Our twins are four years old and Jack is eight years old, they are four years apart almost to the day as the twins were born the day before Jack’s birthday. August of 2019 was a very busy month for our family because as if twins isn’t enough activity, it is also the month that Jack started pre-school. The poor kiddo was going through so much change that month and it was overwhelming for all of us, but I still remember that feeling of our first kid starting school, we were embarking on a new phase of parenting. Not only that we were bringing two babies into the world but that we had a kid in school now too. There were so many blessings that came with him in preschool but it was also stressful! Looking back on it now, I don’t think I was prepared for the stress that would come. And I knew to expect that it would be an adjustment but at the time, I was not as sensitive as I could have been to being okay with that difficulty. I think when it felt overwhelming for all of us, I wanted to go straight to figuring out what would fix it, when in reality sometimes just recognizing the feelings was what would have helped the most.
So often people would say “Oh wait until you have two kids in school, then what will you do?” Then once Eva started school it became “What will you do when the twins go to school, you’ll have no kids at home!” Well my friends, this past week I registered the twins to start kindergarten next year and all of the feelings are hitting. I am excited for them, very excited actually. They see Jack and Eva go to school and are so excited to start themselves, but at the same time hitting this milestone makes me feel older. It’s a milestone that we have had in the back of our minds for about four years now and the fact that it’s happening sooner than later is making me realize how quickly time goes by. In so many ways, four years ago feels like just yesterday but at the same time so much has happened in that time that it feels a lifetime ago.
Jack and Eva both had some time in preschool before kindergarten but the twins will not. We have moved to another city so the preschool we know and love is not an option anymore, in addition to that the financial expense of two kiddos in preschool feels a bit overwhelming. It also feels hard to justify taking the twins when they are the only ones at home. I am not too worried about them socially because we go to church twice a week where they are in a classroom environment, they also have quite a bit of exposure to kids through playdates. When Jack and Eva were younger the playdates were smaller and with kids their age, the playdates we go on now have many more kids with multiple ages! A lot of the families we go on a playdate with will have some kids who are Jack and Eva’s age and then younger kids the twins age. The last park day we had included 13 kids ages eight to one.
I have been worried that the learning will feel overwhelming since they won’t be doing any preschool so I have been trying to focus some “home preschool” for them. We started with this pre-doodles handwriting book from The Good and the Beautiful and have loved them. They are affordable and the pictures are so pretty. The goal was for me to sit down and do it with them each day but they loved the books so much that they wanted to do them on their own as well! At first I would stop them but decided that I should be encouraging them to do work independently as well, so I began to embrace them working independently. We recently finished that book so I will be purchasing the second one soon.
Over the years I have found some very good websites that offer letter and handwriting printables. Big Activities has tons of resources from letters to connect the dots and even holiday printables. Twisty Noodle also has great resources for letters, numbers and holidays as well! For Eva, I made her a learning notebook where I used a binder and clear inserts to slide the pages in. We were then able to use dry erase markers so that the pages could be reusable and switched out easily. This also saved on printer paper :)
One thing I was never able to find at an affordable price was an alphabet coloring set. I could find free printables for a single letter but never stumbled upon a set that would just print out all of the letters. While working with the twins recently it dawned on me that I should make them myself! It was actually a fun activity that the twins and I did together for a few days last week. I would draw the letter then we would talk about objects that started with that letter, pick which one we wanted and then I would draw it. As soon as I printed them out, not only did the twins want to color the pages but Jack and Eva too! That was something I did not expect! They colored all of the pages over the span of one night and the next morning, so I may make a binder for each twin so we can use dry erase markers but I had another idea with the colored pages today…
The twins are in the stage where they will ask me how to spell something but they don’t know what all of the letters look like. Elisha was making a birthday card today and wanted to know how to spell “Amelia” so I grabbed the pages that they had colored and laid them out for her, she was then able to copy the letters to spell her friends name! My hope is to create more resources that I can use with the twins for our home preschooling days and then make available for other mom’s with littles at home. If you feel inclined to download them I would appreciate it so much! Even better would be if you left a comment letting me know how you and your kiddos enjoy using them.
