What's In the Box Wednesday

Olivia is 4 years 1 month.

So, yes it has been a very long time since I've posted anything about Olivia's "school" time, but yes we are still having this time together. It hasn't been very structured with all the traveling we've done, but even with that we managed to complete some very fun activities all about bugs, which we absolutely loved. I was a little surprised at how much Olivia enjoyed learning about bugs. I bought her a couple of tubes filled with bugs which she played with constantly, we read our bug books over and over and used her bugs to reenact them, and the highlight was the butterfly garden where we watched caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Now that we are home we've been more structured. One of my favorite parts of our new structure is this Raising Rock Stars Preschool program, which you can see in action here. I don't have any pictures of our own, but it's a fabulous way to keep me on track of giving God the first fruits of our day. It's basically just a short Bible time with the kids right after breakfast before we head up to our "school" room.

For our actual "school" time, I have this new setup in our office/school room. I wish I could say it's a completely original idea of mine, but I actually copied it from one of my favorite blogs. It's still a little bit of a work in progress, but both Olivia and I are loving it!

• The flag: we start our time together with a prayer and saying the pledge of allegiance.
• The bulletin board: displays last weeks and current activities, poems, and calendar.
• Top book shelf: this week's books, game, finished work tray, and other items too big for the boxes.
• The boxes: #1-6 are filled with preschool activities and must be completed in order before moving on to the starred boxes filled with open ended toys she can choose to or not to play with. The numbers/stars are velcroed on and Olivia removes the number as she completes the box.

Our calendar time, reading time, preschool work, open ended toy time, and game time all takes one hour. Though we don't play the game every day. Usually the last 15 minutes are devoted to either the game or the toys...depending on what Olivia wants to do.

So, this new system is working great so far!! I'm a little surprised to be honest, and I don't think she would have responded to it so well even a month ago.

This is what I had the boxes filled with for "school" this morning:

• Box 1: Itty Bitty Bookworm activity - basket weaving. I cut slits in the brown construction paper and then Olivia takes 1" wide strips and weaves them in and out.
  

• Box 2: Handwriting Without Tears activity - play doh letter "T" and number "2."
• Box 3: Handwriting Without Tears activity - coloring and pre-writing in workbook.

• Box 4: Letter of the Week activity: Turtle puzzle (Velcro backed to stick to flannel board).
• Box 5: Number stencils: putting numbers 1 - 30 in order.
• Box 6: Melissa & Doug bear puzzle: Practice dressing skills.
  

• Star Box 1: automoblox, counting bears, and rings from Twister Hopscotch

• Star Box 2: Pottery Barn Kids sizing puzzle.
• Star Box 3: Leap Frog letter/word game.

Now that I've gone on about how great this new set up is, you might be wondering where the pictures are of Olivia's Wednesday activities. Well, while this setup is working great on many different levels, today was a day I chose to be flexible (one day last week Olivia wanted to play instead of do school, so we played then too). Our morning today was running along smoothly, and I was getting ready to move the kids into the classroom when Olivia had a sudden, first time inspiration to really involve Isaiah in her play time. It was a moment I didn't want to interrupt, so I didn't. The preschool activities will still be there tomorrow, but her desire to play with Isaiah may not. Instead of working through our boxes like we normally do after breakfast, we made a huge mess both in Isaiah's and in Olivia's room playing.

Isaiah was absolutely thrilled about this much attention from his big sis, and while Olivia didn't stay devoted to him the entire time, we all had a blast!