Monday, September 14, 2009

Am I a Closet Homeschooler?

Dos is in preschool two days a week. While I am thrilled that he is getting a great social and educational environment there, I have a huge desire to provide learning settings for him with me. In our everyday life, I want to be the one who opens new doors of learning for him. As I have mentioned before, I absolutely love http://www.mamahomeschool.blogspot.com/ She does a fantastic job of offering a variety of learning prompts for her kids. I have used several of her ideas with my kids.

Last year, I took the list of Before Five in a Row's recommended books and made various lesson plans for Dos and Tres (as she could participate). Did I do all the books? No, because throughout the year I would take the BFIAR list and see if the local library had these books. We were not able to cover every book but the ones we did, we loved! I think Blueberries for Sal, Yellow Ball, and The Big Green Pocketbook were my favorites. Oh, also The Carrot Seed. Dos was so intrigued and ask leading questions and it seemed like he was truly a sponge taking it all in.

Following this experience, this year since he is in school part time, I still am desirous of leading him in learning. His preschool teacher has done a wonderful job of already listing out themes for the whole year and I simply look at her theme and try to supplement some activities on the days Dos is not in school. This week is Pets and it just so happens that my favorite blog, mamahomeschool has done the book Angus Lost and shared her activities. Unfortunately, our local library does not have this book. What I did was take several books I had in my private library that related to dogs (which our are only type of pets) and read them to the kids.

We also listed out ways to care for our pets (the pic to the left) and then played a matching game of dog pics. The great thing about the matching game is that I laminated the paper and allowed the kids to mark on it with an Expo marker so that once we were finished matching they could erase and start all over again. I tried to do the Dog Lotto game; however, my game board was too flimsy and did not withstand my kids' tugging:)


Bible time today focused on Noah and the Ark which was great because we got to talk about animals some more! We also used this time to incorporate math by counting the animals. I have A Beka 3 year old curriculum for math, art, and letters. Although I am just starting to use it and may change my mind - I'm not real impressed with the math lessons. They seem to lack creativity. Back to the Bible lesson....we made an Ark, colored it, and loaded it with all of our stuffed animals. I also had a picture book which told the story of Noah and we read it together. I am amazed at how much Tres is picking up just by sitting with her big brother.

I have no clue what the future holds for my kids. I would never have considered home schooling but now I wonder what will be. If all I do as far as homeschooling is this, then I'm fine with that. I like only having to be responsible for "lessons" a couple of times a week. But in my mind, I would love to have more children and enjoy the thrill of leading them in school lessons. And if they go to school for their education, that will be fine as well since I am already completely busy with Dos' preschool.




Thursday, September 10, 2009

Aaaaahhhh!

I am in panic over this Holiday Auction. What if I'm not doing it right? What if I fail? Aren't those always my thoughts when I take on a project or a new task? Is is these thoughts that sabotage my success or are they whispered truths to keep me RUNNING toward success? Either way, I am meeting with the Marketing Coordinator tomorrow and maybe I will walk away with a sense of ease.

It has not been helpful that me and Tres have been sick for the first half of the week. Also, Numero Uno's direct deposit was messed up and his company in order to correct the error had to take the entire paycheck out of our account and will not be able to reimburse us til Monday. Aaahh! and Dos has decided today is not a good day to take a nap even though I was SO looking forward to nap time since I only got two hours sleep last night. Oh well, I guess we will all have an early bedtime tonight:)

There are friends of mine that are extremely detailed in their planning and I am very impressed with their work. One of my friends is the leader of our prayer group. She takes the time each week to type out each girl's prayer request on cute stationary in cute font and delivers it each week. Now, me? I'm the girl that is the visionary not the detailist. You would think I would be since I have such a love for lists. I mean, there is no piece of art more beautiful to me than a well laid out monthly calendar hanging for all the family to see:) Okay, slight exaggeration, but I do love a well planned calendar. So, what's my solution? I'm going to contact my detailed friend and set up a meeting time that she can help me detail out this Auction. Yeah!

Friday, September 4, 2009

Blogging

I got hooked to reading a couple of blogs. One is www.mamahomeschool.blogspot.com which I love! And the other is www.punkincenterusa.blogspot.com . A couple of things I like about thei's is they have a list of all the blogs they have sited or viewed recently to the right or left of their blog. How do they do that? I had envisioned that I would have my blog posted daily but that hasn't happened yet. I feel like I'm supposed to have a picture in each post but again that hasn't happened yet.

Dos and Tres are playing with their Power Rangers and Barbies on the back porch. I got both groups of toys at the Cullman Kids' Mart. In fact, most of the kids' stuff comes from the kids' consignment sales. My favorite one is Wee Swap (www.weeswap.blogspot.com) which is an upscale resale group.

Uno gets his first progress report today and I'm curious to see how he did.

Numero Uno and I are going to watch the Alabama game at his sister's house tomorrow night without children! I could care less about seeing the game, it's the idea that he and I will have a somewhat date night that I'm looking forward to.

About Me

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I'm a thirty-three year old stay-at-home mom to four beautiful children. I am daily learning what it means to be a Christian who loves God.