Preschool

Many of us with elementary age children also have preschoolers at home, so I thought I'd share how I've been keeping my preschoolers busy in the morning so I can focus on work and my 2nd grader's E-Learning. Disclosure: I have TWIN 4 year olds which makes much of this easier, but some of it harder.
                                                                        The set up

This might be the most crucial part of my "preschool" - I take about 15 minutes to set up their space each day. I have a designated place (away from my 2nd grader) where my twins "school" exists. I try to set up an area for:

• Messy art/play (play-dough, paint, kinetic sand etc.) - this is at our counter.
• Some sort of puzzle.
• Pretend- This can be a laundry basket (boat) and blanket tent (cave) and wrapping paper tube (fishing pole),  pretend food, a set of Fischer Price people they haven't seen for a while, small animals next to Magnatiles with a request for a farm etc.
• Games- I just raid our game closet and put out a game for the to play with. I'll even put out games they can't possibly play - and they can figure out how to have fun with it. 
• Building materials- Think legos, Magnatiles, or even a large pack of red solo cups!
• 1-2 other items they haven't seen/played with for awhile.
• TIP: Ask your neighbors and friends for unused toys they might have laying around- the power of "new" is huge!

 Circle time

Every school day morning, we start with circle time. This ritual helps my kids get into the mindset that the next couple hours are a bit different than free time. My son self appointed himself "snack helper", so after everyone is happily sitting down chomping on their snack, we do the following:

• Sing a song - I usually choose one from this site  or this site and repeat all week. 
• Pass a bag filled with letters, sing the letter song, each kid picks a letter while we all try to think of a word that starts with that letter.
• Look at a calendar- talking about the day of the week, date, what's coming up etc.
• Pass a "share bag" filled with prompts like- "name one thing you love"etc. or do a show and tell share.
• Go over the schedule for today - sometimes making some choices for the day together.

Learning time

Usually, I can get a good 45 minutes- 1 hour of my preschoolers playing on their own when I can concentrate on my 2nd grader/work emails. I'm not proud of it, but I usually listen for arguing and then I know it's time for me to pop over to "preschool" and play a learning game with the twins. Sometimes it looks like me helping them with play, sometimes it's choosing a game from my collection (see pic- no accident it's kept by the wine- he he), or sometimes it's reading a book. A few simple "at home" activities I've had success with:

• Post-it note letter matching- write lower case letters on post-it notes and put poster on wall (see pic).
• Put paper numbers in muffin tin and ask preschoolers to put that amount of Cheerios in each tin.
• Make a paper book. Have the children draw pictures, and then I write the words.
• Printing off coloring pages with images that the children choose.
• Play rhyming games- A few printable options here.
• I've also had success choosing from D101's early childhood E-Learning boards- ECE AM and ECE PM .

Final Thoughts

Full disclosure that there are still lots of moments of frustration from all parties in my house during "school" time. However, having a structure in place to deal with my littles helps all of us feel a sense of control and structure. We can usually sneak in about 2 hours of school before the kids head out for "recess" with their dad and I catch up on work. This is a far from perfect situation, but we are making it work (most days at least)!