There’s no denying the special bond that my twins share. Tiny and Buba are extremely close (as I’d hoped they’d be) and love each other dearly. Sure, they fight- sometimes quite a bit- but when it’s over, it’s over. Life goes on and they’re more than happy to snuggle together and read books or make up a new game to play. They started playing together at an early age- before most of their singleton friends were ready or interested in playing with either of them- and I have no doubt in my mind, that at the age of 3.5, they are each other’s best friend.

But over the summer, while we were attending group playdates with the kids who are now their preschool classmates, Tiny began to make new friends. Now, almost three months into the school year, Tiny has two other good friends who she looks forward to seeing at school and who look forward to seeing her. Buba has very little interest in playing with these kids. He has told me more than once that he has been sad at school because he wants to play with Tiny, and just Tiny. As Tiny’s friendship with her two new friends has grown, Buba has had more and more weepy days at preschool.

However, his teachers report that he is well liked by his classmates. Buba enjoys singing and drumming and acting silly, which his classmates love and think is hilarious. He seems to get a lot of laughs and attention when he’s singing new, silly words to familiar tunes (something we’ve been doing at home for a long time), but has yet to make a real friendship sort of connection with any of his classmates.

In general, I’m not too worried about this. I know that preschoolers will all develop socially in their own way and time. But it does break my heart a little bit to hear that he’s been feeling sad at school. I’m sure if he were a singleton, he wouldn’t care about other kids playing together while he played alone or parallel to other children. But watching his sister, his best friend, go off and play with others is not so easy to dismiss.

I wish there was something I could do to help him through this. I’ve asked if he’d like to invite a friend from school to have a playdate at our house, but at this point, he’s not really interested. Hopefully, as the year goes on, he will form some new friendships of his own. He may not be the kind of kid who wants to be everybody’s friend, and that’s okay. I just hope he can find a way to be happy in those moments where Tiny is off doing her own thing.

*reanbean is a mostly stay at home mom to g/b twins, Tiny and Buba, who also works very part-time as a private tutor. She blogs about their lives as often as possible at: http://www.reanbean.com/.

**The above photo was taken by a mom at Tiny and Buba’s preschool and shows Tiny holding Buba’s hand during circle time on the rug.

• There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
• Follow your gut.
• It never hurts to get a second opinion.
• Some lessons are more likely to stick if they come from someone other than a child’s parent.
• Things are often more complicated than they appear.
• There is such a thing as knowing too much about something.

The first time we visited a speech therapist was at the recommendation of the family pediatrician. When M was nearly 3 years old, I became concerned about how slowly she ate. I once timed her spending 17 minutes chewing a single piece of meat, and finally had her spit it out. The pediatrician suggested that she had dysphagia, or trouble swallowing. I had imagined that a couple of degrees in linguistics gave me a basic understanding of what speech therapists do, but I was wrong. Speech therapists deal with all sorts of oral motor issues, including problems with chewing or swallowing.

It turned out that M had never quite figured out how to use her tongue to effectively move food around in her mouth as she chewed. Because of that, foods that required chewing would cause her to choke. After six sessions of feeding therapy with an amazing speech therapist and a lot of reinforcement at home and daycare, she could eat successfully. Meals became enjoyable again. It’s been over 2 years, and we haven’t seen any backsliding. In fact, M enjoys food so much now that she plans to open a restaurant when she grows up. Bonus: military medical insurance covered 100% of speech therapy session costs.

It was during feeding therapy that the therapist raised a concern that M might have articulation delays. It had never occurred to me that there was anything off in her speech, since the child talked incessantly and no one who knew her—I, her teachers, or our neighbours—had any trouble understanding her. I thought her pronunciation of yellow as “lellow” was darling, rather than worrisome. The linguist in me had always ignored the nagging doubts, knowing full well that there was variation in the timing of pronunciation mastery, but there should be no cause for alarm as long as the order of acquisition were being followed.

