First Preschool Fieldtrip and Letter Learning

The best part of a Michigan fall is the apple orchards.  Every one of our kids' first fieldtrip was to an apple orchard and Peter got his chance today.  He was so excited.  We rode the wagon out to the orchard and picked apples and pumpkins.  Then he got to ride on a tractor himself and play the rest of the morning on hay bales and inflatable obstacle courses.  He didn't even notice that I kept him away from the donuts all his friends were eating.  He was too busy having a great time.  A perfect day.

 In other Peter news, he's becoming a champion bike rider.  He's not pedaling yet because he's not big enough for the smallest bike we own, but I got him a balance bike and he rides it obsessively.  Every free minute I get asked if he can go ride. Well, that's not the whole truth.  He often goes out without asking and I end up frantically searching for him, only to find him several houses away cruising along.  The other day I was summoned outside by my neighbor because she wanted to inform me that she'd seen Peter across and down the street on his bike all alone.  A couple days after that I found him riding bikes with our 8 year old neighbor boy while I thought he was in the basement.  He can unlock all the doors in the house and open the garage, so I have no way to keep him in, but we've had some serious talks about this and I've even had to take his bike away for a couple days.  I hate that I have to do that, but cars drive fast down our street and we don't have sidewalks along most of it.  He's just too young still to understand.  So I try as often as possible to accompany him and I love seeing how much he enjoys it.  He'll get himself going fast, lift his legs up, and roll along with a big grin on his face. 

Now that preschool has started, I've made a renewed effort at sparking an interest in letters.  He's been completely uninterested up until now, but I'm hoping I'll find a few activities that are fun for him.  This week I got lucky.  I put up sticky notes with letters on them around the basement and then drew the letters on the white board.  We played music and had a dance party while he tried to find the sticky notes and match them up with the letters on the board.  He enjoyed that for longer than I thought he would and then proceeded to roll around on the yoga ball for far longer. :)  Today we used those same sticky notes and I laid them on the floor.  Then we went from letter to letter and did an action that started with that letter - kick on K, wiggle on W, jump on J, run on R, etc.  He seemed to like that even more and he kept brining it back up later as he did other things.  I'd hear him say to himself, "kick the K!" or other such things.  Made me happy that maybe I'd found something that works.  I don't want to put any pressure on him at such a young age, but I also know that Peter can learn anything he really wants to learn, so if I can make it fun and active, hopefully it'll stick.