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.

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!

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.

Already Busy !?!

I have had the misconception that life would not really become hectic until closer to the Holidays. Boy, was I wrong! The Holiday Auction that I'm heading up is keeping me steadily busy plus with our house on the market I feel we are on the move constantly. For example, we have shown our house 7 times in the past two weeks. This is great and speaks favorably for our real estate agent, Sandy Morgan from Coldwell Banker of Cullman. http://www.coldwellbankercullman.comI LOVE to take a nap when Dos and Tres lay down and it has been a long time since I have had the pleasure of taking a nap with them.

I will interject that my day with them has been perfect. The rain from the past couple of days has brought in a cool front and the temperature outside is in the 70's with a nice breeze. We have spent most of the day outside playing hide-and-seek as well as working in the garden. Mainly right now in my garden I'm trying to clean it up because most of my plants have produced all they're going to right now and look pretty ugly left where they are. We also made homemade pizza and ate lunch on the back porch. What a great day!

Now, I am trying to put together a list of events that are upcoming that I need to keep up with. Here's what I have so far: 1. Organize Dos' Field Trips (at least the stuff that I as Room Mom am in charge of) 2. Fall Carnival 3. Holiday Auction 4. Grandparent's Day at school 5. Field Day Now, I believe #4 and 5 are not until the Spring which is a relief but if I don't put it on my list now, I will completely let them slide without a second thought.

Honestly though, I love what I am doing. My heart's desire was to be a help to my kids no matter what age they are. I was afraid that once they got out of the baby stage I would be lost. Never fear, life as a Room Mom is keeping me plenty busy!

Love,

The List Maker:)

Another Day

Here I am with my little girl sitting at the kitchen counter. We are blanching green beans and counting "1,2,3" over and over. We are visiting a new church, Daystar. www.daystarchurch.tv
I have been raised Baptist my whole life so in beginning to visit this church my guard was way up. I still have my guard up a little because I want to make certain this is the church my family and I are supposed to be at. I will say that during church service today, Numero Uno, participated the most I've ever seen him participate in a church service. This church seems amazing and a source of hope for me right now. We had one more church on my "list" to visit but we feel so comfortable here that I think we'll stay for now.
I am so tired right now and yet there is still a list of To Do's:
1. Fold Laundry
2. Put up laundry
3. Cook supper.
4. Bathe kids.
5. Continue to cut out letter and number cards for the K3 class.
6. Plan out Tuesday's Volunteer Kick-Off party (did I mention I'm heading up a Holiday Auction for Cullman Christian School?) www.cullmanchristian.org

I am getting my second round of squash and zucchini coming in. I still have tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, watermelons, and green beans making. In my next garden, I don't believe I will plant as many cucumbers as I did this year.

Since Numero Uno is taking Uno back to his mother, me and Dos and Tres are chillin' out here at the house. I love Sunday afternoons. Now, if I can only find the motivation to complete today's list:)

Preschool

Little Miss looked too cute in her "shades". I hated that she had to have her eyes dilated.

Here is Dos after a day of school. He is so tired but in a good way. He was able to tell me about all he did today including drawing a "beautiful picture for Mama".

As I noted earlier, Dos, started preschool this week. He only attends two days a week but I'm tellin' ya - it's killing me! My baby is almost 4! I know that they say time passes quickly and us Moms have got to let our kids go, I just thought they meant middle or high school. But preschool? My heart hurts when he leaves. I've even considered homeschooling which if you knew me that would be nothing short of a miracle. But then I see how happy he has been to go to school. Tuesday, his first day, he didn't even hug me goodbye. He just took off to his class line and then with the cutest smile gave me a goodbye wave as if to say,"Seriously you need to leave now".

Meanwhile, my list for today I thought was fairly straightforward but man did time fly. Before I knew it, I was again waiting in the pick up line for Dos. Today I got to take Tres to the eye doctor, Dr. Paula Robinson, from Dr. Jill Meyer and Associates. Dr. Robinson looked to see if my little girl has RP which is a degerative eye disease on my husband's side. Good news is her eyes look great! The bad news is this disease does not usually exhibit itself until later in life.

One more thing has been added to my "To Do's": Room Mom for Dos's class. Now before you think, "oh man, that stinks" I wanted this position. I love this kind of stuff! My joy right now is getting to laminate and cut out letter and number flash cards. Thankfully I do not have to have them turned in til next week because I believe it will take me that long to get all 1500 (that's right 1500) of them completed:)