Getting Better

It's been one whole week of home schooling and I've already learned SO much.

I've learned that I really rather enjoy being home with Doodle.

That life isn't so hard when I do what comes naturally. When I stick to what my role is. I am a mother. A wife. A woman. Those are my roles at the moment. I need to refocus on this. For the first time in awhile I feel so strongly drawn to the concept of being a mother first and a photographer second. I love my art, I love my business, but the more I focus on my business the less I feel capable of being a good mother or good wife. I need to find balance between the two.

I've been able to really see where Doodle's interests are and how to best connect with him. I've found myself pulling some of Charlotte Mason's ideals into our schedule while still maintaining the structure that *I* need.

I've learned that I need lists.

I've found so much joy in being able to spend time with my child. We've read books. Planted flowers and vegetables. I've listened to him play pretend with his cars the way I did with my Barbies. I've seen him intently color a giant coloring book brought home by Daddy and actually try to stay in the lines. We've sung songs together and he's asked to learn new ones.

Things just feel like they should be. I want them to stay this way.

Idea Sources

Printed off the packet from http://prekinders.com/summer-packet/ on some good ideas for helping to introduce Doodle to math this summer. We're excited to try the math basketball this week.

Breaking Ground

It's amazing to me how our perceptions of things change as parents and educators. I've found the more down and dirty I get into parenting the more I realize how little Doodle needs notebooks and fancy worksheets and how much *I* need them.

It's true. I sit down and look at the worksheets I've set aside for tomorrow and realize there is nothing on those sheets I could not teach to him using something physical and tangible for him. However the longtime student in me just cannot let go of the idea of using "proper" worksheets and workbooks.

I'm getting better at organizing our curriculum and lesson plans. But that's just a fancy way of saying that I'm learning what works for us and what doesn't. Workboxes are awesome for me to keep organized of what I want us to be focusing on and learning about, but it doesn't mean we actually get through them all. Or even any. Today was a total bust on the workboxes. But we did spend an hour playing with coffee beans in the sensory tub. I got the idea from http://www.childcareland.com/ who posted a video about doing a sensory tub with pom poms. She mentioned giving kids scoops and containers to fill with the pom poms and let 'em go at it. Since I've been looking for a way to help teach Doodle about Kenya's agricultural products (Coffee and Corn being some of them) I thought this would be an awesome sensory activity for us this week. We bought whole coffee beans and he spent a good 45 minutes scooping, funneling and pouring into different containers. Plus the entire kitchen now smells of coffee. Yummy. Tomorrow I'm going to allow him a coffee drink (high milk & some sugar added) as a way to wrap up the coffee part. We then spent 2 hours at the pool relearning how to play in the water and hold our breath for jumping in. If I remember correctly, he's a fast learner and it wont take long before he's off the diving board again.

Tomorrow we're going to be spending some time at home and working on our boxes. I do want to try and get through a few things each week just to keep up with our summer goal of finishing preschool.

Our boxes tomorrow contain :

-Rainbow Colorbook : Doodle gets to color the 1/2 page drawings with the color indicated and then we turn them into a book. He seems to do about 2 pages a day before losing interest. Review.
- Kenya Word Art : Doodle will take the word "Kenya" and get to decorate it with whatever he wants.
- Math Stickers : One of the math books Doodle likes allows him to use stickers to count. We try to do one or two a week. New

- Sequence Rummy : Doodle LOVES cheap flashcards and he especially loves these right now. I'm working on putting it into our workboxes once a week to keep it fun for him. New.

- Science | Taste : Bake Muffins.
- Music - Itsy Bitsy Spider : I'm really not that great at music stuffs so I hope to be able to follow through on introducing one new song/rhyme to Doodle each week. We're going to be printing & coloring a matching book with lyrics to read as well.

Summer

Well that's it.

Our Fabulous Ms Ruth has left us for the summer. It's just Doodle and I for the next three months as we tackle this whole home schooling thing ourselves. I'm excited. And nervous. Really nervous. I'm not even sure what we're supposed to be doing at this point, Ms Ruth always handled that. Doodle just kept coming home knowing new things.

But I put together a few ideas for the summer.

First I decided to look at what subjects I wanted to focus on. Since Doodle has zero interest in writing, penmanship was most definitely not on the list. I ended up deciding on a few subjects.
Math
Language Arts
Music
Art
Science
Sensorial Activities.

Each day of the week has three subjects attached to it for us to use in our workboxes. It might be some worksheets or larger actives or games, but it will help me to structure our weeks to make sure we're not forgetting something.

I then decided to put together a goal for the summer (finish preschool) and break it down into a month at a time.

