Me - Renewed

I am just getting back online after an AMAZING weekend with Sally Clarkson. I went to her Dallas MomHeart Conference and it was a complete blessing!!

I have been to like 9 or so different homeschool conferences in the past three years (counting online conferences) and while they have all encouraged me in some way or gave me new information on the schooling aspect, NONE have touched my heart as a mother more. . . and none of them have renewed me, empowered me or rejuvenated me like this one.

Not only hearing Sally speak, but being able to see her wonderful, beautiful children -- the fruit of her homeschooling efforts, and living proof that the 'Wholehearted Child' educational philosophy works -- in person was a real treat!

I walked away with so many ideas of ways that I can grow in my relationship with Christ, infuse even more joy and laughter into our family, how to make even more memories, how to make reading aloud not only enjoyable but potentially life changing, how to discipline more effectively (and truly get to their heart), how to inspire them, how to pray more passionately and effectively. . . I could go on and on!

While the conference itself was amazing, equally wonderful was staying in the beautiful hotel room ALL. BY. MYSELF!!! It was so. . . clean. . . . and white. . . and quiet! :-) Right away I was able to put all of my belongings away and even laid out every piece of my makeup on the counter in the cute little tumblers they provided, and I did not have to worry about finding a child covered with lipstick. I did not touch the television remote the entire weekend either. I read, prayed, slept, listened to my own thoughts (sigh). It was heaven! And, getting a beautiful flower arrangement from my wonderful thoughtful husband was icing on the cake.

I also highly recommend Sarah Clarkson's new Book, Read For the Heart. I am about half way through this HUGE book and loving every word. After I finish that, I move onto finally reading The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson that I picked up this weekend. I can't believe it has taken this long to finally read these other books of hers, considering that my personal mission is to "Encourage Moms To Experience Joy in the Ministry of Motherhood." After I finish this book, I will move to reading her Mission of Motherhood book, and then Dancing With My Father, which is about living with joy.

I have also begun rereading Just Give Me Jesus by Anne Graham Lotz. I read this with a small group of women in our church a few years ago and it really blessed me then. It goes through the entire book of John. While I was on this mini-retreat of mine, I realized that while I have been watching Joyce Meyer everyday, and reading tons of devotionals, and watching Life Today, and all that, I was lacking in my personal relationship with Jesus. How can I possibly be the Christian, Wife and Mother that I want to be, need to be, without Him??

I am going to be playing around with my schedule a bit to find time to blog (not only to keep family updated on the girls, but also to try to start writing again) without being online during the day itself very often. I want to set the example of media time being a treat, not a time zapper like it can be and has been for all of us in the past.

Off to dance with my girls -- Have a BLESSED day!

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Oh, My!

I recently added the Follow Me feature on my blog so I can see the lovely faces of my readers, but also because I am trying out for the TOS Crew and thought they might like to see it.

Anyhoo, I tell you this because as people are being added to this feature, I am going in and following them as well. AND WOW AM I GLAD I AM!

Kimberly was just added, so I quickly went over to her site to see if I could follow her as well. Apparently Ms. Kimberly just started this blog, she only has two posts, but WOW what a second post. Here, go over and read it, comment and then come back. . . I'll wait.

Did you start crying like me??? This really hit me! If you notice the comment section, I gave a huge reply that basically let her know that I will be reflecting on this for quite some time.

If your and/or your family have creative ways you go out helping others in need that do not necessarily involve money, I would REALLY love to hear them. Please comment and leave your thoughts, ideas, or blog posts you have shared in regards to this topic and I will share them with everyone here. This is something that is near and dear to my heart and if you read read my comment on her blog, you know that I get caught up in thinking it has to be money which is hard for me to do right now.

How else can we truly be Jesus' hands and feet in this world of suffering? How can we get our children, even our little ones, involved? I know that my girl Candace always has wonderful ideas that I will probably be re-reading today as well (but if you are reading Candace, please leave me your favorite ideas here, too!).

In His Service. . . .

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Technology

I like to think I am fairly intelligent when it comes to most things, but technology is just something that has the ability to make me feel completely lost, confused, annoyed and depressed, LOL!

I have no idea why my subscribers have not been getting my posts the past two days via email. And today, I have no idea why all my subscribers show up still under the publicize tab in my feedburner but do not show up on my blog page (number dropped to 1 over night?)

I have also somehow forgotten how to get the digital pictures from my camera onto my computer!!! I have a cord thingy (like that technical word?) plugged into the computer and into my camera, and a little message even shows up on my computer to say something is plugged in . . . . but besides that, I cannot seem to find it on my computer to be able to get them off and put updated pictures of the girls haircuts on here (the girls did locks of love again! Cali had 10 inches cut off and Jordan had 8 inches).

So, I will attempt to figure some of these things out over here, and if you see this post and feel like saying a quick prayer for my sanity I would appreciate it. :-)

Have a wonderful day!

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Statement of Purpose

Over the last few months, Gregg and I have been having "Advisory Board" meetings for our homeschool. During preschool, he would meet with me once a month to help choose topics for the various weeks, and we did sit down together to plan out what curriculum we would use for Kindergarten, but apparently I was still presenting myself with a sense of fear in regards to our homeschool.

Although we have taken the last few weeks off due to various vacations and events, my mother comes over on most Friday nights to do a Bible Study with me and Gregg. Our last study was Too Busy Not To Pray. One of the lessons was on fear and how it can hold us back in our prayer life. After our study was over, Gregg and I ended up having a marathon discussion on fear in regards to homeschooling. Although I didn't feel as though I was fearful, it was coming across that way. After much discussion, we realized that it boiled down to not having a written down, agreed upon vision for our homeschool. Not a strict plan on what curriculum to use each year or books to read, but an overall goal for what we want for our girls by the time they graduate, and an idea of what time periods in history we wanted to cover and when.

We had discussed these things verbally through the years, but it was never put on paper, and never so formally. Gregg's MBA really paid off in helping us set attainable goals and narrowing it down to what we want. We used the model from Educating a Whole Hearted Child and added our own ideas to it. Along with our homeschool vision and mission statement, and overall homeschool objectives, we listed the subjects we wanted to cover and what our goals were for each of the subjects. This became the Keep the Way Christian Academy Statement of Purpose. We then came up with a basic K-12 plan for each of those subjects, a plan for when we would cover those areas (and things such as when we would cover what time period in history). Then, we planned out the next 3 years.

We believe that our statement of purpose is pretty much in "stone," while our K-12 plan is in "ink." The 3 year plan is in pencil, meaning we know that it can change, but it definitely helped me to know in detail what we want to cover, and for those 3 years, what curriculum we would like to pursue. A major advantage of this for me was that I was constantly reading about different curriculums that I thought all sounded great, and I worried about not only fitting them in but when. By doing the 3 year plan, and seeing what we wanted to cover, it all fell into place naturally! I can do Sonlight Language Arts for awhile, since the girls and I both enjoy it, and in 3rd grade when the SL LA program doesn't match wonderfully with our plans for history and literature, I can switch to Learning Language Arts Through Literature for a year. For history, Sonlight does the first part of world history in first grade, the second part in second grade, and moves to American History in third grade. Gregg and I would rather do a year overview of world history in first, an American history overview and intro to American geography in second, and then begin our four year History rotation in third. That means that we can use Sonlight (with my own modifications between SL 1 and 2 since I prefer the History in one and read alouds in the second lol) for first, get to try My Father's World for second with their "Adventures in My Father's World" program, and use Mystery of History for third grade along with some wonderful read alouds from The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach and the notebook supplement from Winter Promise!

I guess we really are eclectic after all, huh? I fought that label for awhile, wanting to be strictly unit studies as that seemed so freeing, then I wanted to be Charlotte Mason as that seemed so lovely, but in reality, we are just US. Jeans wearing, book loving, variety-is-the-spice-of-life believing, God worshipping, eclectic US. And I like that :-)

Now this post was supposed to be about our first week of Kindergarten. Somehow my fingers hijacked my plans, but maybe that is because someone out there was struggling with fear issues as well in regards to a certain aspect of their homeschool journey. I am not saying that my answer works for everyone -- in fact, I know many people who would balk at this approach -- but the peace it has given me has been wonderful. Now, when I read about a great book, curriculum, idea or unit study, I look to see if it fits with our plans for the next 3 years. If it does, I make a note to bring it up in our next "Advisory Board" meeting to discuss adding it to our plans, and if it doesn't, then I keep on moving. If I wouldn't be covering that topic for another 4 years or more, it is likely that there will be new products out at that time that may be even better or if it truly is right, it will come up in my research when I plan for those years. I am telling you, this has truly set me free!