When my husband returned from Iraq and need me or J to translate for him so that he could understand M, it was clearly time to revisit the speech therapist. My MA in theoretical linguistics hadn’t taught me as much about the practicalities of language development as I’d thought. The practice we’d been to for feeding therapy no longer took our insurance, so we had to find a new therapist. We had both girls, now 3 months shy of turning 4, evaluated at the new practice. They ended up being evaluated by different therapists, and we learned how incredibly subjective these evaluations can be.

J was determined to be 2 standard deviations above the norm for her age when it came to grammar, vocabulary and comprehension, but 2 standard deviations below the norm for articulation, the production of mature speech sounds. She sounded more like a child just turned 3 than one soon to be 4. M, on the other hand, was evaluated only for articulation, and declared to be just dandy. These results didn’t ring true for us. M was, to our ears, far less clear in her speech than J. My husband insisted that M be reevaluated, this time by the therapist who had seen J. When the office staff let us know that they were concerned that insurance might not pay for a second evaluation, we offered to pay out of pocket. Insurance did end up covering it, though. The second set of results was more in line with our expectations. Although J’s need for speech therapy was a judgment call, M definitely needed it. Where the first evaluation had her placed her in the 43rd percentile, the reevaluation placed her in the 2nd percentile for articulation.

Since their delays were along the same continuum, the therapist offered to work both twins together in weekly sessions. The sessions were great fun for the girls. The therapist pulled out board games, and let them each take a turn after they completed a pronunciation exercise. She focused on making them aware of how the sounds coming out of their mouths were different than hers. Soon enough, they could say ‘sh’ and ‘v’ easily. It was extraordinary to see how those two sounds alone helped with others’ comprehension of their endless chatter.

After 3 months, both the girls graduated from speech therapy. All J had left to master were ‘l’ and ‘r’, and the speech therapist didn’t think those needed to be rushed. M had a lisp to work on too, but we were comfortable with the exercises she needed to do at home to help with that. We should keep an eye on the girls, she told us, and consider revisiting a speech therapist if they didn’t appear to be making any headway after a while.

My husband and I think that we’ve given it long enough, and both girls’ ‘r’s are still very baby-like. At this point, speech evaluations are often conducted through the school district, so we need to ask both their classroom teachers what they think of their speech before we go hunting for yet another speech therapist.

If you’re curious about what precisely goes on in a speech therapist’s office, feel free to peruse the detailed tales of feeding therapy and speech therapy sessions on my personal blog.

Sadia and her 5-year-old girls, M and J, do their talking, lisps and all, in El Paso, TX, much to the exhaustion of her soldier husband. They try not to talk while eating, but it’s tough when there’s so much to say. They are happy to report that chewing challenges are no longer to blame for the length of conversations around the dinner table.

Of course I want our children to have a healthy diet in the here and now, but it’s far more important to me that they be equipped to make good food choices even when I’m not around. I’ve taken three basic approaches that have worked for us:

1. Educating our daughters on what makes up a balanced diet, and how different foods contribute to their healthy growth.
2. Including them in food purchase and preparation decisions and activities.
3. Demonstrating that listening to their bodies is valuable and taking a non-combative approach to food.

I keep meaning to copy a friend’s brilliant idea of displaying the USDA food guidelines—the old pyramid, or the new plate—on the refrigerator.

Even though we don’t have the picture up, we have always talked about meals in terms of needing a protein, a fruit or veggie, and a starch. We’ve also talked about the need for dairy, but since the girls drink milk morning and night, I haven’t required that they include dairy in every meal. I try to keep my explanations of why food choices are important accurate, but simple. We need protein for strong muscles. Fruits and vegetables help our bodies fight germs, and help us with healthy skin, hair, eyes and nails. We need carbohydrates from energy. Milk products help our bones be strong. Our body needs some fat so that it can get all the goodness out of other foods, but too much can be unhealthy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with sweet or fatty foods, but they are just for flavour, rather than nutrition. I’ve rarely turned down the girls’ requests for sweets, because they ask for very reasonable portions: a cookie or a single piece of chocolate.

