What are they missing?

There are many days where I wonder to myself, "What are my kids missing by not going to formal preschool?"  Fridays are a great time for me to try out things that I think they would get in a different setting, but that we can do all together.  We go to a music and movement class on Mondays, but I really want them to get more exercise then what we get there.  If Rachel had continued at our church's preschool, she would have attended a class at the local YMCA on Friday mornings and I was really looking forward to that for her, but things didn't work out, so what's a mom to do?  How about create a Jungle Gym and Exercise program in our living room?!?!  We turned on Pandora to the Raffi channel today and any time there was a song that had directions or a specific dance (think Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, etc.) we stopped and did what the music said.  If it was just a fun song for dancing and playing, we ran laps, did jumping jacks, made a slide out of the couch and did forward rolls down it.  We had our own little exercise program going on.  I've been trying to get in more leg lifts these days and the kids wanted to try that.  They thought leg lifts would make them faster, so they did leg lifts and then ran a few laps and they were totally convinced that they had gotten faster!  They had such a great time and I love listening to music with them and singing songs. We also got out the piggy banks today and I went through their charts with each of them.  Ford did not do such a great job at staying in his bed this week, so he only got 75 cents instead of a dollar, but I got out a stack of pennies and I told him that if he could count out 20 pennies without needing any help, he could put them in his piggy bank.  He zoomed through 20 pennies like he'd been counting past 14 his whole life!  I was so proud!  Rachel, of course, filled in every box on her chart and earned her dollar.  She did such a great job on her math test today that I gave her an extra quarter.  I was so proud of how well she did her math problems independently.  Ruby also got a dollar today because she actually pooped in the potty THREE times!!!  I showed the kids different ways to get a dollar by giving Rachel four quarters and giving Ruby 10 dimes and we skip counted by tens to show Ruby 100 cents.  I'm thinking we're going to be ready to get the box of play money out soon that they got for Christmas and talk about money.  It will be a little over Ford and Ruby's heads, but Rachel's ready for it.
Another thing that I have trouble managing that I know they would get more of at a formal preschool is time with Play-Doh, so we cleared off the train table today and spent at least 45 minutes building, smashing, rolling, and bouncing Play-Doh.  They actually did a great job and not once did Ruby try to put any in her mouth! Amazing!!  I keep meaning to get the Play-Doh out to let Ford build letters with it, but I'm just always so worried about Ruby eating it while I'm concentrating with him.  She gave me confidence today that we can try that next week.  I wanted to just keep it fun today and just build and smash.  Rachel and Ford do a great job of coming up with a project to do together.  Today he would build "stones" and then cut them in half and hand them to Rachel.  She would then take the two pieces and put them back together again.  Then we all took the tan Play-Doh and flattened it, sliced it into pieces, and rolled it up to look like Penne pasta.  Ford said he was a Cooking-Talent Fairy and baked the pasta for us.  It was super fun!
After we cleaned all of that up, Vanessa brought the boys up to play for a little while and then they went home to wash diapers.  We ate lunch and did a quick Wal-Mart run (I was making pizza dough for dinner and realized we didn't have brown sugar or oil...oops!).  Ford and Ruby took great naps, Rachel rested and then we played violin for a little while.  Ford and Ruby woke up in super cranky moods so Rachel tried her best to do funny things to cheer them up, but it wasn't until we built a fort that they decided to snap out of it and be in a good mood again.  They couldn't quite keep the fort from falling down, so we eventually turned it into a tent for a "sleepover" which was super fun, too.  We finished our school day by playing with the little Legos and then Papa came home.  I think we covered many things today that are just genuine fun and imagination-inducing!