The last few days (or so..) Zelda has been asking to do "pre-school". I think it is stemming from people asking her if she is in pre-school/kindergarten almost everywhere we go. It seems to be expected of kids her age. I just don't see the point for us. She already knows so many of the things that are expected of kids entering school and I have another year and a half to work on the rest. They both get to play with other kids at Kid Spot (unstructured) and local programs like Rock and Read (structured).  So, because of her interest we did a quick impromptu pre-school lesson on counting and number recognition. Things tend to work a lot better with her if she is the one who asks for it. I have tried to do pre-school type activities before and she always stops after a few minuets. I'm hoping this is the start of more regular lesson times.

What we did:

I drew numbers in boxes on a paper and gave them some stickers to count. Prep time about 2 minuets (including locating paper and marker)

Zelda got impatient with the stickers so she used cereal instead. She counted out the cereal correctly on her own till the number 7. By 8 she had lost interest in being careful but I reminded her that when she goes to school her teacher will expect her to finish activities even if she doesn't really like them. With that motivation she finished with some help and encouragement from me. Zorro was happy practicing his fine motor skills with his stickers. Which up until recently he really didn't like to play with cause they were to sticky :p 

Later we made cookies, I packed them during quiet time, and then brought them to a few of our neighbours. We were thankful for the short break in FREEZING (-25) weather! Even though most people weren't home we still had a lot of fun.