Our whole family enjoys food: eating it, preparing and cooking it, even playing with it. If only mine wasn’t the Great Black Thumb, we might enjoy growing it. The kitchen is the heart of our home; I’m old-school like that. It should come as no surprise that our daughters have always been welcome in the kitchen.

My husband may have shortened my life by a year or two by placing our infants in their bouncy seats on the kitchen counter while he cooked. In retrospect, though, I’m glad we’ve always had them with us. Once they could sit, I’d pull the girls’ highchairs into the kitchen, and give them each a plastic bowl and spoon to bang while I made our meals. When I had cleanup time on my hands, they would help me stir. If I needed to get my hands dirty, J and M could splash their hands in the bubble-filled kitchen sink.

As they approached age 2.5, M and J could be trusted not to put everything in their mouths, so their kitchen repertoire broadened significantly. They could help me measure out ingredients, even plan meals. I’d let them choose between fish and chicken, for example, or rice and couscous. Another great option was chef’s salad. I’d chop up lunchmeat and cheese, boil some eggs, grill some croutons, and present a selection of vegetables. As long as they included some of each food group, they were good. It’s easy to do the same with sandwiches, too. We baked cookies and muffins, too, but that was more of a game.

Now, at 5, J and M often help me plan our weekly grocery list. M recently observed that lasagne is a balanced meal in itself. J refused dessert at lunch yesterday because she was full. She knew there would be another ice cream opportunity soon enough. The girls came home from daycare recently telling me that they had been given soda at school. (Let me tell you that we’re not going back to that center.) They were as horrified as I was, but confessed that the cola was “sweet and yummy.” I told them that soda was a sweet treat, and they could have some when I did, a couple of times a month. There was no argument.

When the girls are full, we let them leave the table. If they’re not hungry, they don’t have to eat. They know that they won’t get anything until the next snack or meal. My husband and I both fight the urge to nag at them to eat more or clear their plates. I think it’s a natural parental impulse. We just have to keep reminding ourself that we want our daughters to stay as healthy, happy and whole as they are now.

How do you include your children in the kitchen?

(My husband, looking over my shoulder as I write, claims that he is not a nerd, and is better described as “awesome.” His high school friends would probably go with nerd-jock, though. Oh, and band geek.)

We’re the kind of people who see science and math everywhere in our daily lives. Our kids told us, with poorly disguised ulterior motives, that treats at the school cafeteria cost a quarter. Hubby took this opportunity to teach them about coin values. The first time my daughters helped me weed the yard, we discussed the purpose of the roots at the end of our leafy trespassers before banishing them to the compost pile. I try to respond to questions by showing our daughters the answers, whenever possible, instead of telling them. It often slows us down, though, and M in particular tends to dawdle, so I am learning to curb my love of teachable moments in the interest of getting things done.

Today, I felt awful. I had a headache and, according to my husband, a fever.

The girls needed their bath, though, so I asked them to climb into the cool tub. Now that they’re 5, and capable of climbing in and out of the bath themselves but still bathing together, I’m comfortable with leaving the room while they’re in there. If they were to fall quiet, I’d panic, but that’s not a problem we deal with at our house.

While I retrieved clean uniforms from the laundry, they got increasingly loud. I went in to wash their hair, and caught sight of J pouring water into a washcloth bundled into a pouch in M’s hands. I asked what they were doing, and was told that it was “an experiment.” My headache tempted me to leave it at that, but I asked what they were trying to learn. M told me that they were attempting to catch water. I washed their hair, and debated between rushing them through their bath and providing them a control to their experiment. I decided to go with the latter, and gave M a scrap of plastic wrap from the kitchen. Their glee at successfully containing water in their plastic pouch didn’t help my headache any, but was well worth it. There’s something to be said for keeping alive the wonder that one-year-olds display by chucking sippy cups to the floor time after time. After all, what is a scientist but a very large one-year-old, trying to figure out cause and effect?

