I also hot glued whiskers on the one for me, and that really helped her get a visual for the vocabulary word.  Here's mine... picture courtesy of Sweet Pea!

We also made rabbit ear headbands, a cut paper rabbit, and really cute rabbit in the grass puppets with a toilet paper tube and a smaller tube made of cardstock for the rabbit. 

We were learning the shape "Parallelogram", but Sweet Pea just started at Precepts Academy so we did a lot of reviewing circles and triangles.  During all of our free time crafts she would ask me to cut her out circles of various sizes.  So we did learn a shape!!  I printed these amazing Pattern Block Picture Cards from Kelly's Kindergarten, and Sweet Pea had a good time matching the right block to the shapes in the picture.  So now I have six cards with pictures on both sides to use with the pattern blocks as a Tot Tray in the future! 

(sorry about the picture quality... my camera does a bad job of focussing!)

Our letter for the week was the letter R, and Princess did a great job coloring in an outline of the Letter R and creating a Letter R mini-book from First-School.  I asked her to tell me what letter it was on each page of the book and that provided just the right amount of review for her.  She also enjoyed cutting out the pictures and gluing them in the book herself.  Sweet Pea and I talked about the letter R and she traced it with her finger a few times, but quickly lost interest.  No problem!!  My goal at her age is exposure only!! 

Our number for the week was 18, but Sweet Pea and I focused on recognizing the number 1.  She does a great job counting and 1:1 matching, so now it's time to start putting the symbol with the number!  I may add some number cards to our tot trays for next week... we'll see! 

Finally, as I already mentioned, we learned the nursery rhyme "Jack be Nimble" and the kids practiced jumping over a candlestick!  That was a really fun way for them to memorize the nursery rhyme!!

Other fun moments of the week...

My funniest moment:
I'm in the kitchen getting snack ready and Sweet Pea is playing (albeit somewhat unsupervised) literally 4 feet away in my line of sight with the Rice Pouring Tot Tray.  Do you remember that in a previous post I mentioned that this tray required a LOT of supervision!! All of a sudden I hear rice scattering everywhere (not on the tray!!) and Sweet Pea pipes up, "Oh no!  Somebody made a big ME-ESS!!" (Read in a sing-song voice and you'll come close to her tone!)  Then we learned about vacuum cleaners!! So Funny!

Other fun moments:
- Playing store with pennies and items from the play food and dishes drawer
- Playing cowboy by tying a string around the stuffed puppy and buffalo's necks and dragging them around
- Playing dominoes and matching the next colour to make the train
- Playing with the Disney Checker Game... not sure why she loved this one so much, but we got it out every day!!  She would line up the blue checkers on the faces on one side and the red checkers on the faces on the other side.  We eould also stack them up to make a patterned tower (blue, red, blue, red) and then she'd flip the board over and set them all up on the squares for the tic-tac-toe board! 
- Having tea parties - everytime I turned around I was handed a cup of tea!!
- Having puppet shows with our rabbit in the grass puppets. 

That's a pretty good overview of our Rabbit Week!  Tune in next week to hear what we're learning about Snow and the letter S!

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer

Tot Trays!

I read about Tot Trays over at Carisa's 1+1+1=1 Blog and have been following rabbit trails all over the internet trying to garner more amazing ideas!!  (I also really enjoyed the Spinner's End Nursery School posts.)  Anyways, here are some of the tot trays we've been using this week. 

1) Sorting Pom Poms - I included a pair of tweezers with this activity, but they are a tad too small for Sweet Pea to grip... I'm looking for a plastic pair of tongs, I just havent' found a good set yet.  We tried this activity with a spoon yesterday for transferring, and she seemed to enjoy that way a lot more!

2) Lacing Cards - She has figured out how to put the string in one hole and up the next one, but after that, it basically gets whipped around her head like a sling shot!  She really likes it though, so ... almost a success!!

3) Rice - This is an amazing activity for pouring skills.  You should see the number of play dishes that were added to this tray!!  The challenge with this one is to keep the rice on the tray.  It requires pretty close supervision (but it's fun for me to play with too!).  Sweet Pea and I dyed the rice ourselves with food colouring.  I measured out the rice and food coloring into a tupperware container, and she shook it like crazy!!

4) Pom Poms - we used this one for sorting and patterning.  This was (surprisingly, for me!) Sweet Pea's favourite tray!  She requested it a couple of times during the week.  She loved lining them up in rows and was actually quite amazing at creating the pattern (for a not yet three year old!)...  I'm sure we'll use this one lots in the future, which is great because I can coordinate the pom pom colours to fit the theme!!  Next week we're doing snow... blue and white, perhaps!!

