We concluded our week with a family trip to the pumpkin patch and some pumpkin carving back at home. Next week we will be moving on to the letter "L" with a focus on leaves. 
 
I am finding it challenging to hold Jake's attention. Today he made it through three activities before he abandoned me for his cars. Although this is a success I must say he only spent about 2-3 minutes on each activity. First we looked through the "P" box again. Next, we made past necklaces which he really wasn't too interested in so I made one with and put mine on. This encouraged him to finish his. He wore his for about a minute. I brought out the Do a Dot P sheets from Home School Creations, and we used googly eyes today which he thought was funny then he did one with pom pom balls and then he declared he was going to go play cars. So we took a break.

While Jake was playing with his cars the phone rang. My being on the phone caused Jake to need my attention so he brought me his Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater book. I hung up and read him the book and then we did a counting activity and pre-writing activity with his CARS sheets from 1+1+1=1. Then we went back to playing with his cars.
 
Today Jake and I went to our Mommy and me preschool class at the Adult school. He was a little grumpy (because I would not get his bucket of cars down for him in the morning before we left) so he didn't really want to participate too much. Mostly he played with the cars. He did actually do a spider web art activity today and at one point he did spend a minute or two at the sticker table putting some stickers on a pumpkin.
 
Today Jake and I had our Preschool Co-op with the MOMS Club group. The kids had quite a bit of fun. I forgot to take pictures. We had several crafts- a spooky ghost, a spider, and a mummy along with painting and stickers. We had a spooky sensory bin with all sorts of creepy creatures, a play doh table with Pumpkin Spice play doh, and a few math activities as well (the pumpkin counting activity from yesterday and a cookie sheet magnet counting activity). We read Spooky Wheels on the Bus and explored the "P" box which the kids seemed to enjoy. Here are a few pictures of the activities themselves.  See Printables/ Resources to see links for these activities. I was motivated by several activities I saw on the 1+1+1=1 site and the Home School Creations site.

Later in the aftrnoon we partook in a kid's service project with the MOMS Club. we went to visit the Care Center for a costume parade.
 
This morning when I went int o say Good Morning to Jake, the first thing he said to me was, "Are we going to look for things that start with "P" and put them in the box?"  I explained that he had to wait until after I dropped his sister off at school. (Some of the things in the box were hers and I didn't want her to be upset that we "took" her stuff.  So later we began with the box. Jake loved it... for all of four minutes. Then it was on to the next activity counting pumpkins. We rolled the die then counted out that many pumpkins, then on to PBS Kids to do some "Fair Shares" with Curious George and then a second math activity with CUrious George where you locate the number, the word and that number of objects, then we read Panda Bear, Panda Bear and we did a Panda Bear art project. Next I made a puzzle out of a CARS plate. I pushed a little to get him to try tracing but lasted about a minute so I conceded. We did it all in about 25 minutes. I was a bit exhausted from switching from one activity to another every 4-5 minutes.  I took  a break, Jake played with his cars for awhile. Finally, we ended with a science lesson about Popcorn.

 
 I knew something was missing from what I was doing at home with Jake.
He really misses going to school. Currently we do a one day CO-op preschool program at the Adult school. It is developmental in nature and I want something more academic. Several weeks ago while helping to organize a preschool co-op for our MOMS group I found an abundance of sites on the internet that talked about tot school.  My favorite was 1+1+1=1. At last I found what I was looking for.  Many of these sites have their own blogs so I thought... Why not? Here is our first week. We are focusing on the theme of pumpkins and the letter "P". Jake knows his shapes and colors and though he can recite numbers in order he is just beginning to actually count (1 to 1 correspondence). He is having difficulty holding crayons and pencils correctly as well so we will work on his fine motor skills and dexterity. As a fifth grade teacher I have seen too many times young boys who do not have the fine motor skills for writing at age 10.  Here are some photos from Monday.