I’m glad I took the time to encourage both girls’ curiosity and their partnership in discovery, but I’ll admit to that I’m heading for a long warm bath of my own, now that our daughters are in bed for the night.

When you’re pulled every which way and under the weather, how do you decide between seizing a teachable moment and making it through the day?

As toddlers, I read every article and sought out all opinions on separating twins at school. I was determined to keep them together: kindergarten is so big, the day is so long, my older daughter was slow to adapt to kindergarten, and I just thought they would benefit from each other’s support in the classroom. Fast forward four years: the boys are more different than they are alike, and while both have strong personalities, one is more outgoing and social, the other longs to be included.

This September, my boys will begin their “4s” year at a small, cooperative preschool in separate classrooms. They were together the previous two years, so this will be a new experience for all of us. However, being apart for the 2.5 hour preschool day will give them an opportunity to establish their own skills, likes and dislikes, and friendships, instead of being thought of as a unit by teachers and friends. Things have changed–as a Mom I have grown to appreciate and celebrate their individualness and want them to learn independence in preparation for elementary school. Their elementary school is big and the principal encourages separation of twins.

In the back of my head, I hold this experience as a test for myself–if this experiment truly bombs and both boys are unhappy, then I will fight tooth and nail to put them together for kindergarten. If one boy is unhappy and the other one is fine, which is one of my fears, I don’t know what I will do. Not to mention my fears for the rest of their education and beyond: what if one has a great teacher, and the other has an okay teacher, and they do not receive the same educational opportunities? Ugh.

This was not an easy change of heart, and my stomach still clinches tight when I think about it. I have come to see how my thoughts of them as “brothers who happened to come out at the same time” impacts all aspects of their lives and putting them in different 4s classes and eventually kindergarten follows this path. Is it the right choice? We will have to wait and see.

So, when are you planning to separate your multiples?

Leslie is a freelance writer and mother to an amazing 7 year old girl and two adventurous 4 year old boys who is counting the minutes until school starts.

The countdown has begun! As of right now there are 13 days left until preschool starts this year, I can vividly remember one of the back to school commercials with the parents singing “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”. We had a taste of it last year from January-June and everyone benefited, but it didn’t come without some work. They attended two 1/2 day sessions a week. This year they are going 4 full days.  We are blessed enough to have a wonderful public school system in a very small community. When my son Reese was aging out of early intervention and still needed services the next place was the public preschool. Initially I was told that only he was going to be admitted mid-year but I put my foot down, insisted that I was not sending one without the other, and suddenly they had spots for both boys. I got that news in September. The boy’s turned 3 years old in December and Reese’s services at that point would be the school’s responsibility. There was a lot of meetings and planning.

In September, I met with the principal, speech therapist, occupational therapist, school nurse, preschool teacher and his current therapist’s, to decide what his “needs” were and if further testing would be required prior to writing his IEP (Individual  Educational Plan).  It was decided that no further testing was needed but that a plan was needed to address his severe peanut allergy in the classroom and seizure disorder. I did my research and came back with a plan in October when we sat down to write the plan.

Thankfully, his peanut allergy is by ingestion only so he can be near peanut products. I was so afraid he was going to be ostracized because of the school’s fears. But a plan was developed that they felt safe with and that I could live with. Of course we need to revisit the plan this year since he will be eating lunch there. As for the seizures, again it was the education of the staff but in this case it was my feeling safe with the plan.

The IEP was like a foreign language to me, luckily a good friend of mine is a special education teacher and reviewed it prior to me signing it. He receives 30 minutes of Speech and OT a week right now, which will be re-evaluated in October.  I have noticed a difference in his speech intelligibility and his confidence. My concerns have now shifted to his emotional regulation, inattentiveness and impulsiveness, all of these will be discussed.

Clay had some trouble adjusting to Reese being pulled for his services, but they were great in the beginning and just let him go also. I have found the structure, activities and time away from home to be very positive for both boys’. With that said it had been a lot of work, letting go and trusting other’s to keep my children safe and just watching them grow up.

