Summer "School Time"

Evan's been out of preschool for two months now, and I can tell he's getting bored. Only two months to go and it'll be time for him to start up school again. I was talking with my friend Becky last week when she was cutting my hair and she was telling me she does "school time" with her kids in the morning. I got to thinking and decided that it's time we have a dedicated block of time where Evan has "school time" during the day this summer. While he does practice flashcards, colors, plays educational games, reading, etc., it's not always for a certain amount of time, everyday, without any distractions. Usually he's coloring with his sister or she's bothering him when he's trying to do something.

So I decided that while Em is napping every afternoon Evan will have a chunk of time where he focuses on school like activities. No cartoons while he's doing it, no goofing around, no playing with toys while he's working, etc. Usually it's for about 20-30 minutes and he is given lots of choices on what he can do. If he can't decided then he can ask me to pick for him. So far it's been working well, and he really seems to be enjoying it. He does things like practice writing his name better (He's been writing his name for a long time, but I'm having him work on getting the letter size smaller.), putting letters in order (He knows his ABC's, but identifying some of the letters is tricky, you know those b's & d's), practice writing numbers, practice writing words, coloring in the lines, and lots more.

Here he is today practicing putting letters & numbers in order.

Then he practiced writing the words "MOM & DAD" under the one's I wrote. He knows how to spell them if you ask him, but writing them can be tricky with d's backwards. He also wrote his name, but it's still a little big when doing it on the dry erase board.

Then he did some coloring. He worked really hard on this picture, taking his time. He tends to get in a hurry and scribble through. It might be hard to see, but he did awesome staying in the lines when coloring the sun.

Oh, note the left hand. He takes after his momma! I've got a lefty, and maybe even two. Em seems to favor her left, but not totally yet! I think if he could he'd go back to school now. Since that's not an option and we have two more months of summer, I think we'll just keep up with summer "school time."

Here's my fun fact for the day. It's too long to post on the side. Today at 5 minutes and 6 seconds after 4, it was 04:05:06 07/08/09. Get it, 4,5,6,7,8,9. Pretty neat, huh? My sister forwarded me a text with that. Of course I got busy doing stuff and missed it. I kept thinking to watch the clock and next thing I knew it was 4:14pm. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until next year when it's 05:06:07 08/09/10 for another neat time & date like that!