June
Math : Counting & Ordering 1 - 20; understanding quantitative concepts.
Language Arts : Bedtime Books & Chapter Books ; 10 sight words
Sensorial : Cutting & Pasting
Science : Classification, Zoo Animals, Seasons & Weather
Geography : Kenya & England, Maybe Australia if we have the motivation.

Doodle is into maps right now so I've decided to run with it by doing some Geography work. Since Ms Ruth is in Kenya for the summer this is a perfect time for us to focus on Kenya and Africa. We will be researching zoo animals found in Kenya as a tie-in to our science lessons and I'm so lucky that Homeschool Creations happens to have a full lesson plan on Kenya for us. :) We will adapt some of the ideas for Doodle's age, and we're also going to add in some Swahili lessons for fun.

I am excited. I think Doodle will LOVE it and he is going to have so much fun making postcards to send to Ms Ruth and her kids.

Zoo Day

Purchased a family membership to the Zoo and planning to spend a lot of time there this year.

Since today was our first visit in over a year I decided to let it be more about becoming familiar with the Zoo and taking the time to enjoy the animals and just learn what we can from viewing them. I was impressed with how Doodle would find the info posts and ask me to "read the words" to him. I left my camera at home, not brave enough to travel out with three kids and a camera.

Over the next week I will be printing out a list of the animals we saw at the zoo and a world map. The kids and I will begin by matching animals with their continents and then we'll start to pick out one animal a week to focus on and do a lapbook of. My hope is that we can make a trip to the zoo once a week.

Picture Love

I realized this winter I hadn't spent time on pictures of the kids. Today I made an effort to fix that and start getting snaps of them again.

Another Mother's Day

While Doodle did let Mark and I sleep in until nine, it was no where the luxurious lie in I imagined I would get on Mother's Day back before I became a Mom. I did, however, get chocolate chip pancakes with extra syrup. Mmmmmmm yummy.

While normally we attend church services every Sunday but after so busy for the last week I made the executive decision to take the morning off and do family time. A visit to Michaels to restock the craft table and a stop by the book store to pick up James & the Giant Peach, a hug to my mother and Mark and I took off to pick up his daughters. MissyMae and MissyLou had made me a flower pot with their hand prints on it for Mother's Day. Quite an unexpected surprise and such a touching gift.

With plans to homeschool Doodle this summer the first thing Daddio and I have opted to focus on is reading and books. Doodle is able to read a good handful of words without help and many of his beginner reader books he has memorized. I am proud of his interest in reading and Daddio and I have decided to branch out to some select chapter books. Our hope is to continue with his easy reader books but also introduce him to some more mature literature to keep him interested and challenged.

Our first book is James & the Giant Peach. The chapters are quite short, usually 2 - 3 pages, and a perfect length to read through, stop and discuss, and continue reading.

Doodle (3) and MissyMae (4) have fallen in love with this book so far.  Once we finish the chapters Daddio and I will be renting the movie to let them watch. We are going to continue this with several different kinds of chapter books throughout the summer, with a focus on books turned into movies as rewards.

Doodle also will be getting a large amount of craft time this summer.

To work on his science we'll be focusing on gardening and growing plants. Doodle also is obsessed with maps right now so we've placed them all around his room and will be talking about different places on them, an early introduction to geography but very timely as MissRuth will be traveling to Kenya this summer, Mark is from England and I have family around the states. I also have decided to make use of our washable paints and allow the kids to use the fence in the backyard as a writing board for letters, numbers, and shapes. Each week I'll be focusing on a different shape and painting them on the fence and creating a game. Since Doodle lacks any interest in writing, this might help him learn how to write. Low pressure, high creativity and fun.

Math skills will continue to be based on RL situations. Counting what we have in front of us and slowly introducing the idea of addition and subtraction without visible numbers, just objects. (Three strawberries, eat one, now how many are left...) I also want to continue some focus on personal hygiene and time/calendar. Getting Doodle to be able to use the restroom start to finish without any assistance is a big goal for the summer, at this point he still needs help washing his hands. And understanding the concept of days of the week would be awesome. :)

~ SA 

I don't know what I'm doing.

Let's get that out of the way right now.

I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm starting another blog or wasting time typing this rather than sweeping up the sand by the backdoor.

But it's because I want to remember and share things with people and friends across the world. I want to have something to show my kids so they know they were not deprived as kids because they didn't have the same toys as their friends. Or because their very best clothes were bought at Target so I would never cringe when they spilled grade juice or red paint on them. I want them to see how we played and learned through doing things. How much better off as people they are because of the time and effort Mark and I put into our parenting decisions.

I also want a place to talk about ME. Just me. :) Randomness that needs a place to fall without much care for who reads or who ignores.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this.