Well, I am writing this before I fillin for a nanny. Daddy has been "taking charge" of homeschooling now that I am at the ministry office on normal office hours, more or less. So, in reality, that means that not a whole lot is being done.
Should that bother me? should it not? my kids are home almost all day with their daddy.....something that many kids don't have the priviledge of (and having 3 boys, that is great they have their daddy around all day).........daddy has been teaching them their Chinese lessons and occasional math. Well, for "work" wise, that is about it....so are then called unschoolers? That bugs me for some reason.....I am a textbook person, not trying to keep up to par with peers ,but I like to know where I have been and where I need to go.
I do have a question for my 3 readers out there:-).....history.....this bugs me....we live in Taiwan and only go to the USA once every 4 years.....should I not bother too much with history and just use our time in the USA to "catch up " on it? they do take the IOWA tests, does history matter that much?
Also, I am thinking of just working out something with dh that they do mostly Chinese now, and after dinner (whether they like it or not), I do spelling and reading/grammar so I know they are getting it.......oh....this bilingual stuff is hard.....I am not going to give up on it though, they need it and I KNOW one day they will appreciate it!!!!
suggestions?
I haven't really decorated Amy's room. Up until now she has shared with her brother, so I didn't do much. But, we're shuffling kids around in our 3 bedroom house, and pretty soon Amy will be all by herself in her room. The 11 year old is going to make a bedroom in the sunroom (we need to add a door) and the three little boys will be sharing the big bedroom. My prayer is that God will add another little girl to our family and then Amy won't be lonely!
Here's the nursery now:
So, I'm looking for inspiration to redo her room (for very little cash).
this is cute from Design Dazzle
and maybe a homemade rag rug (go here for tutorial)
I've been having fun playing around with photoshop and creating some digital scrapbook pages. I'd love to finish a book for each child each year, but...um...yeah. That may not happen, but I do have a goal. And they say having goals is important.
That way I can know exactly when I've failed, right?
Anyway, here's what I've accomplished the past two days. I also got the laundry done (almost), but that is not nearly as impressive.
If you like the images you see here, you can download all of the elements, lettering, backgrounds and many other page kits for FREE at www.shabbyprincess.com.
Occupying three little boys so that I can do "big school" with my oldest and entertain my baby can be difficult. File folder games are fun, simple, and inexpensive ways for little ones to learn on their own. To make the games you can buy a book with reproducible pages or check online for free.
Here are my little guys enjoying file folder games:
This is my two year old. He is matching fruit to their silhouetted shape. He loves this one, and will do it over and over again. The gameboard is made by gluing shapes onto the folder and then laminating the whole thing. The pieces are stored in a plastic baggie that is placed in the folder when its put away.
How much fun is it to match the front of an animal to the backside of an animal? Just ask my three year old.
This game is quite versatile. For the younger kids it helps with matching colors, but for my five year old it is working on word recognition. It seems like a simple game, but it really works!
Here are a few sites that offer printable file folder games:
http://www.filefolderheaven.com/
Have fun adding file folder games to your homeschool!
We finally got a new camera and worked out all the glitches with uploading pictures. Its a cheapy digital camera, so the pictures aren't that great. We've lost two slightly more expensive cameras to gravity, and we didn't want to take a chance with that again.
A good homeschooling mom makes use of car rides by employeeing math songs, books on CD, or even well-timed sermons.
Today I used the drive time to catechize the kids. If you are Southern Baptist, like 85% of the people that we know, then you don’t know what that means. It isn’t a strange ritual involving felines. Rest assured. We only use dogs in our religious ceremonies, as they are tastier and more acceptable to the Lord.
If you aren’t acquainted with sarcasm, that was a little taste of it for ya. We don’t actually harm animals in our worship. Squirmy little kids may get a pinch or two, though.
Catechism is just asking children a series of questions and teaching them the answers. It’s used to teach basic spiritual concepts, such as who God is. I was asking the children question #7 of The Children’s Catechism (which we’ve had to edit in a few places to appropriately reflect our beliefs), which is “What are the three persons of God?” I explained about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We got to the point of me telling them that God sends the Holy Spirit to help us at the same time that He changes our hearts and gives us new ones.
At that point I was pretty intellectually exhausted at having to explain the trinity to preschoolers. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my five-year old bow his head and cover it with his hands. When he looked up he was smiling.
I asked him, “What did you just do?”
He said, “I just asked God to give me a new heart.”
“Well, what did He say?” I asked him.
“He said ‘Yes’. And He has my old one.”
The beautifully funny faith of a little child. Praise the Lord for His work in our home and the journey He started us on so many years ago that allowed me to witness a moment of His work in my child.
Poop stories are popular with moms.
I was trying to figure out why when it hit me. For a short period of time, our lives as mothers are defined by the foul-smelling excrement of our itty bitty progeny.
