Works For us Wednesday: Preschool

I, like a lot of other moms out there, want to give my children as much education as possible before they actually start kindergarten.  I am amazed at how many preschool ideas there are on the web and wish I had time to do every single one of them.  The truth is that I don't have time to do even a portion of them and I feel like I don't really even have the time to do anything overly formal as far as preschool goes at home with my girls.  I have been doing some form of preschool with Small Fry since she was 2 but as she gets older and involved in more things and I have more children it seems to get harder and harder.  I am not a home school mom...that is for sure, but I have finally found a fairly simple solution that works for us to get some preschool in each day.  It started when I grabbed a few flash cards to review with the girls one day while we ate breakfast.  They loved reviewing their letters in a very informal setting and asked if we could do it again at lunch time.  I was surprised but said sure.  And for the last 2 months that is what we have done everyday during breakfast and lunch 5 days a week-preschool.  Sometimes I think they will get tired of it and don't get anything out but as I sit down with the girls they say, "mom what about preschool."  We do flash cards, I ask them to spell things, we review their address and phone numbers, we review the days of the week and the months of the year, we count by tens and count things on flash cards.  We sometimes do rhyming words or play I spy.  Sometimes I ask one to quiz the other.  Sometimes after we eat we sit a little longer so I can have them write something or do some fine motor activities.  We get to eat our food, we bond because we are interacting the whole time and they are learning and having fun doing it.  It totally works for us.  It is one of the greatest ideas I feel that I have ever had.  I look forward to eating meals with my girls because of how much they love that preschool time.