Family Musings

As I watch my children grow up, I want them to learn to love. I don't want to squash their questioning and wondering about the world around them. Admittedly, after the 4,537,136th question of the day, I wish Charlotte would give it a rest, but I am still glad that she continues to ask questions. Sometimes though, when it comes to trying to do new things, like learn sight words or some other new skill, she seems to get frustrated easily. I try to encourage her to try, even though it might be hard. this works in varying degrees depending on the circumstances. Related to this, I saw a great pin today and wanted to print it as a reminder in our home. But, unfortunately, the link trail didn't lead me to one that was printable, so, I made my own. And since I know lots of home schooling moms and teachers, I thought you might want to print this for class rooms, either at home or at school. You can click on the image to download a 8.5x11 PDF version from Google Docs. Leave a ...

My husband just brought home my newest project! I had only seen a fuzzy cell phone picture of it so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but it was free for the taking and I had just enough info to know it would fit my space in size, if not color. We are in the process of trying to make our dining room a functional space for both homeschooling and dining and the Ikea dressers we had been using for storage the last four years are falling apart from continued use. This redo has to be done on a frugal budget, so I really couldn't see myself passing up a free dresser! It easily offers enough storage to replace the two plain white, Ikea dressers that are going to either be repurposed, donated, or tossed. Now, we have to figure out what to do with this piece to make it my own. It really is gorgeous and I am thrilled that it has "feet." The rest of our furniture (mostly also from Ikea) all sits flush to the ground, so I am really counting on this piece to break things ...

Bruce here, hijacking Jennifer's blog again. Today is Mother's Day. And I thought I share a little bit about my appreciation for Jennifer. Jennifer and I met in 10th grade history class. And, within one week of meeting Jennifer, I told her that we were going to get married, one day. This is an undisputed fact. But, Jennifer still has trouble believing I really meant it. Of course, she also shook her head "no" when I asked her to marry me 5 years later; she couldn't believe I was serious that time, either. But, I was. So, why would a 15-year old punk be picking out his future wife? It sure does sound pretty absurd. But, even back then, I knew what kind of woman I wanted to be the wife and mother of my future family. Yes, I was a strange kid. Years later, when I actually asked her to marry me, I had already planned out our financial future so that I knew we'd be able to make it. I was only 19, at that time, but I knew people, including Jennifer, would wo...

A child who is 4 years old should be learning how to write out their full name. This skill is standard kindergarten readiness and even if you plan to homeschool, as we do, your child should still work to attain this skill in a timely manner. Why? Well, in our house at least, Charlotte spends time with her peers at church and they often bring home worksheets and art projects that need her name on them. More importantly, it imparts a great sense of pride when a child can successfully write their name on their own. With that in mind, I want to start our handwriting homeschooling instruction by teaching Charlotte how to correctly write her own name. She is already pretty close to having it down. But, since she has 9 letters in her name, someone still has to spell it for her. And her 'e' is always backwards and upside down. To the right is a sample of her handwriting from the thank you notes we made for her Christmas gifts. I don't think it's that bad, but with practice ...

As I followed my family to the van this morning for church, I glanced over into the grass and found a completely   intact snake skin. Knowing how much my husband and girls like to inspect things, I called them back and convinced Bruce to lay the skin by our door so we could look at it later. Then, once we got home from church, the girls immediately asked for the snake skin. It was really neat to look closely at the skin and think about the snake. And while I couldn't get a clear picture, we could even see where the snakes eyes and jaw had been, that's how cool the shed skin was. Our initial inspection and noticing the neat features of the snake, such as the diamond pattern on its back and the curved lines on the belly. Pointing out the distinct features of the snake's face. Finally, we had to figure out how long the snake is. This particular snake was probably close to 3 1/2 feet long, which makes it even more remarkable that the skin came off so cleanly. ...