1. Find Out When You Need To Begin Your Search: We live roughly 20 miles from Boston and needed to begin our preschool search process last October (almost one full year before Tiny and Buba would officially begin!). I suppose, technically, we could have waited until winter or even spring, but several school we were looking at had late fall application deadlines. However, just 10-15 miles further north, many friends of ours were able to register easily the spring before their children would enter the school. Sometimes it depends on the area, and sometimes it depends on the schools. So, it just helps to know ahead of time what you’re dealing with.

2. Know What You Want: If you live in an area where you have a lot of options, it can be tremendously helpful to know what type of school/program you want for your children. Do you need all day or do you only want half day? Would you like a morning program where you have the option to have your children stay through lunchtime or even the full afternoon? Do you prefer to have classes grouped by age or do you like the idea of multi-age classes? How many days a week would you like your kids to go? Would you like a program that is primarily play-based, or would you rather have a program that will focus more on academic skills. And how far are you willing to travel? Would you prefer a school closer to home, or, perhaps, closer to work? These are just some of the questions that you can answer ahead of time that may help you narrow down your search.

3. Know What You Can Spend (But Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Discounts or Aid): I’m not sure what it’s like in other parts of the country, but out here, preschool can be quite costly. (I was shocked to learn, while visiting family this summer, that preschool for 4 year olds is FREE in Iowa! Anyone else have a deal like that?) Knowing how much you can spend, or how much you’re willing to spend, can also be an important piece of information when deciding which schools to look at. However, some schools offer sibling discounts, alternate payment plans, and/or financial aid. Not all schools publish these possibilities on their websites or in their literature, so don’t be afraid to ask. You may be surprised by how willing a director might be to work out a plan that allows your children to attend the school.

4. Talk To Other Parents, But Trust Your Gut: Talking to other parents whose children are already in a preschool you’re considering for your own children can be very helpful. They may be able to talk more specifically about things, such as how the teachers operate their classrooms, how well the staff communicates with parents, and what they personally like about the school. However, your friend may love a school for her own kids that you feel is not the best fit for your own children. Trust your gut and do what you know is the right thing for your own family.

What advice do you give to friends who are beginning to look at preschools for their kids? Not ready for looking yet- what further questions do you have about the preschool search process?

The call came, but it wasn’t good news.  He didn’t make it off the waiting list.  I bawled.  I was counting on this 2 day program to fill my sons social and educational needs, while giving me a change to spend 10 hours a week caring for 2 children instead of three.  I lost it, and cried for the better part of the day.  But after I was done throwing my fit, I gathered myself and came up with a new plan to teach my son at home.  These are what I call my “Lazy Mama” tips for homeschooling a preschooler, because they require minimum effort and get maximum results.  And when you have 2 screaming babies, sometimes minimum effort is all there is!

1.  Put it on the Wall.  This is my best tip for getting your child to learn anything, simply put it on a poster on the wall.  I firmly believe that hanging the alphabet on the walls of your home will significantly improve your child’s knowledge of letters.  School supply stores have hundreds of learning posters to choose from, or you can make your own.  We hang up a few focus point posters in the dining room, and they become part of every conversation simply by being there.  My son knows all the basic geometric shapes, numbers 1-20, all the letters and every sound they make.  Why?  Because he spent a year staring at them on the wall.  Try it, this really works.

2.  Make it part of the routine.  In those early days I would spend the morning nap time with my son “doing school”.  He knew that as soon as the babies went to sleep, it was his time.  Sometimes it would be a structured activity, sometimes we would sit at the table playing with play dough.  Sometimes we would be in kitchen making cookies or in the living room playing blocks.  It was all learning, it was all one on one.  Because we were dependent on my daughters taking a good nap, the amount of time varied from 20 minutes to an hour or more.  That was ok, because we still did some sort of learning activity every day.

