Tents, kids, bears, Oh My!

Our tent arrived in the mail last week. Friday evening Pat took a stab at setting it up. It seems huge! But for our growing family -- I'm sure it will be perfect :-) As we sat and watched Daddy put it up, the kids came out of the woodwork...as I predicted. It brought smiles and glee to all who happened upon the tent. As soon as it was finished being pitched, it was full of giggly, wiggly children! What fun! Pat plans to test it out this Friday with Jacob and Hannah while Luke and I are in Ohio for the weekend. I'm sure we will have many more giggly moments in this tent.

We Hired a Cleaning Man

He even gets down on his hands and knees to clean the floor ;-)

And he loves his job!

Jacob's Preschool

Christ United Methodist Preschool

A view of the classroom - the children are playing at centers in this picture

Today was my last day to be the parent helper at Jacob's preschool. I can't believe he's almost ready to graduate from preschool! 3 weeks until graduation!

Jacob playing at the dramatic play center

I brought my camera along today so I could take some action shots of Jacob at school. I also wanted to get another picture of Jacob and his best friend Tyler. They love to play together! As I was helping the teacher get the craft ready this morning, I observed Jacob and Tyler playing together at centers. They started out in the library first and read books together. Then they worked on a puzzle together. And then headed to dramatic play. Jacob has been telling us that he wants us to move to a house by Tyler so he can go to kindergarten with Tyler.

Jacob and Tyler

I also met with Jacob's teacher for a conference today after school and Jacob is on track to start kindergarten in the fall. She was impressed with his counting abilities -- it's not that I have been drilling him with numbers/math, but rather his countless timeouts have paid off in some regard - he has to count to 60 at the end before he can get up. He can breeze through those numbers in his sleep. ;-)

Circle Time - the children made Zebra masks today during art and Ms. Christina had all the children wear their zebra masks to the circle for circle time. She had them look at one another with their masks on and asked them - "do any of you look exactly alike?" And she explained how each zebra in the wild has a different pattern of stripes. The kids had fun making and wearing their masks and they learned a good lesson about being a unique creation of God!

What a blessing to be able to share this time with Jacob! I'm glad we chose to enroll him in a co-op preschool. I have enjoyed being in the classroom and watching him interact with his friends and teacher at school. And he loves having me there too! I hope I'll be able to volunteer at his kindergarten next year.

Hannah will be attending the same preschool this fall but will have a different teacher. She is going to attend the M/W morning 3-year old class.