Hoping I Stay Above Water

It’s been a long time since I have been waiting for life to go back to “normal”. This year has been especially challenging in a number of ways, including getting used to my husband’s new job, a new baby and a sickness in the family. I have not felt like myself in a long time. I’ve had to scale back on several things in my life so that I can at the very least keep up with the home and the homeschool. Even still, it’s not the same as it once was. I look forward to looking back to this as a memory and hope I learn lots from it. I hope that while this lasts the Lord fills in the gaps for me, especially as it concerns the homeschool.

Enough “Twaddle Free” Books to Last You Through the Summer!!

A few weeks ago we talked about how story time should be a daily activity and ideally one we engage in several times a day (read the article on Nurturing a Passion for Reading).Though we know the endless benefits reading has on our children, we all need a little incentive to carve out this special time from our often busy schedules. Find a wide selection of “twaddle-free”* books in this week’s article, enough to keep your book baskets overflowing for the rest of the year!

Personalize a Mother’s Day Gift for Grandma & Add Music to Your Routine Today!!

Music is a great addition to any child’s education. This week is National Music Week. Read this week’s article and learn songs to use for transitioning from one activity to the next with your preschooler and even to diffuse tantrums, making your daily routines a lot more pleasant.

And if you need ideas for Grandma’s Mother’s Day gift, you’ll will find that too!!

A Breath of Fresh Air…

I have been working on my Home Management Binder and am almost done with what I have found to be the most challenging part…meal planning. Right now I am focusing on dinners and have 2 weeks planned so far. I am hoping to plan a total of 4 weeks of both lunches and dinner, and using this same 4 week plan every month. The long term the plan is to have a deep freezer so that we can do our grocery shopping about once a month (except for milk, eggs, etc). The Binder looks great so far and I look forward to uploading a couple of the pages soon.

Seeing the Binder come together slowly has been helping me feel a lot better in regards to the organization and running of my home. I almost feel like my brain is checking back in .

Yesterday I attended a session featuring the Clarkson’s on the Schoolhouse Expo sponsored by the The Old Schoolhouse. This was also a breath of fresh air for me! I heard part of Sarah’s Talk but all of Clay Clarkson’s, her father. He is the author of Educating the WholeHearted Child.

I especially liked Sarah Clarkson’s talk. She gave so many suggestions on good books and talked about the importance and impact good literature has on kids. I will be spending lots of time this month reading her blogs and look forward to purchasing her new book Read for the Heart. Reading is foundational to the way I teach the boys and I must always have good book lists handy.

The Schoolhouse Expo had a great chat available where the participants were able share ideas and resources during the talks. I generated a list of great books, resources and websites shared by other very resourceful homeschool moms. As I go through them and check them out, I will be posting them here so they can hopefully bless you!

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the speakers for the Schoolhouse Expo this month.
If you want more information visit their site.

Learning and Playing Outside

It’s Spring now and were engaged in some very exciting activities! The one we are excited about the most is the geocaching. Today we walked to the post office and on our way home took out our GPS and looked up geocache in the area. We found one!! I know you have to be wondering “What is Geocaching?”:

“Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. The term itself is a synthesis of geography, GEO, and CACHING, for the process of hiding a cache. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the coordinates of these caches on the Internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something behind.”

Geocaching also gives us another reason to use Google Earth. We have used it before while reading Paddle to the Sea. This time we used it to look up the geocaches in our city and cities we travel to. There are hundreds just in our area!! We are excited and ready! This will definately enrich our family bike rides in the metro parks and will be an incentive to spend more time hiking.

If you’re interested in geocaching, visit their site and read more about it. Joining is free. Make sure to visit their forums. They have one that its for educators on “GPS in Education” at any level. I also found this site with more links and ideas for using geocaching in education.

With the change of season we have also made it a point to observe I’s tree for his Nature Journal. He took pictures and noticed the changes since winter. We compared it to the ones we took in January which are also posted on this blog. We are looking forward to seeing more insects, nests, and most of all the “cotton” (the tree is a cottonwood tree). Each year the tree releases tiny seeds attached to fluffy stuff, and the wind disperses it all over the neighborhood. My son remembers it as it looking like “snow in the spring”.

