A certain 3 1/2 year old person has decided that school is for him too and is now arriving at the school table full of expectation and ready to work.  O…kay.  So I’m ramping up on the preschool action and we’re all loving it.  Whenever Neirin does anything he does it full throttle so he’s suddenly recognising letters, numbers, patterns and generally being a clever little bean all over the place.

I already have the preschool curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler (it’s ridiculously good value) but I want to make sure that we’re not all paper based.  So I’ve started researching different approaches and have pinned about 4 million activities on Pinterest.  I’m really drawn to the montessori style activities for Neirin, they are complete, simple and allow him to develop skills in a natural way.  I also like the minimal likelihood of finding the tray stapled to the cat and painted red.  This is the sort of thing I have to worry about.

For this tray I mixed coloured and white beans in a container, then put a couple of each type in the other bowls.  Without being asked Neirin sorted the beans by colour using first the strawberry huller (encouraging the pincer grip) and then a large spoon.  Eventually he found neither suited him and so finished sorting them ‘with my fingers‘, he happily sorted all of the beans into the two bowls and not a single one ended up attached to the cat.  Perfection.

I’m hoping to do a different tray or sensory activity for him each day as well as using both paper based and ipad activities.  I’ve found some lovely letter tracing and word building apps that really compliment all of the other work we are doing and use similar montessori methodologies.   I think the key to keeping Neirin interested is variety and using simple things we already have around the house will keep me from becoming overwhelmed.  It’s going to be busy at the school table from now on; just the way I like it.