Well, the girls quiet time is almost over. Hopefully I can hop on this weekend to begin journaling our Kindergarten Adventure. For now, I will just end with the first sentence I originally wrote for this post, before my fingers hijacked it. :-)

We began our journey into Kindergarten June 29th. . .

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The End of Preschool

You can tell that I was ready for something new by my notes. I started the year documenting every single thing we did -- books read (and when we read them), crafts done, side notes to self on how the lessons went, etc;

As you could maybe tell from my last post, my notes started to include less and less. . . now that I am looking at our final month (4/20 - 5/31) it is a simple spreadsheet that was pre-typed that listed the date, the letter focus, what day in the Bright Beginnings book we were using for Math, Language Arts and Bible (at this point, I knew we weren't going to use it for a full 36 weeks so I was picking and choosing the lessons that I thought we could benefit from since most were pretty simple anyway), the animal focus, the job focus, the geographic focus and any literature units.

I also knew by this point what we were going to be doing for Kindergarten. Sometime in April, Gregg and I sat down and decided that it was time to move on from FIAR and try Sonlight. I wanted to make sure I covered the remaining FIAR books that I was interested in (and that my library carried), so we just added them in.

4/20-4/24 brought us the letter "M." What a fun week this was!!!! My wonderful friends from Homeschool Share and various blogs from around the globe, along with our amazing family members, sent our girls postcards and letters this week so we could focus on Mail! Our occupation was Mail Carrier and our literature unit was Meerkat Mail. I used this unit from HSS, along with lapbook pieces from Mailing May, Boxes for Katje, and printables from USPS and Enchanted Learning, to learn about the mail system, writing letters AND track the mail the girls received from around the globe. My favorites were postcards from England and South Africa!!! What I failed with was getting letters sent back out. . . I had wonderful intentions but I STILL have not gotten any stamps (just ask my two father in laws who have yet to get the lovely Fathers Day cards that are sitting waiting and addressed! Luckily for my father, he lives next door so I couldn't mess that one up too badly. Martha Stewart, at least in this regard, I am not!) Just thought I would be real there for a moment about my correspondence flaws. . . now, where was I? Oh yes, school. Our animal focus was Meerkats and mice, and our geographic focus was Mexico. We used a wonderful unit from HSS for this -- The Old Man and the Door -- and we absolutely loved it! My favorite part of this week was eating Mexican food every single night! Since moving to Houston, I have fallen in love with Mexican dishes and collect recipes whenever I can (so if you have any, please send 'em!)

This weekend, Gregg's dad and step mom came up for a visit and we all went to Texas A&M for their Vet School Open House. As I mentioned, Jordan says she wants to be a vet, and even though she is young and we definitely won't pigeon hole her, it is a total fit. . . just like Cali, my dare devil child, saying she wants to be a firefighter is a total fit! Anyhoo, we went down there and had a wonderful time. They make it so child friendly, and our first stop was the Teddy Bear Clinic! They brought animals from home, and after getting dressed from head to toe in Vet gear courtesy of A&M, they were led into an exam room where they became Assistant Surgeons!!! They received diplomas with their picture taken "while in surgery" and felt very proud of themselves. Afterwards we had a tour of their three different huge buildings -- where they do large animal surgery, small animal surgery, where they kept reptiles and the like -- and went out to the petting zoo they had set up. We saw zebras and camels, pigs, goats, horses, donkeys, and other animals, and then -- an interesting highlight -- we were allowed to stick our arms INTO a "fistulated cow." I trusted them at the moment that it wasn't hurting the cow, and looked it up later to make sure (it doesn't. . . go ahead, google it. . . I'll wait. Crazy huh?!?) but what an experience! We ended the trip through the reptile exhibit where the girls took a picture with a HUGE snake wrapped around their neck!

4/27-5/1 The letter "N." I must admit here that while I added my own ideas for animals here and there, many of them were used from our Zoo Phonics curriculum. Their animal for letter "N" is Nigel Nightowl and since we hadn't studied owls yet, I thought "Why not?" We read Owl Moon and Owl Babies along with a few others that I didn't record. We read New Coat for Anna as well. Our occupation was News Reporter and this was SO much fun! We read lots of different non fiction books on newspapers, watched a Blues Clues episode on it and I told them things I learned in school (Broadcast Journalism major at LSU) and then we made our own newspaper. The girls also had to interview my husband and my mom, and they did very well -- they had to choose their own questions and then ask them, I wrote the answers of course. Our geographic focus was New Orleans and I used the Louisiana Multi Book Unit Study I wrote for Homeschool Share, along with all the books listed there, and had a blast! Again, we ate food the entire week that went with our geographic focus, but that wasn't that strange since we eat like that normally, ha!

5/4-5/8 Was a combination of "O" and "P." We learned about the Octopus and Penguin, officers in the military and police department and Paris. We read Officer Buckle and Gloria, Lentil, Oxcart Man and Paul Revere's Ride, which strangely enough the girls absolutely LOVED! We did a variety of octopus crafts and dressed up like Penguins, watched lots of videos on both animals, and did a few lapbook pieces from HSS. I pulled pieces from the Officer Buckle unit and a variety of other sources for a lapbook on police and safety, and pieces from the Lentil unit for a lapbook on our military and patriotism.

5/11-5/15 "Q and R" had us doing a fun lapbook on rabbits -- pieces gathered from a variety of books on the HSS website -- and on Queens and royalty. We learned about Russia and read Little Red Lighthouse, Miss Rumphius, and Muncha!Muncha!Muncha!. We had fun this week, gradually getting lighter and easier with our days and falling into a lot of more cuddly reading and watching videos that went with our topics -- maybe that coincided with the increasing temperatures outside, ha!

5/18-5/22 "S and T" We were supposed to learn about snakes, tigers, surgeons, tailors, and Texas. . . we didn't do any of that. We did read The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening and Truman's Aunt Farm. The lapbook on that got scrapped and I did forget to purchase an ant farm, BUT as luck would have it, a HUGE ant pile appeared outside our front door so we were able to watch the real thing, ha! The only real learning that happened that was structured was an impromptu lesson on Scotland. My father is a personal trainer and massage therapist. I workout with him on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, followed by a short P.E. lesson he does with the girls. After he is finished with us, he then has a massage client meet him at his house (next door) who happens to be from Scotland. I casually asked if he could ask her for ideas, and she actually came by with tons of goodies for the girls! She gave them thistle soap (apparently that is the flower of Scotland), a stuffed bear with a sweater of the Scottish flag, a beautiful decorative statue and pictures to look at! The girls loved it all and hearing her voice -- and they were very interested after that. Luckily, HSS is amazing, so I was able to hop on the Internet and print out lots of great things from Wee Gillis, Frog Went a Courtin' and a few other units, as well as crafts from DLTK, Enchanted Learning and a few other sites, and had a lapbook ready to go within the hour. I think my dad was pretty impressed with what we were able to come up with so quickly, and the girls loved role playing the different stories we learned about Scotland for the rest of the week!

5/25-5/29 "U - Z" HA! As I mentioned, we were in combining mode and I was in burned out mode, PLUS my girlfriend Sandra was coming over with her girls for a playdate and she was interested in both Bright Beginnings and Zoo Phonics. I decided to just finish it all up, picking and choosing my favorite lessons to finish out the week.

Gregg and I took the girls to the FEAST homeschool conference in San Antonio (awesome) and we went to SETHSA here in Houston (really good), and the girls and I did two units in June -- Pirates and a combo week on ice cream and chocolate (the units are at HSS, along with complete book lists....the girls loved all the pirate books and we all loved The Parrot Tico Tango)

The rest of June was spent organizing the house and deeper cleaning, and LOTS of relaxing! I also got everything ready for the new adventure of Kindergarten that started at the end of the month. I am SO excited to start sharing about that journey!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

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Preschool in Review - Post 3

It is funny. . . I knew we were learning a lot and having lots of fun at the time, but I don't think it really sank in until now, having to sit down and type it all up so quickly!