After a successful Box Day (for which I'll post the details later), I was really looking forward to our first official day of homeschool. We even bought and had a friend customize new back packs for each girl. I thought Charlotte was looking forward to it as well based on her excitement over the summer and when we opened our box of books from Sonlight. Then, this morning came. And she fully realized that preschool was going to be at home (aka Not. Real. School). Oh my word. Our first morning of school was not off to an exciting start. After we were all calmed down, the three of us settled down in our school room (otherwise known as the Dining Room). Our plan is to include Mary as much as possible so that she becomes accustomed to this particular learning environment (more on how she'll be included later). We started practicing our Bible verse for the week (Proverbs 4:20), read some stories, talked about the seasons and special dates for our family. And we also made...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but we intend to be a homeschooling family. there are lots of reasons we want to homeschool and I'll share those at another time. But right now, I'm so excited about having taken a major step towards our homeschooling goal that I can't wait to share it with you! Bruce and I have purchased our first official homeschooling curriculum (not counting the preschool workbook I bought at Sam's last summer). We bought the Sonlight Curriculum for 4 and 5 year olds . In no particular order, here are the reasons we chose Sonlight for our family: Their "great books" literature-based approach appeals to our desire to develop strong critical thinking skills and avoid the typical text-book type learning that happens in most classrooms today. It meets my specific organizational needs. I know homeschooling at this level can be done inexpensively with resources available online, but my mind gets lost in the blogosphere...

As I mentioned the other day, Charlotte was going to gymnastics camp this week. It is an early birthday present (she'll be 4 in a few weeks) and she was very excited to wake up every day and put on her new sparkly gymnastics outfit. Anyone who knows me on a daily basis, knows that I generally don't have a problem leaving my children with other people. And they don't either. Charlotte has been going to church nursery since she was about 2 months old and never really bats an eye when I drop her off. And now, Mary usually just walks right into her class without even a second thought of me. My girls go to a baby sitter's house sometimes or I swap child care with a local friend. I have just never felt very stressed out about leaving them with people I know and trust. But the first day of gymnastics camp was a little different than I expected. As I watched Charlotte walk onto the squishy floor, she turned and gave me a slightly pensive look, seeking encouragement that it ...

February 1, 2011 EDIT: From now until February 16th, you can once again download Funnix Beginning Reading for free . Take advantage of this offer because when it is over, the price will increase to $38. ******************* After my last post about beginning to research reading systems, my friend Jane recommended Funnix as a free alternative for teaching Charlotte to read. Since I prefer free resources to those that cost money, I downloaded and installed it to see if it would work for Charlotte. She can already recognize all of the letters (90% of the time) and knows at least one phonetic sound for each letter so I think she is ready. We did play the Alphabet Game (also free from Funnix) before we started though to make sure she was ready. Initially, I had some trouble installing the Funnix software. I kept getting an error message regarding which drive I was trying to install the software on. Finally, after re-downloading it, I was able to install it. I will warn you though, it to...

This morning Charlotte and I sat at the table having some fun with a few simple Thanksgiving activities. None of these are original to me and were pretty simple and uncomplicated for her to do. The first one I really want to share with you though is a fill-in-the blank drawing of a pilgrim girl. I am so impressed with how Charlotte filled in the blanks of her face. And, while I think this looks like a piggy little pilgrim, it is just adorable to me! Another activity we made was a "Sharing Book." This idea came 100% from Sprout Online. Charlotte wasn't as ready to share her things as I would have hoped, but then again, she is two and I was asking her to abstractly tell me what she wanted to share. In the end, she decided to share her paper (twice), sandbox (which we don't own), and her books (maybe she'll be a Reading teacher someday). To vary her access to art materials today, I busted out a glue stick and fuzzy pom poms. (I know, such variety is amazin...

True to my word, we have continued exploring the world around us via a trip through the alphabet. Just a reminder, the letter isn't so important for teaching Charlotte her alphabet or how to read, but is most important in guiding me to select new activites for her to particiapte in. We started our I week by making an igloo with cut up construction paper. For Charlotte, the best part was being allowed to use the glue stick for a long time. She loves "coloring" with it, but hasn't 100% figured out that it is meant for sticking the "ice blocks" to the blue igloo. Charlotte also liked sitting in her new school desk. It is an old-fashioned piece I picked up at a recent consignment sale. There is even an opening under the seat to store things... I am thinking of adding her coloring books and crayons there so she can access them on her own, thereby learning to entertain herself more often. Then, coincidentally, the book at our favorite children's museum storyti...