3.  Be flexible and creative.  Use whatever you have around to to teach your children something.  Are you driving in the car?  Play a shape game and ask your children to find shapes in the objects around you.  Are you at the grocery store?  Play find the letters and have your child identify the first letter of each item you toss in the cart.  Help them practice their basic preschool skills wherever you are, whatever you are doing. 

While having a set preschool program, at home or away from home, is awesome, don’t let the lack of one stop your child from learning this year.  There are so many opportunities to teach your kid in everyday life. 

In January I finally got the call I was waiting for, and my son started Mom’s Day Out.  While I love that program and believe that it has been great for him to be in a structured learning environment, I think those first 6 months at home were good for us.  We learned how to be a family without the help of anything or anyone else.  And he learned so much at home, we was a little ahead of some of the kids in his class!  I would count that as a win for this Lazy Mama!

Dollimama is the mother of three, a three year old son and one year old twin daughters.  She spends her days chasing children and doing laundry.  She writes about the chaos of her Life Not Finished whenever she gets the chance.

We are now just under four weeks away from Tiny and Buba’s first day of preschool. T and I chose to send them to a local co-op school that strives to build a strong connection between the child’s home and the school. As a result, we’ve already spent a good amount of time on the school grounds, connecting with other classmates and their parents, and talking about what it will be like when they start preschool this fall.

Back in mid-June, we received the kids’ class list noting which days each student will attend. All 20 kids in the class have schedules that allow them to know all the other children in the class, even though only 12 kids attend on any given day (meaning, their schedules all overlap at some point in the week). To help them all get to know each other, optional playdates were set for Monday afternoons and Friday mornings from late June until the week just before school begins. The playdates take place on the school’s playground, helping them become familiar with the school grounds as well.

Recently, each family received a welcome letter from the teachers. The letter included photos of the two teachers to post on our refrigerator for the kids to view and talk about. The teachers are currently in the process of setting up a home visit to each family, where they’ll talk and play with their incoming students and get to know a little more about them.

Similar to many preschools in our area, Buba and Tiny will have a visiting day prior to the real first day of school. On this day parents come into the classroom and stay as the kids get their first introduction to the school and their classroom. The visiting session is just one hour long and only three other students and their parents will be with us (five kids attend each one hour time slot throughout the visiting day). The following Monday, the children begin attending school on their own, but just for two hours each day. It isn’t until the following week that the full schedule of three hours a day, three days a week kicks in.

Tiny is naturally confident and independent, and I’m sure she will have no trouble transitioning to preschool this fall. But for Buba, who has a harder time separating from T and me and who takes longer to warm up in new situations, I’m so, so glad he’s had all of these opportunities to ease into the whole preschool thing. He already knows and looks forward to seeing a handful of his classmates, and he’s confident enough now to explore different areas of the school grounds (there are four different play areas) without me right by his side. He was very shy when we happened to meet his teachers during one of the playdates, but I’m hoping the home visit will help him become a bit more comfortable with them.

Fingers crossed that all this leads to an easy and smooth transition once that first day of school finally rolls around!

So, how are you/will you prepare your children when the time comes for them to begin school?

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http://www.reanbean.com/

A month ago I was a working mom of 21-month-old twin boys. Suddenly, I was a former computer nerd who quit my job of six years to stay home. If you had told me six weeks ago that I would be not only unemployed but also trying to teach preschool for my twin boys, I would have laughed. Of course if you told me three years ago that I would have twin boys, I probably wouldn’t have believed that either. But here I am, a mom of twins, attempting to put together a plan for home preschool for the under-2 crowd.

Like most parents, we want our kids to be smart and polite and kind and curious. We want the best for them, we want them to thrive and succeed. Enrolling them in an actual preschool sounds great but is out of the question, budget-wise.  Last month when I quit my job to stay home with them full time, it was rather impulsive and it is now part of my role to be frugal and make the most of our one-income household. So, here I am: absolutely no training and zero experience, a whim, a fuzzy plan, a library card and a desire to make the most of our days, I am starting home preschool. I figure that I was mildly under-qualified for two infants simultaneously and so far that is going OK, so maybe I can do this.