I realize I am not explaining the crafts of the various lessons that we did, but I am trying to cover the highlights and at least get my book list in here. We have read some amazing books the past few years and not only would I like to remember them, but would recommend almost all of the ones I list in these posts (I say almost because it is possible that I forgot to scratch a stinker or two off my lesson plan!)

So, onward we go:

The week of St. Patrick's day brought lots of fun! We began the week with a visit to Katelyn and Ashley's house (friends from co-op) to learn about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Marlene did a wonderful job with this lesson! She had the girls make sock puppet caterpillars, then cut out sequencing cards for the story, and all were stored in decorated old coffee cans. Now whenever the girls want to act out or retell the story, all the materials are together! We ALL made Fruit Loop caterpillars, and play dough caterpillars. Marlene also had HUGE cut outs of all of the items the caterpillar ate in the story that she used to retell the story for the children, and finally, we looked at a poster of the life cycle of a caterpillar. On St. Patrick's Day we watched the video from Veggie Tales and read a paragraph about him in our History book. We talked about shamrocks and how he used them to tell about God. We then colored pictures of them and leprechauns, and looked at pictures of Ireland.

It was around this time that we got our catepillars in the mail to raise our own butterflies. This was so much fun -- for the entire family! It was amazing to watch the caterpillars form the crysalis, to attach to the top and then sit and watch as they emerged as butterflies! We kept them for about a week and then put them out on the milkweed plant we have potted outside (it is their host plant). Since then, we have had several caterpillars feeding on the plant and forming crysalises! The girls get so excited about the whole process and brings learning to life! I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!!!

The rest of the week focused on the letter "I" bringing us ice cream, India, Italy, the DVD Bilingual Baby - Italian (SUPER CUTE!!), Tigers at Twilight (Magic Tree House), Italy A to Z, My "I" Sound Box, The Sundae Scoop, Maya Angelou's World - Angelina of Italy, There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal, Opera Cat, Ice cream: The full Scoop, Madeline and the Cats of Rome, Stregna Nona (girls LOVED this!!), Big Anthony, Elephant Dance: Memories of India, Baya Baya Lulla-by-a, The Story of Little Babaji, writing our names in icing, and watching Bollywood dance videos and cardio tapes (total workout!). We also began History lessons with History for Little Pilgrims this week. I had planned on waiting till we started Kindergarten, but while I was looking at it for planning purposes, the girls kept picking it up to look at and asking me to read it, so I figured I would go with their interest! We did a simple poster board Timeline with this and they really enjoyed it.

We spent a second week (for those curious, we are now at the week of 3/23 - 3/27) on the letter I as there had been so many geographic locations that were fun to expose them to, I wanted a second week to focus on the animal and career. We learned about inchworms this week and had so much fun! This week we read Papa Piccolo from FIAR which was very cute and did LOTS of inchworm crafts (Dot-to-Dots, play dough, connect the dots, etc), measured things, crawled like inchworms and sang songs. Our occupation was Investigator and we used the Detective unit study/lapbook on HSS -- it was awesome! In all, this was just a week full of experiments, crafts, and lots of glue!

"J" focused on Jellyfish, Japan, judges, jello, the lapbook for Grandfather's Journey, a tour of Bluebell Ice Cream Factory with our Co-op and a family trip to the zoo. Having spent a week learning about jellyfish, it was so much fun for Gregg and I to watch the girls be so excited to see jellyfish up close! They kept coming back to the display and just sat, staring, for a very long time :-) We did a variety of jellyfish crafts and read several nonfiction books. We did read lots of other books this week -- I know lots of Allan Say books -- but I did not write any of them down this week. I will say that while the information about Japan was interesting to the girls, they did not enjoy the Allan Say books very much. . . their highlight was jellyfish!

"K" focused on kangaroos, zoo Keepers, acts of kindness, kittens, karate, karaoke, ketchup, Katy No Pocket, If I Ran the Zoo, Animal Strike at the Zoo, the zoo lapbook on HSS, Mrs. Katz and Tush, and Katy and the Big Snow and the lapbook on HSS. Our Co-op this month was on your own but it was on Bunnies and Easter so this week we also read The Bunny Who Found Easter, Rechenka's Eggs, Over in the Meadow, Clifford's Easter, and of course, Peter Rabbit. We had a blast learning about kangaroos this week -- we learned that they can jump 40 feet, so we measured that length in our backyard and recorded how many "Mommy" "Jordan" and "Cali" jumps it would take to equal one kangaroo jump!

Focusing on kindness was great -- we instituted "The Blue Plate of Kindness" this week, where someone gets to eat off of a special blue plate if they are noticed doing something kind for someone else. We also made lots of paper hearts with the word "Kind" on them -- the idea was to look for random acts of kindness that can be done in secret and then, again without being seen, to take a heart and leave it where the act was done. One example from the week -- Mama's shoes were left out in the living room and Jordan grabbed them, put them in my room and left a heart where the shoes had been. Jordan LOVED this game! I also had a poster board up in the kitchen where we would write down acts of kindness that were noticed.

They also loved the zoo keeper lapbook we made from HSS. Jordan wants to be a Vet when she grows up and both girls love learning about animals -- one of the reasons it was such a focus point this year. This was a great project to show off what they have already learned and be exposed to new things.

April 13-17th: "L" brought us lizards, love, lions, The Little House (and the lapbook), lifeguard, London, Shakespeare (London tie in!), Stage Fright on a Summer Night (Magic Tree House book about Shakespeare), the library, and lollipops. This week doesn't have lots of notes, but I know the girls loved the lapbook for The Little House, and we had fun role playing being lifeguards and learning about water safety.


One more post will definitely finish up our preschool adventures! We went into super fast mode at this point -- I was getting a bit burned out on what we were doing, was ready for a change, and we decided to sell our curriculum in May and take a few weeks off before starting K in June -- so we started combining letters.

I will try to sneak back on in the morning to finish up the preschool series, but if not, I'll finish on Monday. I can't wait to begin journaling our Kindergarten adventures! It has been a total change, but I am loving it!

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Preschool in Review - Post 2

Two days in a row, I am on a roll!

I realized last night that while I am glad to have just this little bit on here, that I did not take out their various notebooks from the past few months which are full of fun things, great narrations and crafts. . . at the end of this quick review, I may go back and record a few of those highlights as well. But, for now, I will pick up where I left off yesterday . . . the wonderful letter "E".

We took a second week for "E" the week of February 16-20th. Gregg had chosen so many wonderful picture books on engineers and I had found some really cute minit books on Homeschool Share to go with them, that we stayed with this topic for a bit. We reviewed all our previous Scripture memory verses, did some narrations of Bible stories and caught up on our occupations notebook, as well as learning about Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin. This week we also went to the park, spent a long time watching Nutria, had our Preschool Co-op where we made bird pizzas and chef hats, and went to the library for story hour. Friday of this week was our "Big Girl Day!" The Paci Fairy had heard how mature our girls were and thought it was time for their Big Girl Day (totally got this idea from an episode of John and Kate plus 8!). The girls left out a snack, along with their old pacifiers and blankets the night before, and when they woke up on Friday the Paci Fairy had left them a huge keyboard! It was totally approved by their musically gifted Godfather and has been a lot of fun! We started the morning with breakfast at McDonald's, followed by a visit to the Children's Museum and lunch and play at Chuck E. Cheese. :-)

At some point in February we took our co-op field trip to EJ's Pizzeria, where the girls not only had a wonderful behind the scenes tour of the pizzeria, but were then able to make their own pizzas! It was a BLAST -- for kids and moms!

The letter "F" brought us fishes, feathers (and birds), fire fighters, fairy tales, France, farmers, fairies, friends, Feathers for Lunch, The Little Bird (Mother Goose), Fishwish, Flotsam, DK Illustrated Book of Fairy Tales, Big Red Barn and A Chair for My Mother (book and Reading Rainbow episode that showed fire fighter training). The week before at story hour, the focus was fire fighters, so we learned lots of cute songs and it tied in so nicely:-). We had our Tea Party with our co-op friends where we did picture study, listened to Mozart and a cute Rossetti poem. This week we also went to The Depot to meet up with the cowboys riding into Houston for the big Rodeo. We got there early and parked to wait for the riders and before we knew it, we were literally surrounded by horses and riders on all sides! The cowboys were so sweet and let the girls ride the horses, feed and pet them, and it was simply a blast! We also went to several different parks and nature reserves this week.

