"School"

We made the decision this year to not put Cooper into Asilo (Italian preschool) for several reasons. She will be doing a couple other things throughout the year, soccer right now, which I am sure you will eventually see pictures of, but she is so smart, and loves learning so much, that when I ran across a magazine article about "home preschooling" it sounded like a great idea. So once a week we will have a school day, and I will be teaching the kiddos about a different subject each time.

We started with money, partly because we have been working with both Zeke and Cooper on counting, and partly because we had a ton of change that I've been meaning to get rid of, and I already had a trip to the bank planned for later in the day to pay a bill :).

Here we are, ready to start. Notice that we have two Buzz Lightyears joining us as well. We don't really do much around here without at least one Buzz in tow.


Counting quarters into piles of four:

Sorting a pile of coins:

Payton is so helpful :) :

Each of the kids had a coloring page:


(I know that picture is a little dark, but the look on her face is so funny!)

Cooper sorting all the money into piles. We then talked about how many of each one it takes to equal one dollar, and then counted them into piles of one dollar.

And finally we bagged them and took them to the bank. We talked about how many dollars were in each bag, and then the teller gave us a bill that was that same amount. Cooper got to carry the bills and pay for our dinner at the food court with them, which gave us the opportunity to talk about getting change back.

I gotta say, the first day went really well, Zeke surprised me with his sharp little mind, and Cooper has been begging every day since then to learn about more stuff.