It's been a vvvvvvvvvvery long week. This week Matt went back to school and he's got a grueling schedule. Which means he's away much more and I'm out-numbered at home. :)
Me, Chloe and Clive launched this week with some new routines and activities. I began "Hooked on Phonics" which Chloe calls her "Mommy School". I started some simple character training from the website ABC Jesus Loves Me and am slowly introducing Clive to letters. Additionally, I'm doing Five in a Row with Chloe. It's been super simple to incorporated Five in a Row. It's a literature-based curriculum and so I just read one story to Chloe five days in a row. At the end of each reading, we do a craft/activity which focuses on a different aspect of the story. (I promise to do a separate post on Five in a Row in the near future. There are so many neat aspects of the curriculum I'm dying to share!)
It's all gone very well and Chloe is thriving! At first I thought I had planned too much for her -- she's only just 4 and I don't want her life to be super structured yet. I still want imaginative and spontaneous play to be a huge part of her day. But she is seriously loving our new learning activities and I can tell she's flourishing through the new challenges.
My biggest hurdle this week has been preparing dinners without having Matt's extra hands around to help. I'm working on that aspect. Trying to cook some ahead of time and do more freezer meals.
It's been a fun but tiring week. I'm sure glad it's nearly over and that we've got an extra long weekend ahead! What are your plans for the holiday weekend?
4 comments:
Our husbands are such helpful men and it is so hard when they arent around...but a great reminder to us about how wonderful they are!!!
We are doing NOTHING but relaxing this long weekend. It is nice to have a long weekend shortly after school starts!!! :)
I can so relate . . . we got used to having Jim around during the winter/spring when he was short on work, and when he got a lot of work this summer, it was quite a shock!! We were very thankful for work, of course . . . but we sure missed having him around!
I've heard great things about FIAR and look forward to hearing more about it! There are so many great homeschooling resources out there nowadays; it's awesome! Have you seen the free lapbooks and other resources at homeschoolshare.com ? Many of them go along with FIAR books. I'm planning to incorporate some of them along with our curriculum throughout the year . . . we already own quite a few of the books.
So glad Chloe is enjoying her first year of school! :)
Heather: Enjoy your weekend of relaxing and doing nothing! I agree, this long weekend is the PERFECT remedy after our first week back to reality!
Carrie: Um, yes, homeschoolshare.com is my FAVORITE resource site! In fact, my preschool co-op group (something else I need to blog about) is using that site for all our unit studies this year. I actually don't even own the FIAR teaching book -- I'm too cheap to buy it. :) I've requested it from the library again but in the meantime I've used the homeschoolshare site for lapbook/activity ideas. GREAT stuff! I can't wait to post photos of Chloe's first lapbook! I'm stealing my own thunder here but another thing I love about FIAR is the stellar list of books they use! We are library gurus and check out tons of books but several of the FIAR books I hadn't heard of before. Ok, I better stop now or I'll have nothing left to blog about next week. :)
Thanks for the great post! I had not heard of FIAR before but after checking it out, I love it! The homeschoolshare.com is a really cool site and I'm so glad that you and Carrie mentioned it.
I have set up a workbox system for Michael and so far, it is working for us. I love how organized it is.
I can't wait for your updates in future blog posts. I am such a newbie at all of these wonderful homeschooling resources and I so appreciate your willingness to share what you are doing:).
To answer your question, we are celebrating Michael's birthday with Grandpa and Mimi today. He requested a dinosaur theme;). How completely opposite of Chloe's adorable tea party theme:).
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