Homeschool Mothers Journal 1/11/2012

In Our Lives This Week: Honestly this week has flown by. Taxes and school has taken up most of our time this week. I have managed to do a few extra things though.......trying to keep up with my house and not let it get ahead so much. I got my filing cabinets cleaned out and organized. The feeling of knowing where everything is makes me smile. I am hoping to do one decluttering thing every week. I am just all about destressing our lives this year. My lack of organization spills over into everything, including my kids and that is a serious focus for 2012. Have been putting everything I find that we don't use on Craiglist. Pretty sure the kids think they might be next!

Bodie, graphing how many hearts of each color he has.

Here is Brylee sorting sweethearts onto the right color of heart.

In Our Homeschool This Week: I found some free, cute printables for Valentine's Day from www.teachingheart.com  and also www.preschoolprintables.com.

She liked this heart pattern matching game.     

    This game had pictures of hearts with a certain vowel on it. Bodie sorted the words onto the heart with the matching vowel sound. 

The next game we did was kind of like Cooties. We had the two hearts glued on paper. Then you roll the dice and look at your sheet to determine what bug part to draw.. They liked it so much we had to do more than love bug.






Things that are working for us: I am doing a combination of things to work on behavior issues. I have a jar for tickets. The deal is that when they get fourteen tickets they get to do something special with mama or daddy. These tickets are harder to earn. I reserve them for things we are really having issues with. I also take tickets for being disruptive in class, whining, argueing, and other things. I want those fourteen tickets to be something they really have to work for! We have a sticker chart for smaller goals. I am more generous with these and they can't be taken away. Once they get five stickers they get a choice between things in the prize box or .50 cents. I am always keeping this stocked with bargins I find in the dollar section.

Questions I have: Still looking for creative ideas to deal with sibling fights. Any ideas?

In Our Life This Week:  Spring feels like it's right around the corner here, especially with the really mild weather we are having here in central Texas. We don't have a tractor so Glenn hooked the disk up to his truck and was able to disk up our pasture and the arena! He put seed out too so now if we could get a decent amount of rain we might get some grass growing! I'm a little worried for our trees though. The leaves are already coming out and we are sure to get some nasty weather before spring really arrives.

In Homeschool This Week: More towel time and table time and it really helped this week. We had one day where she tried to pout about it, but I stuck to my guns and made her wait for the timer to go off. The rest of the week we had no issues.  The best part for me is that for at least part of the day there are way few battles. I am not frustrated trying to keep up with up jumping from thing to thing. She seems happier too so it is one little part of the day that feels more organized. 

Bodie's caterpillar.  

 

 

 

I found a site that had cute ideas for fractions using caterpillars for Bodie. I modified Brylee's to work on patterns.

Brylee's caterpillar   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She's excited about finding the right letter!

I have noticed a big improvement in Brylee's recognition of letters lately. I used my "parking lot" board with clothespins that had matching letters. She loved this game and was so proud when she found the letter that the clothespin belonged to. We did this during table time. It took about twenty minutes for her to get all the clothespins on the correct letters. She stuck with it the whole time and I did not help her with any of the letters.


Struggle of the week: Usually there is at least one struggle during the week, sometimes involving multiple days. This week Bodie had a day that he was just really emotional. I'm not sure what was going on, but he was just frustrated and crying over everything. I could feel my frustration rising and patience dropping so I just decided to have him lay down. I made him lay down for an hour and a half. He never did go back to sleep but got up in a much better frame of mind and the rest of the day was uneventful. Now if only I could lay down every time I was cranky!

Questions/ Thoughts: There has definitely been more fighting between brother and sister lately. Their ages are three and six so it is a tough age I think. I'm looking for any great ideas on what to do to break up the fights with less frustration on my part. Any ideas? Things that have worked for your family?

