"I do it, work too!"

I am making an effort to become less of a pack rat and not hang onto every one of my kids' drawings and worksheets as they grow up. So I have decided to scan in a few pages and record the kids' learning progress for posterity's sake. As such feel free to simply skim through this post looking at cute little kid handwriting and come back next time for some fun updates.

In an attempt to balance Corbin's desire to attend preschool with his friends and learn new things with my desire to not spend a lot of money or have a committed schedule yet, I started doing school work with the kids on a daily (well semi daily) basis this past fall. He usually enjoys it, plus then I feel better about letting him watch TV in the afternoons while Makelle naps so I can get things done around the house.

Depending on my ambition level on any given day it ranges from reading books to elaborate projects with accompanying themed songs and stories. Most days are just middle of the road though and we do a math and writing worksheet then work on reading a book together.

He's a smart kid and aside from being able to add coin sums (2 nickles and 3 pennies equals 13 cents) he has basically finished two of the kindergarten level books. (Though his handwriting skill is still that of a 4-year-old, if not worse, so we have to modify some pages.) So yesterday I started him on a first grade one. There is no way he can do the more advanced pages yet, but he made quick work of some of the pages at the beginning.




Since Makelle typically likes doing whatever Corbin does, she insisted on "I do it, work too!" So her daily work became playing with her shape sorter or having books about colors read to her, doing those little toddler wooden puzzles or coloring. Yesterday she got a hold of one of Corbin's older preschool wipe off workbooks and a dry erase marker and started coloring on it. Just to make her feel cool I told her to draw a line to the other slipper that matches and to my astonishment she actually did!



So I helped her finish up the page and then today we printed off our own matching worksheets so now Makelle does her work everyday too :)

And let me tell you, she is pretty darn proud of it!