The letter "G" week began with a small birthday party for Dr. Seuss! We focused on his books all day, reading Green Eggs and Ham, Oh The Thinks You Can Think, ABC, Mr. Brown Can Moo, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Hop on Pop. Along with our yummy cupcakes (which we baked while doing fractions lol) we watched the animated versions of Sneetches, Zax, Green Eggs and Ham and Horton Hears a Who. We played a game I found online for Pinning the Egg on the Plate, we created silly stories and did lots and lots of rhyming games! Cali enjoyed coming up with rhymes for Cat (hat, rat, that) and Sad (bad, dad), while Jordan came up with the following story -- I should note that the girl LOVES to tell stories and has been known to go on for over a half hour with stories that flow completely, have wonderful characters and everything but this was an assignment to go into a very small Dr. Seuss hat minit book, so I cut her off really short lol.


Once upon a time there was a cat in a hat. He was singing lots of songs until he bumped into something.
He thought he bumped into something . . . but, it was just lightning. It was going to rain and then he thought he was going round and round, but it was just the rain going Pitter, patter, pitter, patter

The rest of "G" week focused on gardens, goats, giraffes, Guinea pigs, gorillas, Greece, grandparents, The Golden Rule, Galileo, Planting a Rainbow, The Tiny Seed, Good Night Walk, Growing Vegetable Soup, Flower Garden, My Two Grandmothers, Good Morning Gorillas (Magic Tree House), gratefulness, grace, I Completely Know about Guinea Pigs (Charlie and Lola), G if for Goat, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Secret of the first one up (groundhogs), Gladys goes out to lunch, Good Night Gorilla, lots of nonfiction books on animals and geology, George Gershwin, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh, D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and Galileo for Kids. The girls also created stories this week that they asked me to type up and make books for, which was fun.

The beginning of "H" week began with a REAL TREAT! We went to a Family FARM! A wonderful woman in our co-op mentioned back in September that she was raised here in the Houston area on a farm, and how much her children enjoy going there. As I was planning the week for "F" and was trying to find a good farm to visit, I remembered this conversation and immediately reached out to her. While we had some scheduling conflicts, the wait was well worth it! This family was so gracious and kind, and we had a total blast! This was better than anything I could have found and we were able to do way more than a farm open to tour groups. We collected eggs, fed their chickens, sat and observed the chickens and roosters for awhile (and where they slept, how they got around, etc), helped them plant a garden (zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers), observed their TONS of cows and baby calfs, played in a creek (spent lots of time here, watching water flowing from higher ground to lower, examining rocks, skipping rocks), fished in their pond -- and caught 2 catfish(!!) -- played in sand, road bikes and skateboards, observed a wide variety of trees and just HAD A BLAST! Thank you so much Sinitieri family!!!!

The rest of "H" week focused on Hawaii, our read aloud was High Tide in Hawaii (Magic Tree House), horses, horticulture, history, Haydn, Handel, My H sound box, H is for Horse: an Equestrian Alphabet, My First Horse and Pony book, tons of Billy and Blaze books, Hans Holbein the Younger's painting of Edward VI as a child, Hooper Humperdink by Dr. Seuss, happiness, Luka's Quilt, Hula Lullaby, Grandma calls me beautiful, watching Hula for Children and having lots of fun dancing around, A House for Hermit Crab, Milton Hershey, Sam Houston, John Hancock, and hygiene.
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Well, I guess that is good for today :-) I am feeling better already having some of this on here as a record of our schooling, so I really do hope to have all of preschool updated and online within the week. Then it will be back to taking a week at a time and including posting our fun family moments in with the lesson plans!

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We are still here :-)

Well HELLO!!!

I know it has been forever since we have updated. In fact, our first official "year" of preschool has come and gone -- we only did it from January 1st until the end of May, as the girls flew through it!

This is just a quick little update post to let you know that I will be coming back (even if it is just a couple times a week) to post pictures, review the school week, keep up to date on family stories and events, journal my own thoughts, and express a little creativity!!

We are now on our fourth week of Kindergarten using Sonlight K, Math U See, Horizons Health and NOEO, along with a few other things here and there (like HSS, Moving Beyond the Page, Bob Books, extra read alouds, Draw Write Now, Donna Young, etc;).

Now that we have a computer back up and running (WOO HOO!), Gregg and I both think it is important to get back to updating this blog, at least once a week. As my wonderful husband just said, "I just know we'll regret it in a few years (or longer) if we don't start doing it."

So, what have we been doing since I last posted in November? WOW, that has been awhile, huh?!? We used Bright Beginnings, Zoo Phonics (thanks Heart of the Matter!!!), FIAR and HSS for our five months of preschool. Gregg and I used them to create our own trip down alphabet lane. While the girls did create a few complete lapbooks, we mostly used a variety of notebooks to scrapbook our learning -- we had an animal science notebook, an occupations notebook, and a hodge-podge notebook full of various lapbook pieces on cardstock for our different literature units. Each week we learned about a different animal, career, and geographic location that began with the letter of the week, and pulled together TONS of fun picture books on a wide variety of topics that related back to the letter of the week.

Bright Beginnings was our main spine for Bible activities (loved, loved, LOVED this part), Scripture memorization (Gregg made huge posters each week with the verse to remember and the girls LOVED it), Health, and Character lessons. We did many of their math and language arts suggestions, however we did skip many as our girls knew a lot of the information. . . but what we did use provided a WONDERFUL foundation!! Jordan (currently age 4) is reading up a storm -- using Sonlight Language Arts 2nd grade and is doing wonderfully -- and is in Math U See Alpha for first grade. Cali (currently age 3) is using SL LA 1st grade and while we are supplementing with Bob Books, Starfall, and totally going at her own directed pace, she is doing awesome! As for Math, she is using MUS Primer for K, but is FLYING through!! This is week four and she is on lesson 12! Since there are 30 lessons total, I know she will be in Alpha before the year is through.

Our schedule currently consist of Bible, Scripture and Health with our breakfast, then Jordan comes up for an hour to do Language Arts and Math while Cali watches her favorite show of all time -- Blues Clues -- then Jordan has free play while Cali has school for 30 minutes. Cali's schooling is always at her own pace and is driven by her desire to learn and be like her big sister! :-) After that is free play till lunch, which is eaten with History and Science read alouds, then they go to their room for our literature read alouds in bed before Quiet Time. After Quiet Time is over, we have Tea Time with poetry and other fun stories, then it is free play till Daddy comes home.

Back to Preschool:

Zoo Phonics is a WONDERFUL program! We used this a little differently than is suggested, spreading it out in the beginning, so that we can keep with our one letter a week concept. They suggest two a week before moving into more advanced phonetic concepts. Doing it the way we did I think was a good middle ground for my girls, with Jordan way beyond what we were doing but EXTREMELY enjoying every single lesson, and Cali really learning and reinforcing what she knew while having lots of fun. Zoo Phonics has TONS Of ideas for a well rounded curriculum so between the two, along with the tons of ideas we came up with, I had way more than enough, but I thought that was a good problem to have :-)

So let's see:

We began the year the first Monday in January with a family breakfast at IHOP and a fun trip to NASA to coincide with our "A" week! Also, this month, our Co-op learned about Ping and China. We went on a trip to the Imperial Gardens in Katy, Tx (followed by a yummy lunch at The Rainforest Cafe with the girls best friends Skylar and Emy), and a day at our house with the girls learning about what sinks/floats, and other cool related things that are escaping my mind at the moment.

"A" brought us alligators, Africa, astronauts, apples, animal crackers, Armadillo's Rodeo, finger painting in apple sauce, aerobics, adding, scurrying like ants, Adam and Eve, and Noah's Ark, among other things.

"B" brought us bears, Brazil, ballerinas, throwing balls, BINGO, Berlioz the Bear, Flight of the Bumble Bee, how to make books, Tower of Babel, balancing, The Wheels on the Bus, Baking, and Babies being born.

"C" was for Cats, China, Canada, Chefs, Cookies, Clouds, Eric Carle, Being Capable, calendars, crawling like crabs, cheese, crackers, catching, cardio, calisthenics, Courage, catching balls in containers, cornbread, cooking techniques, Cook a Doodle Do, counting, and conducting music. Wednesday of that week also brought a WONDERFUL day of story hour with our good friends, a half an hour of exploring a trail at the park and then tons of free play at the park playground. Gotta love Nature Study time when the Houston Texas weather is actually bearable -- um, unlike NOW!

