The Good [Kids'] Stuff: Mama School

I am so happy to be on the other side of our cross-country move! It has been a whirlwind of a summer, and I often worry if I gave our boys enough of what summer should be. But, one very high highlight was our mama school sessions (our hour together in the mornings during Nathan's naps). I have continued to frame the weekly activities around one story. I'll just record what I can remember...


Our first week was Robin Hood. One very exciting artistic development for Peter is his emerging figural objects--he draws wonderful people, like Maid Marian and Prince John shown here as puppets.
We also spent some time talking about coins, since Prince John is always counting his coins. I happened to have some old silver dollers and Susan B.'s in my purse (found when I went through my old childhood boxes at my parents) and showed them to Peter. I threw in some foreign coins for added excitement, and that made me feel justified in keeping them. And it is nice to see the old cintimes, pounds, and lire from pre-Euro Europe. Do they still use pounds? I always get mixed up there. I also had an old magnetic dart board and Peter and I had a archery duel. There were no fatalities.

We had to spend a week talk about the book What People Do All Day. Does anyone else love this book? We are all about Busytown.

Here is Farmer Alfalfa's farm:


Here is Stitches the Tailor's newly built house:
Peter and I built this popsicle-stick house while my brother was here and I sadly told Peter that I couldn't find any toothpicks for the windows. After my brother left our place to return home, I saw these little sticks that he had made for us out of extra popsicle sticks. I thought that was so sweet. Don't they look great?


We spent a week talking about the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I had some activities planned (Bridge building! Horns and their many uses! Troll home design!). However, we ended up spending all of our time on these awesome huge pictures of the characters
The artist with his work
Middle Billy Goat
Really, this is the scariest troll I've ever seen. Check out the face:

(so blurry! Oops) This might give me nightmares!



Biggest billy goat. I am responsible for the zigzags.
The face!


We have also been busy at the library, hitting them up for any extra craft activity they have going on. Here is Peter's skunk and rainbow fish.

As much as I'm looking forward to preschool, and for a moment to finally unpack those last boxes in the basement and do some sewing, I have really loved this time with Peter. I'm hoping to continue our morning sessions on the off-days of preschool. Two mornings a week seems perfect to me.