I’ve had several people ask me how in the world I manage to do Learning Time with Little Bug & where do I come up with all these “cute ideas”.

First of all I want to say this: You don’t have to do a “Learning Time” with your kids to be a “good mom”. I think there is a lot of pressure out there for some reason these days which makes moms feel like if they don’t have some cute craft on the kitchen table at the end of the day, somehow they failed as “Mommy” that day. That is one big fat Mommy-myth. You don’t have to do a daily craft with your kid to be a good Mommy.

I do it because……..I love it. And, most importantly, so does Little Bug. I was a teacher before being a Mommy and I love “making lesson plans”, prepping for them, and then doing them with my daughter. I cannot wait to set up our homeschool room in the new house!!

Another misconception to clear up: The majority of the activities we do, I didn’t come up with the idea. I am a fabulous copy-cat!! I know how to scower the internet for cute ideas that other Mommy's have come up with, copy them, and do them with my kid. That’s why I link everything we do. Got to give credit where credit is due. There are just a handful (if that) of my own ideas that I’ve done with Little Bug in my Learning Time posts.

And – another misconception – you don’t have to be a teacher to do this. Anyone can have fun with their kid doing fun activities and crafts and teach them something along the way without having a degree in Education.

So – if you want to do something like this with your toddler/preschooler, it is quite simple.

I don’t do much of anything that involves major prep or planning!! Most of the activities/crafts I choose to do with LB, require two to at the MOST 10 minutes of prep. That’s it. Fun and simple has been my motto from the start! I click right out of any activity that is going to take me five hours to prep and four trips to three different stores for supplies!

I usually take a naptime to sit and find all the activities I want to do for each theme of that month. Usually I can gather all the activities for one month/theme during 1-2 naptimes. I organize the activities I find by activities that need to be printed and activities that are a craft that I need to gather supplies for.

Since we don’t have a printer, my mom prints everything in the “to print” category for me (that is a HUGE help!) and then on Sunday nights it isn’t uncommon to find me spread out on the bed prepping the week’s activities! A true teacher? I guess you could say with my Sunday night prep sessions. (I did them when I taught.) I used to try and get all the activities for the whole month prepped at one time, but I found working by the week on this is better for me.

I have this little basket in our laundry room where I keep the week’s activities.

I put the supplies for each activity in a little (or big) zip-lock baggie and then it is ready to go! I don’t include supplies needed for most activities (like: markers, scissors, glue, etc.) in the zip-lock baggies. We have a “supply box” that gets pulled out every time we do Learning Time with all those things in it.

We currently do Learning Time after Sweet Pea lays down for her nap. Now that she is on one nap a day (WOO HOO) she lays down at 12:30 and Little Bug doesn’t lay down until 2pm. That gives us plenty of time to do LT before naptime. We usually spend at least 30 minutes doing LT, but sometimes we may do it the entire 1.5 hours before naptime or sometimes it might just be a quick 15-20 minutes if we are wanting to do something else in that time slot. I roll with Little Bug – if she is in to it – we keep going. If she is done, we stop. I want learning to be FUN for her! She is 90% of the time really into what we are doing though, so that is nice.

If you fall into any of these categories, give yourself a break and don’t even try a LT:

• You have a baby under 6 months. For me, the first 6 months is always a little (or a lot) rocky and even though I wanted to start LT with Little Bug when she turned two, I didn’t couldn’t get it together until Sweet Pea was 6ish months old. (SP was born just a couple months after LB’s 2nd birthday.) Just put it off as something to do once the baby grows up a little.
• You are about to move. HA! I am preaching the choir on this one! Not sure how much LT is going to take place in April for us! I’m planning the themes now, but how much of it we actually do, we will see about that.  
• Your kid’s not in to it. So what? Not all kids (and moms!) are into crafts. No big deal. If your child doesn’t learn best this way, find out how he/she does learn best and roll with that!

And let me put on my “Teacher Hat” for a few moments and close with this. Do you know the most important thing (educational-wise) you can do for your child(ren)??

READ TO THEM – DAILY!!!!

It is never too early or too late to start reading to your child. It is so, so, so important. And it is something literally ALL parents should and CAN do for their kids (if they have access to books, of course – which I guarantee you anyone reading this right now has access to books!). There are so many stats out there that are astounding and show the differences between children who are read to and those that are not.

When I taught, I had parents who read to their children daily and, sadly, I probably had some students who didn’t have one book in their home. It was very apparent who was read to and who was not.

I start reading to my children from birth! And if they had grown in my womb, I probably would have been reading to them then too! I read to them even if they aren’t paying attention (i.e.: the toddler who won’t quite sit still for a book yet). Oddly enough, I am referring to Sweet Pea on this one and not Little Bug. Little Bug will sit and listen to books for an amazing amount of time. Sweet Pea is in the phase of sitting with me for about 1.5 seconds of a book before going to get another one or running off to do something else. I still read to her. Every day. I make sure the house is quiet (no background noise) and I just read. She is hearing the words, even if she isn’t looking at the book.

So-that is how I do it! If you want to start LT with your toddler/preschooler I’ve actually made it very easy for you! I have activities posted for every letter of the alphabet that I did with LB from February to September of last year. Then, in October, we started themes and I’ve got activities for many themes from October of last year to March of this year posted. You can find all those posts HERE.

Just copy from one of the biggest Copy Cat’s around!!! (That would be me.)

- Elaine