"D" brought us Deer, Denmark, Dentists and Doctors, feeding ducks, Dandelions, Daisy-Head Mayzie, doughnuts, Jacob's dream, dreams of all kinds, dancing, drums, dogs, Dvorak, A Dance of Friendship (Angelina Ballerina), and Dependability. Wednesday brought us a repeat of the week before (still wonderful weather in February) and Friday brought us a field trip to the Dentist where they got their teeth clean.

"E" brought us Elephants, Egypt, Engineers, Horton Hatches the Egg (which Jordan related to our story that week of Joseph being sold by his brothers, as Horton was sold to the circus for money, too!), eggs, excellence, encouragement, and eye care. We went to the Children's Museum with friends this week, and we also really enjoyed the Mrs. Wishy Washy series, The Poodle who Barked at the Wind by Zolotow, and our Stuart Little read aloud.

This week we also did some narrations from Bible stories. I will finish this post with these narrations, and will come back by tomorrow with a few more weeks worth :-)

2/17 I asked Jordan (she had turned 4 3 months prior), to tell me the story of Adam and Eve without re-reading it (although very familiar with the story, we hadn't read it for over a month at this point). This is her narration:

Eve got two apples, but they weren't good. They tried one, but they thought they were better than God!! And they had to leave the forest. The sun was sad. Before they ate and tried the apple, a man disguised as a snake said to try one of the bad apples.

They thought they were better than God.

1. {said very emphatically here} God made a person.
2. Made the sun
3. Made all the animals
4. Made Adam
5. Made the world.

At this point, I asked her how the animals got their names and she said, "Adam saw them and said what they were called." Imagine a "No duh, Mom" look on child's face.

Then I asked how God made Eve:

He made Adam go into a deep sleep. He closed up his skin where he took one of Adam's ribs and said, "Let there be a woman out of this rib," and then -- POP! -- a woman came!!"

Can it GET any cuter than that??? Well, maybe so. . . here is Cali's narration (just turned 3 at this point) of Noah's Ark:

He tried to find his animals. . . a hippo. . . an alligator. . . his Mommy. . . .

{Cali, did they get on something}

A Boat!

{Then what happened?}

He tried to draw a picture of Jesus. The End!!!


Here is Jordan's narration of Noah's Ark:

Noah builted an ark and he counted each animal by 2 by 2. And then God made a flood! Then they floated, and then he sented a dove out, BUT before that he sent a black bird out. Then he sent a dove out again and again and again and again!! Until the flood went away and they saw a rainbow!

IT"S NOT OVER YET!

The ark was on a mountain. Until they saw a rainbow over it -- it was HUGE! They couldn't touch it, but they were still happy. They still had food they could eat and water so they could drink.


Now Jordan's narration of the story of Joseph -- I think she got a bit confused between Jacob and Joseph, but that just made it all the more adorable, ha!:

Once upon a time, Joseph's Daddy Jacob was really old. He couldn't see. His father made him a coat of many colors! And then his brothers were ANGRY, they wanted one, too!!

And they saw Joseph and they ripped his coat off and threw him in an empty well, and they sold him to Egypt. But he was in jail, but he was still happy because God was with him! He got out of jail and the King of Egypt had a dream about skinned cows and fat cows; The skinned cows were eating the fat cows. And then Joseph came to the King of Egypt and he became the Prince of Egypt! And he pretended his brothers were spies, but he still loved them. And they became happy, too. And he hugged them really tight and kissed them. And then he told them that God stays with us and Jesus always loves us!


Now, just in case your heart isn't completely melted, here is our final narration by Cali on the life of Joseph. Remember, she just turned 3 at this point.

I want to be a firefighter that saves him!! {meaning from the well}

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I have a feeling it is mostly only family that is still around following this old blog, which is actually great because you all have to love me regardless of how well I keep this up to date, but if anyone else out in blogland is still around, I'd love to hear from ya!

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!

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I am the Featured Homeschooler this week!

Good Morning :-)

I must tell you that I intended to start back blogging slowly, however my computer has been unwilling to turn on for the past few weeks! The only time I have to be online lately has been when Gregg is home from work at night with his work laptop, but it is important to me to reserve a lot of that time for family. . . and watching our newest passion: The Tudors, Season 1!

I did want to direct you to the interview I did with Heart of the Matter about our homeschool. We are the featured homeschool of the week!

I hope to have our computer fixed soon. . . it has been an interesting challenge to have our online resources so limited, but it has also helped me to keep my priorities in line. We have been having such a blast the past few months! LOTS of crafts (we are ALL finally at the age where we enjoy them lol), reading great books, nature walks, tea parties and science experiments inspired by the new PBS show Sid the Science Kid. I can't wait to share with all of you the MANY pictures we have taken!

Have a wonderful Sunday with your family. . . for us, we will be going to an Indian Pow-Wow in town and getting a wonderful introduction to our Indian unit next week!

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Getting through my thick skull

Good Morning Everyone!

What a week! In times past, when I would go several days without posting, it would be because of a natural disaster or a lot of running the streets. This week, however, we stayed home all day, everyday. So what has kept me from getting a start on my mountain of blog-catching up? My wonderful girls, the beautiful world outside our windows, and lots of baking, books and fun. . . and a little God-led heart change!

I have taken notice of a handful of times in my life when God has not only laid something on my heart, He has decided to back it up with completely changing my heart towards something. Other things, such as my self esteem or weight, He prefers me to work on, so I can "truly earn" my new mindset. Apparently, this one is either too important -- or I have taken too long to "Get it" on my own -- that He has decided to just change my heart and mindset immediately.

This week, our days were spent maybe watching 30 minutes - 1 hour of television during the day. . . period. I have spent maybe the same amount of time on the Internet daily. . . period. That includes checking emails, forums, websites and blogs! I simply have wanted to calm our days down, focus on each other and what is truly important. The radio has been on, we have done much dancing around and my house has never looked cleaner -- although this time it is with my girls help instead of putting on a video to keep them occupied! I know that they have gotten older this past year (and going from 2.5 - 3.5 years old and 1.5 - 2.5 years old is a big help), but I have made no secret of my struggle between keeping a house clean and having a wonderful day of learning and fun with my girls. I have shared my struggle with having preschoolers truly help me clean. . . maybe all this time it was ME that was causing the trouble. . . anyway I digress.

God has also finally helped me to figure out my "Daily Routine." My problem before was that I couldn't NOT get locked into a time scheduled routine. I would write things out and feel that they naturally led to "times" (such as an hour for cleaning, thirty minutes for an exercise video, thirty minutes to cook, etc), and they would also naturally flow at certain times of day (breakfast at a set time-- say 7:30-- and that would take 30 minutes, which would flow into exercising for 30 minutes at 8:00). I would read how it is better to just have a routine that would flow with the day, thus allowing for those "things" that always come up that cause me to feel as though I am trying to beat the clock or always behind. . . . but read about it as much as I would, it simply wouldn't happen. That changed this week.

What made it finally click? Apparently my intelligence in this regard is at a preschool level! What has made the difference is making a few picture charts for the girls that allow them to set up habits and know what happens when. It gets them so excited to follow and they read it all day! And I love that the pictures next to the words also give great reading practice. But it is best to keep it uncluttered, so there are no times. Simply a picture of a bed next to the words "Make Bed," and a plate of pretzels next to the words "Snack Time." We have followed this new picture/time-less routine all week and the result can only be what I assume those wise souls were talking about. . . Joy. Peace. Fun. Contentment. No constant checking of the clock or reshuffling things -- simply rolling onto the next thing on the chart. Sigh......

Besides the change in television and Internet, we have added in daily exercise and so far I have exercised everyday with the girls. . . so I am starting again, but this time since it is on my handy dandy picture chart that the girls read daily, I am thinking/hoping/praying that this time it sticks -- and when I am not "in the mood," I am sure my well-intentioned, must-follow-the-rules oldest will kick my butt. :-)

So, sorry to appear flaky this week in not posting. I will start doing better, as my plan is to start blogging at night while watching television with my husband, which he understands since it is simply my form of scrapbooking and I won't be surfing the web or anything. We also know that our family uses this blog as a means of keeping up with what is going on at Il Maniero (Italian for "the manor house," a new name we are trying out for our house, inspired by my recent obsession with all things Jane Austen. . . all the homes in her novels have a name. . . yes, I am a dork but it works and we have fun, so leave me alone lol).

