Just a few scant weeks into the beginning of Mommie School/ Pre-Homeschooling Noah I came to a realization.  I was waaay too overplanned for what I was wanting to do with him.  Worked into my schedule were two week and one week themes, which made sense during the planning phase of summer.  I wanted to have one theme per alphabet letter and follow a  lot of the Tot School and other online curriculum for toddlers was guiding me to.

However, with only one child  and the abundance of  activities and games available out there, I was finding it hard to print it all, ready it all and to keep Noah's attention to simple do the number of good activities out there during our daily time down in the family room.  So my choice was to either forget some activities or forget some themes: I opted for the latter.

Not that the information out there on Tot School and other sites is bad, but for us I really wanted to opt for a more relaxed plan for this special time.  I want Noah to know that the time I spend teaching him is, from the beginning, a time for him to explore and have fun, and that I am willing to learn at his pace and in the way that suits us best.  I want to be spending more time with him and less time planning and cutting and laminating (although I do love my laminator that the Hubs got me for my birthday a ridiculous amount.)

So we found ourselves with a second week of Apples in my revised plan, and we had a wonderful time outside playing in the apples at Minnetonka Orchards with a great group I am involved with from Meetup.com.  It is a haul from up here in the north metro of the Twin Cities, but it was a wonderful getaway from our daily routine and Noah loved the trees, the train play-structure as well as the animals in the small farm area.





We rounded out our week's activities with one of the classic preschool apple activities- apple painting.  Noah used the halved apples for stamping, but actually enjoyed using a brush to paint the apples themselves more than anything.  Noah is still somewhat phobic when it comes to getting his hands sticky, so I like to allow him the freedom to use a brush or use his hands when it is time to get messy. 

(This is also one of the last activities we did on our old breakfast table that we recently replaced.  Chair recovering and table refinishing posts coming soon!) :)