Brain Dump - Munchkin

My planning for Munchkin is MUCH different than that for Monkey and Monster, primarily because Munchkin is not ACTUALLY in school... physically or as far as the Department of Education is concerned.  IF we had chosen to send the other two boys to public school, Munchkin would still be at home with me this year - NOT in a preschool.

HERE GOES NOTHING!!

Munchkin: 2 years old ~ Preschool

I feel that at this young age learning is best done through PLAY!  A child's "work" is the time they spend playing... it is NOT a waste of their time, nor the thing they can do once their learning is finished, rather they are one and the same.

So I strive to allow all three of my boys to have a lot of free play but particularly Munchkin.  Sometimes I will direct his play, and often he will take part in some directed play his brothers have created, but it is also vitally important that he have LOTS of free play time to direct his own time.

Our playroom/learning area is set up in such a way that he has free access to a variety of toys and learning experiences.  We have two HUGE bookshelves that hold lots of books, but also have space in the bottom two shelves for toys and these are primarily toys that Munchkin prefers to play with.  He has daily access to the wooden train set, Fisher-Price farm set, his Octonauts toys, his Bob the Builder toys (his two current obsessions at the moment) and a whole shelf of board books.  Then we have a smaller bookshelf that I use mainly for setting up some more directed play activities for Munchkin.  I am going to try to make them have a theme this year as we are doing a Letter of the Week program again this year but we shall see how it goes.

I am not sure how much one-on-one structured learning time I want to try with Munchkin, nor do I know how much I'm actually going to have available.  Hubby works from home and may be able to work one-on-one with Munchkin at times when I'm working with the older boys and I do believe I'll have some time in the afternoons when the big boys are enjoying some TV time.  They prefer to watch Pokemon and Munchkin is not keen so will come and find me and ask me to play with him or read to him so this may work out to be our best one-on-one structured learning time.

I don't want to push too much structured learning on him at this age but do hope to do some letter and number recognition with him this year.  He already recognizes the letters A... B... and C... and also understands the concept of two objects... as in, if he sees a picture of two birds in a book, he is able to tell me that there are two birds.  So I hope to build on this through the year but plan to do it with literature as well as songs and games!

I hope to include sensory play as part of Munchkin's week and also some nursery rhymes as well.

I have lots of ideas I want to try with my littlest man and I'm keen to see how this year is going to shape up for him...