Tomorrow, I'll give you a rundown on our Rabbit Theme week and the books and activities we did!

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer

Up and Running!!

Well, the Precepts Academy Preschool is up and running!!  I have my first almost full-time little person!  Sweet Pea is not quite 3 and she loves imaginative play and "paperwork"!  We have had so much fun this week learning about rabbits!  Here is our learning poster for the week:

We haven't done a lot of talking about Parallelograms yet... hmm... maybe I need to get the pattern blocks out tomorrow!!  You can see our calendar beside the learning poster.  We put a shamrock sticker on every day in March and we sing the Days of the Week song every day.  Sweet Pea loves to sing and almost has this one down in less than a week!! We also usually sing This is the Day that the Lord has Made during calendar time.  For Jack be Nimble, I set out a Votive candle on the floor (unlit... duh...) and the kids jumped over it as we recited Jack be Nimble.  They loved saying "Jack jumped over the candlestick!" as they jumped over the candle.  

Here are some photos of our school room set up:

 On the shelves are Stuffed Animals, Mr. Potato Head, Barbies, and My Little Ponies.  In the clear plastic drawer are play food and dishes, dolls and doll clothes, and puppets.

 Behind the chairs is the 100s chart.  Behind the table is the ABC poster.  On the shelves are Lincoln logs, Bus, Lock & Key toy, Animals bin, K'nex, and People bin.  On the white shelves are puzzles, lego, buttons, and misc. games that wouldn't fit in the game cupboard! 

I adore these book shelves!! The first one is all Kids' fiction arranged alphabetically by author.  The 2nd and 3rd shelf are non-fiction loosely arranged according to the Dewey Decimal system.  The bottom middle shelf is coloring books.  The top shelf on the right is CDs.  On the other side of the white shelf are Preschool teaching resource books and arts and crafts books... as well as a miscellaneous sampling of homeschool books that I reference frequently!!

These shelves are the best thing about the whole room!!  They were built to hide the back of the wall oven (which takes up the entire middle shelf on the right hand side), but they hold basically all the craft supplies etc. that we use everyday!  Such as:



Math and Language Manipulatives and Games

Dishes, Preschool Towels, and Tot Tray Supplies

Paints, Perler Beads, Nature Box (Shells, Pinecones, etc.)

Playdough, Pipecleaners, Stickers, Tissue Paper, Fabric & Felt, Yarn, Paint Cups, Foamies, Wood Pieces (Popsicle sticks, skewers, clothes pins), Googly eyes & styrofoam, and Pom Poms!  Whew!

So that is the preschool... next time I'll show you the quiet room and kids bathroom, as well as some of the tot tray ideas we've been using this week!!  I'm having a blast, and I love that I'm able to do what I love out of my own home!  If I can't homeschool my own kids, this is the next best thing!!

Thanks for reading!!

Jennifer

A Salute to Moms

Yesterday was an amazing day!  I had one of my favourite preschooler friends over for a lesson in the morning and we got to talking as we were completing a paint with water (and watercolours!) picture. 
"Who's your mom?" queried my little friend.
"My mom is Mrs. Edwards who teaches you about Jesus in Children's Church, " I replied.
"And my mom teaches me and [brother] and [sister] at home," she said.
"That's right.  And my mom used to teach me and my brother and two sisters about Jesus at my home when we were little.  Now, she doesn't have any little people living at her house, so she teaches you about Jesus in Children's Church."
"This paint is white, just like the colour Jesus made my heart," she remarked, moving on.  I just treasured this little snippet of conversation because it shows what a difference moms are making.  I praise God for a mother who raised me to know Jesus, who taught me to spend time in God's Word and in prayer everyday by setting me the example of doing this herself.  Sometimes I don't always see eye to eye with my mom about everything, but I respect her opinions because she has lived out her life demonstrating faithfulness in all she does.  She taught me to obey not because she was right (which she was), but because in obeying her, I showed my love and obedience for Jesus.  (This early teaching, by the way, saved her a lot of grief when it came to the teenage years!)  I remember her reading Little Pilgrim's Progress to us as well as countless children's books, poems, and Bible stories, not because they catered to her interests, but because she wanted to instill in us a love of literature.  It is a direct result of this early influence that I was reading at 4 and have a library of over 2000 books today, including a treasured copy of Little Pilgrim's Progress (as well as the original) which I found a couple of years ago in a thrift store rummage!

