Many families have started a new school year with all things running smoothly.\u00a0 Some families are wondering about the preschoolers.\u00a0 Should they have a plan?\u00a0 Do they need a plan?\u00a0 The answer can vary from day to day and be different for each child in your preschool age group.\u00a0 We have developed a plan for our little ones\u00a0that we use when needed.\u00a0 Sometimes the little ones are content with their toys and have a great play day during the school day.\u00a0 Other times they come asking for “twin time”.<\/p>\n
We call it twin time (named after our twin daughters)\u00a0but the name really doesn’t matter.\u00a0 I’ll explain how we use it in our home and then you take the parts you like along with your own inspirations and develop something that works for your family.\u00a0 We’ve been doing twin time for several years and have used a variety of subjects such as:\u00a0 music, craft, religion, story-time, learning, outside play, playtime, and you can add more.\u00a0\u00a0I then assign\u00a0each of my older children to a subject.\u00a0 In our family there are usually about 4 or\u00a05 older kids ready to have a fun time\u00a0during their twin time.\u00a0 We rotate the subjects among the older kids about every 2 months because all the big kids usually want a turn to do craft time, plus it keeps fresh ideas and approaches to utilize during that special subject\u00a0time.<\/p>\n
So what happens during twin time?\u00a0 My older child takes a timer and sets it for 25 minutes.\u00a0 During that time they have fun with the little ones\u00a0focusing on the appointed subject.\u00a0 During craft time for example they might do some painting, make something out of Popsicle sticks and construction paper, or use yarn, glue, glitter, foam, colored tape,\u00a0and other supplies to make a mask, puppet, or decoration.\u00a0 When the timer beeps, the timer is reset for 5 minutes which is clean up time.<\/p>\n
The older kids get a break from school and spend some sibling time with the littler kids and the little kids have fun.\u00a0 Some days all the subjects are covered, other days the little kids are playing with their toys and then will decide they would like to have some twin time.\u00a0 Usually if one of my older kids is done with their school work or almost finished I will let them take the first turn, other times an older child simply would like a break and volunteers.<\/p>\n
One of the key points is preparedness.<\/strong>\u00a0 Before anyone leaves with a timer they have an idea about what they will be doing.\u00a0 We make boxes that are filled with ideas for each subject and add to these boxes throughout the year as we come across clearance items, gifts, or ideas in magazines or newspapers.\u00a0 This time can be very simple or can get very enlivened.\u00a0 My big kids thought it would be fun to have weekly themes.\u00a0 So they made a list of themes for each week of our school year and focused their twin time around that theme.<\/p>\n For example “At the Beach” could consist of reading books about characters that take trips to the beach for story-time.\u00a0 During craft time the little kids can make\u00a0clear bottles become a\u00a0beautiful table centerpiece\u00a0with layers of colored sand.\u00a0 At playtime they can pretend they are packing for a beach trip by getting their gear together.\u00a0 They then\u00a0put on sunglasses and lay out their\u00a0beach towel and play games with an inflatable beach ball.\u00a0 What about religion?\u00a0 The mercy of Jesus is usually described as an ocean.\u00a0 Talk about the ocean, show pictures from books and show how much water is on the earth with the use of maps and globes then do an experiment.\u00a0 Fill a container with water and get an eyedropper and take a drop from your container and put it into an empty container.\u00a0 The little kids will delight it doing something with their hands and getting a turn to put drop after drop into the unfilled container.\u00a0 After a while they will get the idea that God’s mercy is very great and more than we can imagine.<\/p>\n What I like best.\u00a0<\/strong> The little kids are learning and having fun and developing strong bonds with their older siblings.\u00a0 My older children are loving their younger siblings and learning how to teach and have patience.\u00a0 We do have a simple rule that the little kids must listen and follow directions or they can be excluded from that twin time activity.\u00a0 It happened in the beginning a few times that a little one was sitting upstairs doing nothing while mom graded papers or helped another child.\u00a0 My little ones quickly learned that they would rather mind than miss out on the activity.<\/p>\n What about Mom?\u00a0 Well I don’t have an official twin time.\u00a0 I am usually the first stop in the showing off of the craft, color page, or getting to hear the exciting activity that just occurred.\u00a0 And when your a mom time with your little ones can really be called anytime.<\/p>\n Put your little ones in\u00a0the high chair for craft time.\u00a0 This helps your older child keep things under control since they can easily remove finger paint or other messy substances easily and not worry about it getting everywhere.<\/p>\n We also have a set of small old t-shirts we use as smocks that can get messy so their daily wear doesn’t get stained.<\/p>\n Very small kids will not always stay still to hear a story or do an activity so train your big kids to go with the flow.\u00a0 A story-time can turn into reading one page from 10 different books.\u00a0 Sitting on the floor singing songs can turn into a parade singing around the room.<\/p>\n If you have a wider age span in preschoolers (an 18 month old and a 4 year old) consider having separate fun times for each of them or have 2 older children assigned to the subject to help their partner at their age level.\u00a0 There are many ways to work it out with your specific situation.\u00a0 Even coming up with new subjects that appeal to both of them can be an option.\u00a0 How about snack time?\u00a0 (You can get fun and fancy with this one too!)<\/p>\n Remember to create something that works for your specific family and keep changing it as your family changes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many families have started a new school year with all things running smoothly.\u00a0 Some families are wondering about the preschoolers.\u00a0 Should they have a plan?\u00a0 Do they need a plan?\u00a0 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7,80],"tags":[92],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7urq8-e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}EXTRA TIPS for very young ones:<\/h2>\n