Our Regular Life: Afterschooling

     I always dreamt of the day when I would get to plan fun activities and crafts with my children, and now it is finally here! I feel like Laura took a long time to get to the point of enjoying activities I planned (and sometimes she still isn't into them), but when we do get to sit down together and work on something, it's really great. I am in my element here.

     Afterschooling is a sort of compromise between homeschooling and... not homeschooling. It's just about right for me (who, if we're being honest, can use a mental break from being the mom of a two-year-old while she is at school, but who also really enjoys planning toddler crafts and activities to help said two-year-old develop her mind). It's really the best of both worlds.

     Laura's preschool has weekly themes to work with, which makes it even easier for me to come up with ideas to complement what she is learning (with much thanks to Pinterest). Last week they focussed on apples, and this week, fall. Here are some of the things we got up to:

Crock pot apple sauce. Sooo yummy.


Apple sorting and counting tree

'A' is for apple!
We've been trying to follow along with the letters they are working on each week at school, too.

We also made apple prints, but apparently I forgot to take a picture.

We made them into a birthday card for Grandma.

This week we went for a 'hike' along the trail to look for fall treasures.
Laura's favourite was the "milk leaf" (aka milkweed pod).
We gathered them up and brought them home to make some prints with.

(our prints)

I would have preferred to go to an actual forest, but I don't know of any good spots around here.
We're planning on going for a real hike up at Grandpa's next weekend.

We took some books on fall out of the library,
and talked about how the geese fly South so they don't get too cold in the winter.
We also talked about how squirrels gather up nuts and hide them so they have food all winter.