We count the number of poops to make sure our milk supply is adequate. We equate the poo color with the health of our babies. Yellow grainy is good. Purple, not so good. Who fed the baby lavender play-dough? (true story)
A huge milestone in the life of a mother is when her little darling somehow manages to bypass the diaper and place his poopy into a potty.
We call daddy.
We call grandma.
We blog it.
We post it on Facebook.
We Tweet if we are really young and hip.
We take disgusting pictures and plan a two-page spread.
Little Johnny pooped in the potty!!!
What is life like without this constant concern for our child’s fecal matter?
I don’t know. I’m not there yet. I’m not sure I want to be there. Changing the first inky black diaper of a newborn, gently rebuking a wiggly six-month old who is threatening to get poo all over her own heels during a diaper change, passing out M&M’s to a victorious two-year who nailed the potty – these are the moments of motherhood. To rejoice in those days being over means rejoicing in the end of my motherhood.
My prayer is that I have a few many more poop-filled years left in this life.
You can start breathing again. Its okay. I'm back.
I know you were holding your breath, waiting for my reappearance.
For whatever reason, I just haven't felt like blogging lately. I'm pretty sure God gave Satan the go-ahead to beat the stuffing out of me. And instead of fighting him with my silver-coated Bible, I just sort of laid down and let him wallup me.
Enough, I say!
Plus our camera committed suicide and tried to take down Photoshop with it, so I don't have any nifty-cool images of my perfect...*cough*...family to show you. You will have to be satisfied with my words. Yeah, I know, its like eating a salad without dressing. Perhaps you can choke it down for a few more sentences.
Miss Darlin's birthday is coming up and I've been thinking of her amazing birth a lot lately. I've tried several times to write about what I learned and how I can apply those lessons to other areas of my life. In honor of that, and because I don't want to leave you with dry lettuce in your throat, I'll post the song that helped get me through her labor. To this day, I automatically relax my shoulders and breather slower when I hear this song. Good memories!
Enjoy.
kinda went better than I had expected. Though by Friday, we did have a day off......I am trying to think why???!!!! something came up....... oh, we had a pastor and his wife from up north come down to pick up a newborn they are going to adopt. That was quite an interesting, yet emotional experience!!
Ds1 did well with most independent work. Though quiet reading has gotten sorta behind. He is allowed to pick the Sugar Creek Gang or BoxCar Kids book and read a chapter a day, he can read it at night. He didn't like my "oh, you haven't read the past few nights? guess you need to make up those chapters.....3 chapters today huh?" He didn't like that. We did have a bit of "I forget how to do it" when it came to multiplication, 3 digit, but he did good after the initial "redo your paper". He remembered quickly:-)
Ds2 did well, though I am trying to figure out reading with him. He did good on his Chinese. Dh is teaching them on Thursday and Friday. Ds2 is liking grammar (didn't get that from me!!).
Ds3 is still into having class, and wants his first:p.....won't last long. Being he is only in kindergarten, we really don't force things and have quick lessons. He is liking his math and writing quite well. We are using a book I got from free from someplace on the internet that gets movement and all that fun stuff invovled in learning the alphabet...HE LOVES IT!!! and he was so proud of him self for reading words like "man ran can" those types.
the one and only DD is picking up pencils and wanting to write in every book around. She gets pretty mad if you take it away from her. She is doing well and daddy tries his best to occupy her while we have class..... which is not an easy job in itself.
We are preparing for Ds1's 11th birthday......my, where has the time gone!! Dh leaves for a ministry trip to China that afternoon. So, it will be me and the kids for the week.......shall be um....interesting!!!
I'll write more another time....have a great week
Several years ago we enclosed our back porch and turned it into a mudroom/bathroom/pantry. The bathroom (the priority) and pantry were quickly finished up, but the mudroom remained unfinished all this time. I knew how I wanted it, but it never seemed to be a priority. Plus I detest mudding and sanding drywall and that's where the project left off. My mother-in-law took the kids last month so I could work on a project. Dang! That meant I had to actually work on a project! lol I decided to tackle the mudroom once and for all. I did manage to get the room mudded, sanded and primed that weekend. I then had to wait for hubby to put the flooring down.
This weekend we made another Home Depot trip to pick up cabinets. I painted the room at 8pm last night so that we could get the cabinets up today. Sadly, I'm only manager to average about one day a week to work on the project. Still, we're finally at a point where I can see the end in site. Here's the very attractive "before" pictures. It's kind of funny, because directly to the right of the first view, is a totally adorable bathroom. You just had to walk through this mess to get to it!
And the "during" shot. (A view of the same area in the picture directly above) Not close to being done, but at least you can get a feel for the desired outcome. I can't wait!