Um, yeah. Alphabet School. I took my daughter there for several weeks, and well, lfe got busy and we stopped going. But, since then, we have done several "H" themed activities and I finally have enough that I think I can make a passable attempt at sharing them with you. Some of these go back 3 months... Heart Faces Paint Horse anyone?   Wanna hang out with me?   Hiking in Highlands Hammock Stopping to smell the hyacinths Riding her bounce and spin horse I hope we get back on track this week and I can bring you a post sponsored by the letter "I."

If you follow the news, you know that last week, Florida was inundated with rain, getting more than 7 inches in some part of the state. It is quite an unusual start to our rainy season, in which we normally get a few quick showers each afternoon. I'm sure I don't have to tell you which we prefer. The weather last week required me to get pretty creative on our usual 'go to the park' day. So, I grabbed a bag and started pillaging my art closet before we headed to a friend's house. All of the items were pretty random but sure to provide a decent amount of fun for whatever set-up and clean-up effort they required. In no certain order, here are some of the events that filled our rainy day. Silly Photo Session (even more fun if you have a new camera!) - Just let the kids go making faces, dancing, doing somersaults, jumping, holding hands, whatever they enjoy doing. You can take pictures with their favorite toys, or of them imitating their favorite animals. Temporary Tatto...

Today is the last day for our Spring Kindermusik session and I am definitely going to miss it once class ends. Charlotte has had a lot of fun learning new songs, playing new instruments, and having songs sung just about her. One way in which I've been encouraged as her mother is in using different voices and tones in reading to her. I knew it was good to get silly with my child, but sometimes, well, some of us more reserved types need positive examples to reinforce the silly behavior. Ms. Debbie isn't embarrassed at all to get down on Charlotte's level and model age-appropriate silliness. Kindermusik helped me break out of my shell a little more and experiment with my voice more while I am reading to Charlotte. And I also knew that using different voices would help her understand dialogue and different ways to manipulate her own voice. Being able to get the non-verbal part of communication down will be important as she gets older. Sometimes what people say is more about...

As I mentioned previously, Charlotte has been able to attend a Kindermusik class for the last several weeks and I've been so impressed by it, I really want to share some of what we've learned during this time. Even though I've read Ms. Debbie's blog for several months now, I  wasn't ever really sure how to integrate posts about how reading and music go together . After seeing it in action though, I know that reading can help teach students about the rhythm of the written word, much like music helps us hear the rhythm of a song lyric or about the tones of music when we change our voices to imitate certain characters in a story. I'll share about the reading today, and the tones in a future post. In fact, there are many books that are based on popular children's songs. Charlotte already loves books because we've been reading to her from the very beginning , so it makes sense that I can use a research-based approach (which seems more like common sense th...

I am now way past officially behind on our Alphabet School . I imagine I'll be picking it up again in a few weeks when school gets out and I have more free time. But that doesn't mean we haven't been doing crafty things. Here is our latest fun craft. (Sorry for the cell phone pictures, my new camera is supposed to arrive tomorrow!) These are super easy to make. Start with a coffee filter, markers, and a pipe cleaner. Let your kids make all sorts of doodles and scribbles on the coffee filter with the markers. I chose to limit the kids to just 3 colors so they wouldn't get too crazy or end up brown. Then, with a spray bottle preferrably, or a damp sponge, wet the coffee filters so that the marker ink is somewhat difused. Once the filter is dry, scrunch up the middle a bit and twist the pipe cleaner on into the shape of a butterfly body and antennae.   These are super quick and fun to make. Charlotte liked seeing how the color faded and the color combinations a...

We spread our G activities out over 2 weeks since I was on a computer fast. Unfortunately, the fast meant I couldn't upload and edit my pictures every day so, this post might be a little scattered. Our G week of Alphabet School started with a little Goodwill .  I had gathered up several items from the house that we no longer needed and we dropped them off in the back. Then, we went inside to look for some goodies of our own. The first crafty-artsy thing we did, other than coloring G-themed worksheets, was play with some new glitter pens . It started out kind of fun and cool until Charlotte realized she could squeeze them and make LOTS of glitter come out in a large blob, on her arm. She wasn't happy when I took her glitter pens away. Oh, we also did some glass painting with green paint . And this picture demonstrates why we always do these sorts of activities in the high chair! And we couldn't forget to show off our groovy grocery gown ! We colored it with some new...