I will post next week on our Transportation week which was a lot of fun, and begin the catch-up list previously posted.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend with your families. . . I know we will as both LSU and the Saints play this weekend! WOO HOO

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Ok, let's try that again

Dare I say that I am back? :-)


I was already behind in posting things on this blog and all the events of the past month certainly haven't helped things! I will be posting throughout the coming weeks on the following:

• Our Hurricane Experience -- We lost power the Friday it hit and got it back Tuesday afternoon. Since then it has been interesting trying to get back into a groove. While I will go into a lot more detail on that post, I will tell you really quickly that both my home and my parent's home (they live behind us) were spared any damage! Besides a few minor scares and inconveniences, it was actually a pretty great experience for us personally in that it provided LOTS of family time full of talking, reading, and memory making. We watched minimal television (we did have a generator and watched some things, like Saints football of course), and taught our girls (and myself) how to wash clothes with a washboard and hang a clothes line!


• Our Camping Pictures, lapbook and recap -- Yes, I know dear family members/readers, that you are chomping at the bit to see ME camping, much less the girls delight in the whole experience, and it is coming I promise!
  
• Horse Week pictures -- We had so much fun with this unit! It lasted two weeks technically, but with Gustav hitting in the middle and having my brother and his adorable girlfriend here for one of those weeks, we still kept it pretty simple and fun. We have a lapbook, fun pictures of all the books we devoured and of course, our pictures of our family trip to the Race Track to see the horses up close!


• Trip to San Antonio -- Wow, that trip was awhile ago, huh? But it was fun, educational and definitely one I want to document. We visited the Alamo (which has a really cute treasure hunt for the kids to make it fun) and the Riverwalk.


• Butterflies -- Just because I am so upset with myself for not posting the pictures of that unit since it was one of the girls favorites, I will post the pictures from this unit that we did I think back in June?? Wow, talk about BEHIND!
  
• Olympics/China -- I have pictures of our Lapbooks and of course, our Harris Family Olympics! There are SO many pictures though, that I want to use one of those cool slideshow thingys but every time I try to upload pictures into it at photobucket, it doesn't work. Any experts out there willing to help a sister out, please let me know!
  
• Children's Museum -- Ok, this trip was back in May!!! But again it was a fun family event that needs to be documented!
  
• Anything else that comes up between now and then!
  

But for now, I am off to clean up a bit and then have fun with my girls :-) I will leave you with these pictures of the breakfast Jordan made for us last week! The day before, she had woken up REALLY REALLY early and had decided to feed herself Tootsie Rolls for breakfast (we have a Tupperware container in the pantry with a few treats leftover from potty training). That day, I put some pop tarts, cereal and raisins in Tupperware in an easy to reach cabinet for her to have easy access to in case she ever did it again. . . well the very next morning, she woke up like at 5am or some ridiculously early hour.

I heard her in the hall bathroom (which is right by our bedroom), telling herself that she had an idea -- Pop tarts and Raisins! I got up a little while later, unable to sleep, and was greeted by a wonderful surprise! She had placed 4 paper plates on the table, with a pop tart next to each plate, sprinkled with a few raisins and the grand finale, a solitary Marshmallow on each plate (left over from our camping trip)! She yelled "Surprise!" and was just so happy with herself! It looks like my 3 year old is a budding cheff-er (her words) after all :-)

Have a wonderful day and I will be back soon with my mountain of updates and posts!

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On Second Thought, Scratch That. . .

Yesterday I was so proud of myself. I finally got online to update our family and blog-world friends on what we have been doing and just knew that I would be back to regularly scheduled programming, blogging wise.

Then, this Ike mess started. Being from New Orleans, my family and I feel pretty prepared for this storm. We are in the extreme NW Houston area, so we are actually being advised to stay put and not evacuate. The main concern is 40 - 60 mph sustained winds that should begin hitting us tomorrow. Gregg is currently on his way home and we will start gathering supplies in case power goes out.

So, all this to say, I guess I am not "Back" like I promised yesterday. Once the storm is over, I promise to post the pictures of our camping trip (I have had several family members politely hounding me, LOL). I should be back online by Monday.

Until then, have a wonderful and safe weekend with your families!!

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We're back :-)

I want to thank everyone who has emailed me to check in with our family. I know we have been silent for awhile, but it has been for great reasons.

The tragedy that my friend is going through did rock our family. My husband has never met Marsha or her family (we kept saying we would all get together and we would try to make plans, but you know how that goes. . . ), but this affected both of us. We have both been actively praying and turning to God, trying to get any lessons He wants to teach us from this experience. So far, that has meant A LOT of family time and reaching out more at our church. One thing that touched us was the amount of support they have locally from their church family, and we realized that since we changed churches a few months ago, we haven't really met many people there (besides my wonderful parents who go with us!) . . . we wondered who we would call if a situation like that would occur in our family. As it turns out, our church is holding a meeting this Sunday to create new small groups, this one particularly for Married Couples! We are praying that we will be able to make some friends and establish relationships through this new group.

As for the family time, we have been BUSY! I will make separate posts about all of the things we have been doing, but I will quickly summarize here. The week of Christian's passing, we were in the middle of a Camping theme. Monday and Tuesday we read lots of stories about camping, made a make-shift tent with blankets and pillows in the living room, and watched some fun camping cartoons. Tuesday evening, while I was driving to Marsha's house, Gregg wanted to do something special for the girls to wake up to. . . I think we all felt the need to hug our children closer and let them know how much they are loved. . . so he put up the huge tent in the living room. He added a lot of soft blankets, sleeping bags, pillows and stuffed animals. He also laid all of the books out inside. It was very nice and the girls were definitely excited to wake up to it Wednesday morning! That evening we decided to take the girls out to dinner -- I was in need of a family night -- so we went to Pizza Hut. Not five-star dining but come on, they are preschoolers! We were so impressed by how well they did in the restaurant. . . we kept flashing back to what seemed like a short time ago when they would be climbing all over the place, not wanting to sit still, and crying. They grow up so fast, don't they?

Friday afternoon we set out on our camping trip. It was a hard decision to make for me, as that was the same night they were holding the viewing for Christian, but the major thing that we are taking from this experience is how important family is and how quickly things can happen. I knew Marsha would understand and want me to keep the date with my family. The girls were really excited! I will be posting pictures from that night soon . . . and I must say that my first camping experience, even in the midst of extreme Texan heat, was a great success!

Last week was all about HORSES! My girls love horses so we started a two week unit on all things horse and pony. It has been a blast and this weekend we took the girls to the Sam Houston Racetrack -- not to bet, but to see the horses. :-) We had a great time, and I am loving the idea of incorporating these fun family events into our units! I will have lots of pictures coming from that week!

This week we are continuing our Horse week, but we also held our first Preschool Co-Op meeting in our home on Monday! The girls are SO excited! I am a little nervous about leading so many children (what works for us may not work for others), but the girls are making lots of friends. Currently there are 7 families total with 15 children, and I think one more family will be joining us. Ever since they left, the girls have been asking for their friends to come back!!

So that is what we have been up to. Busy, but really, really good! How about you? I would love to hear what everyone else has been up to for the past two weeks. . . I have so much blog reading to catch up on!

I will be back soon with all of our pictures!

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God Directed Lessons

This summer, I began a much lighter and enjoyable approach to our homeschool preschool. I am taking wonderful unit studies, along with my children's delight directed topics, and using them as jumping off points to create a fun learning environment.

What this has meant for us is not following the traditional FIAR approach of Monday - Social Studies, Tuesday - Language Arts, Wednesday - Art/Music, Thursday - Math, and Friday - Science. Instead, I am pulling together TONS of books and fun videos, reading whatever books they ask for (attempting to read each book at least once), and going over lessons as they come. There are several topics I go into the unit wanting to cover, and there are several topics that come as a complete surprise -- either resulting from something the girls ask me, or coming from a God-inspired moment. Often, this has also led to multiple units happening simultaneously!!

An example would be a few weeks ago. I believe at the time we were learning about Kangaroos. One day, after reading our books, we decided that for our movie time (this summer, we started a tradition of cuddling on the sofa together after lunch for movie time several days a week) we would watch The Land Before Time: The Time of the Great Giving. We had never seen this movie before, but really enjoyed it. The story is about a bunch of dinosaurs who are struggling because their water supply had been cut off. As a result, there is a water shortage and the trees in the valley were dying. Toward the end of the movie, lightening struck one of the dry trees and started a fire.