Anyways, all that is just to say that I love moms and I think they need a lot more encouragement than they get some days.  So if you're reading this, and you're feeling guilty because you didn't have time to construct the Great Pyramid out of sugar cubes this week amid running the eight year old to hockey, dance, soccer, swimming, and guitar lessons and making fresh play dough for the 4 year old while hearing her recite the alphabet and feeding the baby and getting meals and making sure the house runs smoothly, please remember that the choices you are making for your kids now have a lasting impact and above all, stay close to Jesus.  "Apart from me you can do nothing." John 15.  Have a blessed week!

Jennifer

Still Praying

Well, I'm still looking for full-time preschool / day care kids.  This has certainly been an exercise in trusting God.  I do not consider myself to be entrepreneurial by nature, so starting my own business and not having a regular paycheck can tend to cause slight panic attacks until I remember that I'm not in this on my own.  God has given me a passion for this little corner of Northern Ontario and a passion for educating children to high, Christian standards.  There are so few teaching jobs available in the Public or Catholic boards, and we don't have a local Christian school... yet. 
What does a Christian preschool mean?  It means that every morning, we start the day off with prayer, trusting God to lead us into the learnings He has for us that day.  We thank Him for the weather, whatever it may be, knowing that by the "word of His power" He is "upholding all things" (Hebrews 1:3).  We thank Him for daily providing for our needs - our snack, our lunch, the roof over our heads, our families.  We read Bible stories that tie into our theme - Jonah for Oceans, Noah for Rainbows, Joseph for Clothes...  We listen to music that honours God and reminds us of who He is and what Jesus has done for us - Jesus Loves Me, For God so Loved the World, He's Able...  It means that we look at all of our science experiments through the lens of God's Intelligent Design of the world - monkeys climb because God made them that way, ice melts because God knew we wouldn't want it to be winter all the time, God gave whales blubber to keep them warm in the cold water... In everything we do, we want to "remember our Creator in the days of our youth" (Ecclesiastes 12:1).  It is not my job to force kids to make a profession of faith.  It's not even my job to lead them through that process.  It is God's job to capture their hearts and lead them to Himself through the work of His Holy Spirit.  It is their parent's job to daily live out their faith at home, to answer their kids' questions about God, and to lead them in prayer when the time comes.  If I can keep on praying for them and encouraging them to see God's hand at work in their lives and in the world around them, to live their lives for His honour and glory, I will have produced much fruit!
This entry may have turned out to be more mission statement-y than I originally intended, but it was good for me to stop and consider why it is still so important for me to advertise as a Christian preschool, when that "label" may turn some people off.  I am a Christian and this is the only way I know how to live.  God honours faithfulness to Him.  Jesus, let me be faithful. 

Jennifer

Back Online!

Well, I finally have internet access again after my move!  This is very exciting, but does not necessarily guarantee that I'll be writing any more frequently!!!  My self-education journey continues to progress.  Here is a list of my 2011 Reads so far:
Anne of Green Gables series (all 8 books, a yearly reading selection since I've been 12 years old!  I still cry in every book!)
Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis - I had to read it before I saw the movie!)
Gullivers Travels (only Lilliput & Brobdingnag - again, I just watched the movie! Aside: Jack Black is hilarious!)
Brothers Far From Home: The WWI Diary of Eliza Bates (I'm on a bit of a WWI kick right now - it started with Rilla of Ingleside)
The Wingless Bird, Catherine Cookson
Sinners and Shadows, Catrin Collier
Danny Boy, Anne Bennett
(The last three were recommendations from our local librarian... I don't think she quite understood what I was looking for... they were basically romances about women not about the actual events of WWI... oh well, the last one, Danny Boy, I actually quite enjoyed.  It is the story of a woman and her husband who had to leave Ireland to get away from the IRA and their search for employment in England, among other touching events.)
Megiddo's Shadow - excellent about Cdn. Yeomanry trooper sent to the Dardanelles
If I Die Before I Wake: The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona MacGregor, Toronto, 1918 (Jean Little)... amazing read - I finished it in one afternoon and I cried buckets!
Currently, I'm reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque which is written from a German protagonist's perspective and is exceptionally interesting. 
I'm also attempting to get through Confessions by St. Augustine, but it's a pretty hard row to hoe!  If I can get a couple of Books done per month, I count myself as doing well!
In addition, I'm doing tons of reading from the Old Fashioned Education grade 3 reading list relating to Ancient History.  She does have some excellent selections and the Science Readers by William J. Long are amazing... they make me want to become a naturalist!!  (http://www.oldfashionededucation.com/)
I'll try to be back soon with more of an update on the preschool program, but wanted to get these readings recorded while they were still fresh in my mind!
Happy life-long learning!

Jennifer