Luckily for me, there are tons of resources online for homeschooling: Printable lessons, Units of study for purchase, Themes, Book lists, activities and an overwhelming number of resources. Our home preschool needs to be a no or very-low cost endeavor and needs to fit into our days. Starting small, I collected ideas using Pinterest, then I moved onto formulating a real plan. My basic strategy is to pick a topic each week and add books and activities using that topic as a guide. We are relying heavily on the library, local free and low-cost activities and the Internet’s endless bounty of “someone else probably already did this” resources. (Seriously, if you haven’t checked out Pinterest, you should.)

Our first week’s topic was Bugs, Bees and Butterflies. We checked topical books from the library and planned a trip to the local Nature Center to see butterflies and bees. (It was free but had a suggested $1 donation per person which we gladly paid.) This week’s theme is The Beach and the Sea so made the boys’ first trip to the local (also free) beach. I have books, art projects and a sensory activity planned. In coming weeks, I have marked our calendar for a visit to our CSA farm, a trip to the zoo (free since we are members), the fire department safety open house, an indoor botanic garden (also free), an apple orchard and the not-at-all-free-but-awesome-anyway trip to Day out with Thomas at the Illinois Train Museum.

The nice thing about doing this with not-quite-two-year-olds is that we can be flexible and incorporate it easily into our days. My boys are really learning to understand the things around them, to talk, to sign and to explore their world. Home preschool will allow us to have a plan each week so we don’t get into a rut and resort to TV, but allows us to have our routines and fit these activities into our day. We spent about an hour each day last week reading or learning about bugs.   When we have other stuff to do, that is fine too. We still read non-theme books and embrace teachable moments. We let them play and explore and be toddlers. We have playmates and outings with other kids. And, most importantly, we don’t do school if they are not up to it. The first week was a lot of fun and I the boys actually learned a lot. They both point out bugs on the sidewalk and sign butterfly and try to flap their wings to fly. By any measure, I think our lessons were a success.

The nitty-gritty of planning preschool for 1-year-olds with no any training or experience has been interesting. First I brainstormed topics that would appeal to little boys: Bugs, Beach, Farm, Firemen, Dinosaurs, etc. Next, I outlined the over-arching goals I want from each week. No matter the theme, I want to make sure we continue to include colors, numbers, letters, senses, foods, music, self-care and manners. I have jotted down any notes that pertain to our theme, whether free activities, book lists or online resources. I scheduled themes around free days at museums or upcoming community events. We can all get out of the house, take advantage of the great places we have in our area for free and cheap educational experiences and hopefully raise smart, upstanding citizens along the way.

The computer nerd in me sort of took over and I leaned heavily on the Internet for resources (seriously, how did people raise kids without the Internet!) and used a couple different applications to organize. My notes and lists all go into Evernote, my schedule of themes and activities are color-coded in iCal and any documents I find or create are all organized using Dropbox. I can access the notes and documents from any computer, my phone or iPad. (See, told you I am a nerd.) I know I am not the first to do this homeschool thing, and I am certainly not forging any new path. This is what works for our family, and is something we find really exciting. I am documenting it all as we go on our blog, mostly so I can look back and see what we accomplished.

So this is our home preschool, one week in, finding our way, entertaining and educating while spending as little money as possible. I have units mapped out until the end of February on a wide variety of toddler-friendly topics. I want my boys to have great experiences and continue to be excited to learn and explore. It’s amazing how fast they are approaching two, I feel like we were just driving home from the hospital with our tiny babies. Their enthusiasm to learn and my desire to stay busy will hopefully be a recipe for success. If you’re interested in seeing how we are doing as this project rolls on, you can visit the Preschool category of our Go Team Wood. We also welcome any suggestions for activities, homeschool, preschool or anything else that might help this endeavor. After all, this is new to all three of us!