It is so difficult to get this child to write in his Nature Journal, or anywhere for that matter. He will gather items, observe the subject at hand, loves taking pictures, but when it comes to writing anything sometimes it’s like pulling teeth!! I just stopped trying….for now Have you found any fun ways to getting your young child to write?

Lessons in the Soil For Your Preschooler by J. Nevels

Learning about Nature is one of the best ways to teach our young children about their Creator (Romans 1:20)! Our active learners love to get down and dirty! Use the resources shared in my article below and teach your little ones about plants, seeds and gardening. Use the teachable moments to practice other academic skills and help them understand basic spiritual concepts. What ideas can you share on how to help your child see God in His creation? 

Lessons in the Soil For Your Preschooler by J. Nevels ~ HSB Company Blog.

Join Us on This Global Treasure Hunt

How do you get a me and my 4 little boys out on a 1.5 walk in the morning? Send me on a search for a geocache! The excitement was intense last night, when I first told my boys about this new activity. I was even excited! I almost took them out last night to find our first one but I managed to contain myself !

Geocaching is a worldwide “treasure hunt” that puts into practice a lot of the skills the boys are learning now and helps me nurture their global perspective. It’s also a great way to keep them active, enjoying the outdoors. The activity involves lots of problem solving and navigational skills. We used the GPS in my phone and the clues provided online. It was great to see them so engaged and working together! We found 2 in our neighborhood today and there are lots more nearby, but I am especially looking forward to searching for ones out in forests!

Visit their site or a similar one that does not require a GPS (letterboxing) and learn more about this exciting adventure that will get your whole family out of the house! When you find your first geocache come back and share your pictures and stories!!

My Brain is On Vacation!!!

Have you ever felt physically present but mentally MIA? Are you sometimes just going through the motions? It has been one of those weeks for me. I told my husband it feels like my brain is on vacation. We go through the lessons, I cook the meals, I even read books for story time but the fire, the energy, the passion that I usually feel is just missing this week. I think this may be the Lord’s way of getting my attention, or my mind realizing that I have officially joined the “big family” club . I feel like the “old lady who lived in a shoe” who had so many children she didn’t know what to do

I am realizing that there are certain changes I must make in the way I manage my home and home school. There have been a lot of changes besides the new baby, and the need for planning ahead and organization is just not optional anymore.

As I have been praying and thinking this week I have come up with a list and believe it will help me meet the higher level of challenge I feel I‘ve come up against:

#1. PRAYER – I must lean on the Lord and be sensitive to His voice. I want Him to guide all my decisions, planning and time management. Only this will guarantee success in my home the way He defines it.

#2. Home Management Binder - I am working on a Binder to help me simplify yet organize the running of my home and the education of my children. A friend told me of this great resource and I will be spending the next couple of weeks working on it and look forward to implementing and using it. I know this will probably become an essential tool for me!

#3. Planning Ahead – When I don’t do this in my home my days are just chaotic! I need to take this essential step of management and education just as seriously as it is taken in the corporate world. I MUST be intentional and set specific times aside for planning and strategizing for the following day/week. I also need to teach my family to respect this time. This will involve me pulling myself away and regrouping.

#4. Prioritizing My Time – I need to be very prayerful over every item I choose to add to my “To Do List”. I need to prioritize making sure that there is always time for God, my husband, my children and MY REST!!!

I am still praying over this list and I am sure there are items I will be adding in the near future. If there is anything you have learned in your journey that will help me or others please don’t hesitate to share. What management skills have you learned since being a parent? In what ways has the Lord stretched you as you have learned to run your home more efficiently? What changes or tools have you learned of and have implemented that you have found to be essential to your daily life?

I think the Home Management Binder will grow to be one of the most important and essential changes I will and MUST make and I look forward to using it. Right now, what I look forward to the most is for my brain to check in so I can put it back to work ASAP !

Nurturing a Lifelong Passion for Reading by J. Nevels ~ The Official HSB Community Blog

Nurturing a Lifelong Passion for Reading ~ The Official HSB Community Blog.

The Old Schoolhouse’s First Online Homeschool Conference

Register and Enjoy THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE’S first online Homeschool Conference featuring speakers like Todd Wilson, Susan Wise Bauer, Andrew Pudewa and many more. For the price of the ticket you will also get the MP3 downloads of all the sessions!!