Preschool ~ Fine Motor

~Smiley is currently 40 months old~

Fine Motor Skills:

We focused a lot on fine motor skills this past week. Here are a few shots of what we did. The kids put spaghetti in a shaker type container with small holes. A parmesan container or sugar shaker would work equally well... They both loved this.

They worked on a cute screw-type toy that Smiley's sister got for Christmas. It's still a little difficult for her to actually screw the pieces together, but her brother enjoyed it a lot ;)

I was planning on doing some more writing and pre-writing practice, but Smiley was not interested. I would say that hand-writing is definitely the area that is most challenging for him. He is very young, so I am not pushing anything right now. I really just want him to enjoy our school time together :)

Reading Skills:

We worked on our ABC puzzle this week and Smiley is really good about sequencing the letters while singing the song ;)

We do lots and lots of read-alouds every day. It's a huge part of our daily routine and has been since Smiley was an infant. We typically read a few books first thing in the morning (while the kids have their milk). We then read some more before naps and occasionally in the afternoon. We always read 3 books before bedtime (both kids, on the couch) and then one more book in Smiley's room. He has been much more interactive while reading and asks lots of questions and asks the meaning of words if it is one that he does not know. I think all the reading we do has a lot to do with his great vocabulary!!

We picked up our BOB books and Hooked on Phonics books a couple of times this week as well. I am not very disciplined with this yet. Smiley really has an interest in reading and is often trying to sound out words, so I really want to get better about this and make reading part of our routine!

German...

This is probably the area I have focused on most the past couple of weeks. Smiley's German skills have improved dramatically lately. I have really made an effort to only speak German with him and his sister. He understands most of what I am saying and is starting to also answer me in German :) It is really tough to speak a foreign language consistently when living in an English speaking environment, but I really want him to have the gift of being fluent in two languages, so I am trying my best to stick with it!