As the movie was ending, it started to rain at our house. We turned off the television, pulled up all of the blinds, and sat next to the windows, watching the rain. We talked about how that fire was started and talked about our trees and plants that had plenty of water and weren't dry at all. That led to conversations about what plants need to survive and various weather topics.

The next morning, we looked out our back window and saw a man climbing my parents' tree. . . I had totally forgotten that they were having it cut down! The week before that, we noticed that the needles were all very orange and brown, in comparison to the neighbors' trees that were lush and green. It continued to get worse throughout the week and it was obvious that the tree was dead. So that it wouldn't become a hazard (like the dead trees in the movie!), they had arranged to have it cut down. . . it was just a total coincidence that this happened the day after our big discussions about this type of thing! So lessons were scrapped for the morning as we sat next to the window and watched the tree being cut down.

Watching the process led to more conversations on what plants and trees need to survive, why that tree was dangerous and needed to be cut down, the observational differences between that tree and surrounding ones, how the man was being safe while climbing the tree (an intricate system of straps and rope), the tools he was using, and the process of cutting down the tree itself! We were just amazed by the entire thing, capturing it all in pictures -- much to the amusement of the workers!

That was just a two day mini-unit, but I just love how these things come together. . . and this is just one of several mini-units that have resulted the past few months. Being open to the world around me, my environment, the girls interests and questions, events that are happening and divine inspiration has led to exciting moments in our homeschool, and I pray that I can continue to be as open to His gentle leading throughout this journey!

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Striking a Balance

Balancing my many roles of Wife, Mom, Teacher, Maid, Cook, Friend, Daughter, Sister and Writer is something that I struggle with daily. From the emails I receive, I know that I am not the only one with this dilemma. It seems to be one of the things all women have in common – the quest to find balance in life and hush the never ending to-do list in our minds. As homeschooling moms, on top of all the other balancing acts we are performing, we also have to find a way to balance the busyness of the day and all the items on that to-do list with the fun moments that truly make the entire journey worthwhile.

As we bring this series on experiencing joy to a close, I only thought it appropriate to address ways that we can practically participate in those family traditions and rituals while still fulfilling the other roles our families need us to perform. The first step I took to strike this balance was something I learned on a retreat I attended late last year. My sweet friend Chelsea told me that she was completely exhausted just thinking about my day and all the things that I tried to accomplish . . . and the guilt that I carried around from not crossing all those items off of my list. She helped me to see that to have peace and joy in my life, what I needed to do was become intentional and plan. I needed to figure out what REALLY needed to be done around the house, the activities I needed to be a part of (if any), and how many from-scratch gourmet meals I needed to fix each week to feel good about myself. Most importantly, I needed to get my husband’s input. Then I just do what is on his list! It is wonderful if you can be Mommy Mrs. Perfect, but for the rest of us, the important thing is that your family knows how much they are loved. Wendy told me something that has stayed with me, “One thing’s for sure, my dear children do not worry about cleaning, mopping, laundry, dishes, etc; But they will say, ‘Mom, you didn’t sit with me and talk’ or ‘Mom, you don’t play with me.’"

Secondly, I put all but one of my yahoo groups on “no mail.” Those groups can be invaluable in the wisdom you can receive, but that wisdom is also provided by searching the archives. Chances are that they have discussed every topic you can think of at least twice anyway! Stopping all those emails from coming into my inbox every morning immediately lightened my load and helped calm me down.

Now, I’ve only been a Mommy for 3 ½ years so I thought it best to get insight on this balance thing from some much more seasoned veterans. An overriding tip was . . .

To read the rest of this article, please visit me at Heart of the Matter Online.

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My Biggest Mommy "Failure" . . Any Suggestions?

Good Morning and Happy Monday!!

Wow -- The Heart of the Matter Conference was such a BLAST and we have already received wonderful feedback. If you attended, I am working on an exit survey for the conference right now that we hope to send out soon. Please be on the lookout for that so you can truly get your voices heard and help us to make next year's event that much better (anonymously, of course!! We want brutal honesty... ok, well maybe not BRUTAL lol)

While that is going on, I am attempting to catch up on all of my emails, bloggy friends posts, my own posts and oh yeah -- HOUSE CLEANING! I did not get much done last week at all with this house, plus the girls were ABLE (see, I am choosing to think of it as a fun privilege and not horrible parenting) to watch a lot of fun videos and play play play while I was logged into the conference . . . so I am sure I don't have to tell you that there are toys everywhere, food and juice cups being found in strange places, sticky floors and mountains of clothes to wash LOL! I am going to be in MAJOR cleaning mode for the next two days but it almost seems silly to do too much deep cleaning with what I have in store starting this weekend. . . .

Last summer I started potty training my oldest, Jordan, who was then 2 1/2. We got a "Potty Patty" doll, locked ourselves into my master bathroom for two days with lots of toys and worked on learning how to use the potty. It went well, I wasn't comfortable enough in parenting to truly tailor the program I was using to our family so I did make a few mistakes, but she was pretty much trained. At night, I had purchased plastic pants to put over her training pants but they were velcro -- as in I paid too much money for them and got them off a so-called experts website -- that did not stay on very well, so we decided to go to Pull Ups. Things went well for several months . . . she would not be trained when she was at the nursery or anything, apparently she didn't want to stop playing to do something as silly as go potty lol, but at home, all was well. Then things started to slowly backslide. Then before I knew it, total regression.

I have been told by many, including some who are very knowledgeable about this sort of thing, that it is very common for older siblings, especially when they are so close in age (14 months apart), to regress when they see their younger siblings still in diapers. That plus totally messing up with pull ups led us to where we are now. Now, I know that the beauty of homeschooling is that we do not have to follow social norms -- there is no real need for my girls to potty train by a certain age for school or anything, they COULD wait until they were totally ready and just "start doing it" like I have read from so many other homeschool moms -- BUT with the rising costs of groceries, I just cannot afford diapers and pull ups anymore! Also, Jordan does do a good job when she remembers, the pull ups were just really confusing for her and Cali has been "asking" about it for awhile now, but I wasn't brave enough to do it on my own again lol. I needed my husband here for reinforcement for two of them :-)

The Plan??? We waited until Gregg could take a week off of work, and we are going to go COMMANDO TRAINING :-) Both girls at the same time, no pull ups ever again, just training pants and real underwear. We have been gearing up for this and the time is coming. . . Gregg works his usual half day on Friday which is when we will begin to introduce the topic and then starting Saturday morning . . . IT IS ON!! :-) (side note, we are doing a unit on China this week and a unit on The Olympics all next week, so we won't only be doing potty training, but it will be Mommy's primary focus!)

So, Potty Training has been my biggest Mommy Failure... Jordan is 3 (will be four in November) and has gone from not trained, to trained, back to not trained in a matter of a year and I do not want a repeat performance of that failure. So I am enlisting YOUR HELP!! I have a few questions that I would love to get your input on and would also LOVE to hear any tips you have -- methods, rewards, consequences, anything you want to share!!! So, without further adu, MY QUESTIONS :