Homeschool Mother's Journal 11/27/11

   

In My Life This Week:  This was the week of Thanksgiving. It's normally a crazy time for us, but I was determined to relax and not stress out about things. We got a couple of days of school done and were off to Grandma Ginger's house. The kids ate too much candy and I ate too much of everything and I do not even care. Time to go on a diet again so I can lose five pounds before gaining it all back during Christmas. 

Our Fairy House

In School Lately: I word it this way because I have been simply awful about blogging and have gone through several letters since I last wrote. I'll try to highlight. Brylee continues to work on different letters every week. Some weeks she is more into it than others. Here are a few great things we did: 

We made a fairy house for the letter F. First we went on a nature walk and gathered only things made in nature. We had fun making this. Sad to say it had a mishap with the garden hose a few days later. Next time we will remember not to put it close to the path of that dreaded garden hose.

Flowers made out of cupcake liners and buttons! 

Bodie has been studying early civilisations so he tried his hand at hieroglyphics:
 

The tops and bottom are his.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

I have been working a lot with Brylee on her colors, letters, and numbers. Here are a few fun things we did :

 

 

 

 

 

We normally color these, but she has been getting tired of that so we used these colored disks instead. We used blocks for any color we did not have in the disks.

 

 

 

 

 

We used the same things for her counting cards.

 Same igloo cards, but with shapes. We used her shape flashcards to match them up. You can see that cresent is not in her flashcards. This was a great way to review her colors too. 

Did I mention that I get so many of my printables from TOTSCHOOL? They have themes every week depending on the letter. I print them,laminate, and am ready to go.

Embarrassing moment this week: So you realize I don't have it all together all the time(in fact rarely) and have struggles just like any other mother here is my embarrassing moment:

Some of you on my facebook know that a couple of weeks ago Bodie decided it would be a smart thing to expose his underwear in his P.E class to the horror of many little girls and the secret joy of many little boys. Apparently, over the last week, upon speaking to parents and some of the other coaches, it has been decided that Bodie can not participate in this block of sports. So, he has been kicked out until January when I suppose we will try again. While part of me laughs, I do understand they can't have boys(or girls) pulling down their pants at will and think this is a good lesson for Bodie to learn. I am embarrassed that my child is the one which the coach will probably be talking about to the kids as an example of how not to be. Oh well life is like a box of chocolates and you never know what you're going to get.

We did crazy hats for the letter H.

 

Becoming Intentional

   



 
Being intentional comes to some people naturally.....you know checklists and organization. For me it's like fighting up hill with a grizzly and sometimes that grizzly is me. When I decided I was going to homeschool I knew I would have to be more intentional. Some weeks are better than others. The biggest amount of planning comes from my three year old. 

If I want to be productive at all I have to have things planned out for her, otherwise she makes her own fun. Normally I use Sunday afternoon to print out worksheets and activities for her. If I am not intentional about this it can ruin our whole week. Trust me I have learned the hard way. I also keep a list of busy ideas in a spiral. The days of thinking on my toes are long gone. Anyone with multiple children understands this. Having a list of extra things to do can save the day!

What about housework? This continues to be a struggle for me. It was not my best area even before I had kids. I think all homeschoolers struggle with this some because our kids are always home. There isn't that break during the day where you can focus on nothing but cleaning. It helps me to have certain chores my kids do every day. Another thing I tend to do is start one thing, get distracted, and start another. By the end of the day I have a number of things started and not so many finished. So I am trying to remember to focus on one thing at a time. I remember one day I got the idea to dig up all the dandelions in our yard. Of course I started but never finished. When my husband got home he thought there had been an armadillo visit. Honestly he never knows what he might find when he comes home poor guy. 

Also as moms, we need to remember to let some things go. If we don't we will spend our whole life doing. This is the fast road to burnout. Any time I feel myself getting grumpy, it is usually because I have not taken some time for me. When was the last time you were intentional about  a break? I am going to be intentional about sitting down and drinking my coffee this morning before I start the day.