Loving School, Hating Busywork

Pin It I am having a hard time not being a hater of preschool. I have scoured too many blogs where I see moms creating lapbooks, doing unit studies and 90 different things with play dough. Honestly, I don't really care if other moms want to do that. It is all about your motives, but it seems so crazy to me. My kids love to play, read books and anything to do with learning. I want to keep it that way. I want them to LOVE to learn and not have to sit at my dining room table for an hour until they get a concept right.

"Cut, my man, CUT"

I just think it is so wrong to evaluate a 4 years old on how well they can cut or color. Do we think they will never learn to cut? Will they be sixteen and have not learned to draw straight line? If they really love books and when you read to them they will be motivated to learn their ABC's.

That being said, we ARE doing school this year. Not because I think they need to meet certain standards, but mostly because they are kids and they get bored and start bugging each other if they are left to play all day. We need to have a schedule or mom and everyone else struggles. When we move from thing to thing it keep the day interesting and gives us some sort of structure. I want my boys to know how to sit quietly and play and I have a ton of fun things that I would love to do with them.

We start our school time asking, "why do we do school?". The answer is to love God, to praise God, and to obey God. If we are not doing that then it is pointless. The main focus of our school time is the Word of God. I know my kids will learn to cut and color, but they will not know the word of God with out some active memorization and study. We are memorizing scripture and reading bible stories as much as we can!

So... here are a few pics from the first day of school!

 Recess! Except the dress code was very informal, if not, nonexistent. 

"MOM, we were making mud." Of course you were. 

Reading about Adam and Eve and coloring... or swording...