As a LeapFrog Mom Ambassador, I receive products, promotional items and educational material to use and share as I see fit. However, any opinions expressed by me are honest and reflect my actual experiences.”
Many moons ago I got a degree in Early Childhood and taught preschool in a public school and then later taught elementary school. After having three kids I knew my heart was at home with my babies so I left the work life behind and have created a very different path than what I originally planned. 
I have always kept a foot in the education door by teaching preschool at home for each of my kids when they got to preschool age and now I homeschool too. As my older kids get older I realized it was to hard to teach a formal preschool out of my house on top of homeschooling.
I was feeling pretty bad about not doing a formal preschool with Rory until I realized I didn’t have to have other kids over to do preschool activities with her and I have a secret weapon to help out! I have 4 big kids that love playing with their sister and are fabulous teachers!!
When planning our school year this year I have divided up our time in 20 minute stations and everyone gets a chance to work with me 1 on 1 and then each of the big kids takes a turn working with the two little kids. Hello, instant preschool! I let them each pick what they want to teach with some guidance from me and it has been a blast. Here is how our day goes …..
Story Time and Lap book
Kennedy begins our day by picking one story and reading the same story everyday for the week. She then does an activity about the book and they put it in a lapbook they are making. They love having something to show everyone that comes over about what they are doing. Right now they are reading Jesse Bear What Will You Wear? and doing activities for it. We went Pinterest searching for ideas and found a simple super cute one for FREE! She has come up with some super fun activities.
One of the days after reading the story they colored bear heads and then sorted M & M’s onto the matching colors.
Last week they read about fish and painted hand print fishes. Seriously she is a great teacher and I don’t even have to help her much at all!
Science and Crafts and more
Delaney loves crafts so she of course picked this area. She too often starts with books and then goes from there. Last week they read a Fancy Nancy Peanut Butter and Jellyfish and learned all about jelly fish. They painted them, drew them, and even made one in a bottle. Check out the tutorial HERE.
Physical Activity
Audrey my 7 year old has named herself as the exercise time. When the weather is better she plans to just be in charge of recess but since it is to warm still they have had to get creative. They have had dance parties, bowled with plastic Coke bottles, played musical chairs, and they have made an obstacle course and practiced over, under, around and through. Anything to get them moving.
Books, Books, and more Books
Sydney my oldest has a pretty hard school schedule so she has decided she will just be the librarian and read them lots of books because she doesn’t have time to plan anything. They sing all those fun preschool songs too. Works for me and they love it!
A B C and 1 2 3
Mom’s turn now. I am working on learning sounds, counting, identifying numbers, and writing. We have been working on writing her name and identifying letter to start with. It is so fun to see how excited she is to tell me all she did before she got to me. She is loving all her school time.
Electronic Fun
If you are keeping track you realize I am now out of big kids. So what do the two little kids do now you might be wondering? I have found the perfect solution. They are learning and loving it and cant wait till their play time comes along with our favorite LeapFrog products. Seriously if you haven’t checkout LeapFrog for learning activities you are missing out. They have fabulous cartoons, electronic tablets (LeapPads) and other fun educational toys. Our new favorite is the Word Whammer.
Rory loves to take what she learns with me and then practices her letter sounds with the fun 3 games on the Word Whammer. It is easy enough for her to play by herself but still challenging enough to keep her entertained. My 2 year old loves it too because it talks to you and has parts he gets to move!!
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