1. As I mentioned before, last time I was locked into my Master Bathroom for two days. Why? It is the only room in the house that can be closed off that isn't carpeted. Our kitchen and entry are ceramic tile but I have an open floor plan that connects my kitchen to my family room. Luckily, if you can say that, my family room now already has spills and stains (berber carpet was not the wonderful thing I was told it would be, at least not with two toddlers) so I am not as concerned. I CANNOT lock myself into that bathroom again - I will go insane! --so we will be in our living room. I will probably push apart my large sectional sofa and have the big open floor exposed (picking up my nice-ish Bassett rug of course). I will bring a potty seat into the living room, and have both a potty seat and a child friendly smaller seat on the toilet in the hall bath which is just a few running steps away. MY QUESTION TO YOU -- any tips for covering the carpet? Should I put down a tarp? Plastic table cloth? blankets? Either way, our steam cleaner will be on stand by LOL
2. Along the same lines I guess, there are some that say you should put them in the pants right away, others that say you should have them without pants at all for the first day or two so it is easy, and then work in the pants part. . . What do you recommend? Did a particular plan of attack work best for you? Why or why not?
3. NIGHT TIME -- I have purchased the plastic Gerber pants (although the largest size is a bit tight for my oldest, any other suggestions?) and will have down a pad underneath the sheets. . . my question is about going to the bathroom at night. My girls share a bedroom upstairs, and my husband and I will be in our room downstairs. Last year when training, I had placed a potty chair in her bedroom. It was around that time that I was so paranoid about them going into the bathroom by themselves at night -- thinking they could somehow drown or hurt themselves or something -- that I put one of those handy dandy childproof door knob covers on the inside of their door. . . is that horrible?? ANYWAY, Jordan did well with that until she then decided to start going potty and then take the cup out of the seat and then pour THAT all over my floor -- it would have been better if she would have just peed all over my floor because then it probably would have occured during movement or something and wouldn't have been so concentrated!!! In fact, she became like a dog (sorry honey, Mommy loves you!) marking her territory by always taking the cup and pouring it out in the same exact spot in her room!!!! So we took that out of her room, and didn't come up with a great alternative then, which probably helped to get us to where we are now..... SO.... I am thinking I need to go ahead, bite the bullet and take the doorknob cover off and allow them access to the bathroom at night. Does anyone else have those fears about the bathroom? Any tips on things I can do to alleviate those fears? They never do anything crazy during the day or anything but the night seems so mysterious I just don't know what could happen. . . maybe I have seen too much TV. Also, any suggestions for things to tell them so they know they can come out and use the bathroom BUT then go back to bed? :-)
4. Finally, somewhat related, I still do have the "approved gate" at the top of my stairs but haven't used it in a very long time. If I am going to take the doorknob covers off of their door, they will be able to come down the stairs at night if I do not put the gate up. My girls are 3 ( 4 in November) and 2 (turned 2 in January). Does anyone have concerns with children this age being on the stairs in the middle of the night? They are totally fine, of course, during the day, but I have never had to be concerned before about the nighttime with limited visiblity. Any suggestions or tips? Should I leave up the gate or let them have free access?

OK, I guess that is it! If you subscribe to this feed, as many of you do, you can comment like usual by email (by responding to the feed) BUT it might be fun for others who have similar questions to follow your response.... BUT I am greedy and would prefer you to respond any way that will get you to respond LOL, as I need some HELP in this department! And, like I said, I would also LOVE to hear your potty training stories -- if you want to share your own failures that would be nice (let me know I am not alone here girls lol), as well as Success Stories :-)

Depending on responses, I might list some favorite replies in an upcoming post so make sure to leave a blog address if you would like me to link to you!!!

Have a WONDERFUL week!!

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Lessons from my girls

I thought I would share some of the lessons that I am learning from my beautiful daughters :-)

• I taught the girls a little sing-song, "When I fall down, I get back up again." This is always SUNG, by the way! This is normally sung after falling down, which seems to happen a lot around here LOL. They are still so young and, as can be common with toddlers and even preschoolers, they used to get emotional pretty easily when they fell down. It seemed to be out of embarrassment many times, so I taught them this song -- I guess about 6 months ago -- and they sing it at least once a day without fail! Even when I think they should be hurt from the particular fall they took, they always pop up with a smile and sing "When I fall down, I get back up again."

What is this teaching me? The fact that they have totally embraced this song as a mantra, and the fact that I hear it on a daily basis, has me learning to apply this saying to my life as well. "Falling down" can mean so many things -- falling off the exercise bandwagon, the organization bandwagon, the spiritual bandwagon or anything else that is important to you and you set your mind to do. Most recently for me, it has definitely been the exercise bandwagon. I was obsessed this time last year and working out ALL the time. That was not a lifestyle I could maintain, and because of that I ended up stopping all together. I tried again at the beginning of the year and that lasted for a couple weeks... then I fell off again. I tried again a few months ago... then I fell off again. I have been "gearing up" to get back on the bandwagon for a month now -- gearing up yet not doing anything! This week, I am starting again. And this lovely song my girls sing to me has me realizing that it is OK. Because, "When I fall down, I get back up again." Even if I end up getting "back up" every week . . the point is, to get back up!

• Jordan has started to say the cutest thing! Whenever she gets hurt -- whether it is from "falling down" or if her and Cali get into a sibling squabble, or whatever it may be -- she looks at us, sometimes even with tears in her eyes, smiles and says, "Accidents happen. . . But I'm STILL Happy!"

What is this teaching me? Isn't it obvious? :-) We can CHOOSE to still be happy -- still experience JOY -- even in the midst of heartache, life troubles, hurts, disappointments, etc; What a powerful message! I pray that she continues to see life this way! I do want to make sure she knows it is OK to be sad sometimes and that she doesn't always have to be so "tough," and I really think she knows that. It is just her choice to still smile. . . and I LOVE THAT!

• Cali has also started to say the cutest thing! :-) Whenever she does something really good -- like help us when we haven't asked her to, answers a question correctly, throws a ball, whatever it may be -- she literally BEAMS and says, "I'm AWESOME!"

What is this teaching me? Again, I think it is pretty obvious! As long as this is kept in check -- which it is, because she only does it when she is expressing happiness with something she has done well, not in a "I am better than you way" -- it is such an AWESOME Mantra to have! How many of us have negative tapes in our heads, telling us: "You're not good enough," "You're not pretty enough," or "You're stupid?" I know I have many negative tapes myself and I can only imagine how different my self-concept would be and how many stupid actions I would have spared myself from (trying to gain approval from others) if I would have told myself and BELIEVED such a wonderful mental tape! Cali. . . You are AWESOME! :-)

So. . . What are your children teaching you?

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Getting Caught Up. . .

So, some of you may be wondering what happened to my wonderful plans for getting caught up with all of my posts, huh?

Well, for once, it was not because I forgot! Blogger has not been being friendly with me. After thinking about uploading a picture for about an hour, it then gives me an error message. This has happened all weekend! Since the posts that I had left were all pretty picture intensive, I have had to put my wonderful intentions of being caught up on hold. BUT, I promise to get them all up soon!!!

Until then, have a wonderful week -- I probably won't be able to post much, as I will be attending the best homeschool conference ever, that you just happen to be able to attend in your PJs! :-)

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Enjoying the Journey

If you have been following this series, you know we have previously discussed things that keep us from experiencing joy in our role as homeschoolers, and more importantly, mothers. I pray that by seeing yourself in some of the examples, you realized you were not alone in the battle against our Enemy, who would love nothing more than to keep all of us in an un-joyful place. Having seen our own struggles mirrored in another’s life, we get a sense of peace and are able to move on. Today we will be discussing ways we can take time in our day to make sure we are enjoying our family, and special traditions and rituals we can incorporate to truly build family unity!

I must confess that this was my favorite part of the survey I conducted. I started compiling answers over three months ago, and the responses were so awesome that I immediately started implementing many of them! Granted, many of them are things that I was already striving to do, but seeing how others made it a daily priority encouraged me to do the same, and my family has been blessed as a result. There were also several moms who confessed in embarrassment that they realized they hadn’t established ANY rituals or traditions unique to their family. . . if this is you, please do not sit there in guilt or shame! Take some of the ideas I will list here and use them as a springboard for creating your own special family moments. It is never too late to start and today is a perfect opportunity!

The way that I have always made sure I was enjoying my family was to stop and ask myself if I had REALLY hugged them, laughed with them, or been silly with them yet that day. Did I abandon all motives and intentions at least once and just sit down with them and sing songs, hug, and join in their play and silliness. Since I am a natural goober, this should come pretty naturally and often it does – but it is just as likely, if I am not careful, to get bogged down in my “to do” list for the day and let these moments pass me by. It seems that I am not alone. Taking time to be intentional about silliness, singing, laughing, and tickling were listed by almost everyone who replied! It just warms my heart to not only know that I have so many kindred spirits out there, but to think of all the joyful homeschool children we are raising, children who are confident and grounded in their parent’s love! This journey truly is a blessing!

Those were things that I have always done, but the ideas gleamed from your responses are what has truly made the difference in our home. . . .

To read more, and find out what suggestions have made the biggest impact on our homeschool and family, visit me at The Heart of the Matter

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You have to read this

Greetings!

I am a bit behind in my posting, huh? I will catch up soon on our Monkey Adventures, my amazing husband and his weekend alone with our girls, and on this week's journey with Bees, but until then, I wanted to share THIS. The Old Schoolhouse Minute had a link to an old CM Carnival from November that I decided to check out. In it was the above posting by Dewey's Treehouse that was inspired and inspiring. It was on the wild adventure that books can take you and just explains my heart so much better than I could :-) Read it -- be blessed!

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