First Day of "School"

So here's the deal. Although many of our friends are starting preschool this fall, I never imagined sending my kids to school so early. The way I see it, they are going to be in a school environment for at least 15 years. As two year olds with a Mommy who LOVES being home with them, they have a great opportunity to learn, play, and grow in some unique ways before they hit the school grounds. Not to mention that I would have to go back to work full-time to afford sending them to preschool part-time. I went to school long enough to know that this doesn't compute.

So I've been really excited to plan ways for us to spend our time supporting their interests and introducing them to new things that I think they'll love. To that end, we are continuing our Mommy and me class, which starts on Friday. We also have a fitness class and a music class. We've been doing the fitness class for a month now and they love it. They know many of their major muscles and often make their stuffed toys and dinosaurs go through some pretty rigorous exercise routines.

But the most exciting thing is our Homeschool Preschool. I'm very lucky to have a good friend named Elayne who is the mom of awesome twin girls three weeks older than the boys. She is a total do-er. I often talk about ideas, but Elayne makes things happen. So from her encouragement, this idea was born. We were also lucky to find out that another great mom with great kids was waiting a while on the whole preschool thing as well. So Megan, Elayne and I began our own project - the Homeschool Preschool, or what my boys call MommySchool.

The idea is simply to get our six kids together once a week and offer them a morning of learning and play in a more social and structured setting. The mommies make the lesson plans and teach the classes, giving us the ability to teach our kids what WE want to teach them and the opportunity to enjoy watching and helping them learn. The kids get to work with other kids and learn from other adults.

So today was Day One. I think it went great! The boys definitely enjoyed themselves. We sang songs, told a story, made an art project, and even formed our own spider web! We also spent a lot of time trying to get the kids to stay in the circle rather than run off and play with toys. But that's to be expected. We were all really proud of the great attitudes the kids had and how nicely they played together, listened to one another and shared.

If you ask my guys, the best part of the day was sitting in the empty ball pit and having the Mommies dump all the balls over the whole class. Let's consider that a lesson on gravity.