Preschool and Tyler's Creativity

Tyler is completely obsessed with two things: numbers and coloring. Put them together and color-by-number anything is his favorite right now. In fact, I found some color-by-number church-related pictures and he sat very quietly and watched Conference doing those most of the time. He's learning how to read the color names, but the last few months I have just been coloring the color key for him and then he's off.

Paige always likes to color if Tyler is. She is my best at staying in the lines this young - I think she watches what everyone else does. How does she pick up on every little detail? 

I recently made Paige a calendar book like Tyler's and she loves it. It has shapes and colors in it to work on - and she begs for it whenever her brothers are working up to the table.  

I also keep pipe cleaner and beads in her book and she sits and threads them all on. Sometimes several times. She has the best fine motor skills of my children at this age and loves doing things like this.

These animals are my new best friends. I knew I should've just brought animals into the equation and it would all sort itself out. We have been doing adding and subtracting with Tyler - I'm telling you, it's all him and his number obsession. So to help with the concept past the ten fingers he has on his little hands, I got him counters - we have used beads and popsicle sticks and little cubes. He would do it fine, but sometimes get either frustrated or bored - and now I think it was just because it didn't seem fun enough to him! 

I ordered these animal erasers a few weeks ago to play a game with and instead, finally pulled them out to use as math counters. HOORAY! It has been the best week ever. So, he's still begging to work on math, but he's completely content to sit for...up to 1 1/2 hours while adding and subtracting. (And I'm begging him to stop!) It's been so great! 

After he did all his flashcards, he then counted them all in their groups and we wrote those numbers down and then we added all the animals up together and wrote that number down. He's really starting to get the hang of how the number thing works and counting animals was just combining two favorites.  

Which now leads me into the latest and greatest book/movie around our house. I read this book to Trenton when he was around 3-4. I just finished reading it to Tyler. Tyler LOVED it. And then I showed him the movie (even though we own several movies, I don't think my kids know about many of them). It was watched or begged for every day for about 5 days straight. Multiple times a day. It's still asked for, but we're breaking down to every other day now. :) This week I have had to also: hang up all sorts of drawings of the characters of Charlotte's Web that Tyler has drawn, and found several color-by-number pictures to print of the characters. If Tyler isn't working on numbers or coloring, then he's drawing. Which maybe would be in the same catagory, except Paige can color, but not really draw.