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With all of this computer virus nonsense I haven't written many preschool posts lately.  But we've been busy nearly every weekday morning gettin' our brains fired up!  The boys just love preschool time.  Their desks signify a special place and a special time of day for them.  I am continually amazed at their ability to sit and focus on an activity.  With as busy as they are (and knowing full well that 50% of their genetic make-up is bursting at the chromosomal seams with ADHD!), I often worry about how they will do in a real school setting somewhere down the road.  Yet each and every day they surprise me with their ability to get totally lost in an activity.  And then they'll turn around and scale the refrigerator.  But hey- I'll take any glimmer of hope I can get.  I may just have to start coming up with excuses for why my kids must complete their worksheets in kindergarten while hanging upside down from the ceiling fan in the classroom.  Better yet- I'll just ask my mother in law for those...  I know she had a lot of explaining to do when Jon and his brother Brad were in school!

Working with them on their preschool activities has also shed some light on an unexpected area- the boys individuality.  I know this is going to sound strange, even to my friends with twins-identical twins at that- but our boys are so similar it is eerie.  All of my friends with twins tell us that theirs are night and day.  Even a friend of mine who had mo-mo twins- they don't get anymore genetically similar than that without being conjoined- says that hers are two totally different people.  But ours are truly and honestly one in the same.  Their physical developments- from rolling over to crawling to walking to cutting teeth- were so close, if not occurring on the exact same day, that it was just pain eerie.  They have always had the same personalities, the same likes and dislikes, the same interests.  They have always wanted to play the same things.  At the same times.  So its been hard for us to see them as individuals at times.  Often really.   But preschool has been the first thing that has helped me see true differences in them.  They are subtle differences, but to me they are glaring- and welcome- when compared to everything else that is so much the same.  Caleb likes to write.  He loves to trace letters and takes pride in following the lines.  He likes to try writing them on his own, though he often gets distracted when one of his letters turns out to look like something else and then he gets lost in a drawing of that unintended object.  But he isn't too into reading.  He likes to study the pictures and its difficult to draw his attention to the words I'm pointing at.  When he does glance over to the words, he'll often know the ones I'm pointing out- but I only know if he truly knows them if he answers before his brother does.  Matthew on the other hand, is practically reading.  He loves to memorize his sight words and is proud to read them when I pretend not to know those words in our stories.  And if I point to a word that he hasn't memorized yet, he can sound it out.  He can sound out just about anything now- with a little help on the tricky vowels.  I had no idea how truly absurd the English language is until I started teaching a 3 year old to read!  Today a woman stopped and stared for about 5 minutes as Matthew read a good 1/3 of a volcano book to me at Barnes and Noble.  She didn't even pretend that she wasn't staring.  The kid is really leaning how to read.  But getting him to trace letters- you'd have better luck milking a bull.  It just fascinates me to see how their minds truly are their own, and I don't know if I would have ever noticed if we weren't working together on their preschool at home.  I'm just so grateful that I get to be the first to see these things instead of a real teacher  :)

Anyways- today we started with a quick calendar lesson.  We have been working on a days of the week song and a months of the year song, so we practiced both of those- identifying the day, date, and month.  We did a crayon rubbing of the leaves we collected at Greenfield Village yesterday (which just happened to be the most beautiful day at the village I have ever seen!).  They were just amazed when the leaves appeared to come through the paper! Then we read Curious George and the Pizza Party, keeping an eye out for our new sight words of the day "at" "as" and "and".  We played a fun memory game with our Melissa and Doug pizza set where I order a pizza with different ingredients and the boys have to remember my order and make my pizza.  We spent some time with our sight word board practicing our new words, then reviewed the flashcards of all the sight words we have learned. All in all- we spent 50 minutes on our learning activities today.  Well, 50 minutes at home.  Then we packed up and went to the bookstore where we spent another hour and a half devouring all sorts of books!  But I demonstrated great self-restraint in not buying any.  I wish I could say the same for the pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting we made last night  ;)


Leaf Rubbings

Cal hard at work

Teamwork!
I love how they'll help each other!

Making pizzas like Curious George