Random Thunks 'Bout the Merge of One Year into Another

So, it's the end of a year again. The end of a chunk of time... 12 months to be exact. Or 52 weeks. Or 365 days. Or 8,760 hours. Or 525,600 minutes.

I have a habit of rewinding and reviewing, which can be a good thing (except at night when I'm trying to sleep). So, as can be expected, I've been doing a lot of reviewing in the past several days... looking back over the last year... evaluating my growth and my failures, my steps forward and stumbles backward.

And I'm actually a bit confused this time. I can't pat myself on the back and say, "Wow! Look how much you've grown! Look at how much you've accomplished!" But I can't exactly say it's been a stagnant year or a year of failure. Maybe it’s just that the preceding two years were marked by such incredible growth and heart workings that they make this past year’s progress seem tiny and insignificant.

In the area of Spiritual discipline, not much change has happened. I still need to be more purposeful in Bible reading and prayer. And then be consistent, once I am purposeful.

Wifery is good. I mean… I really need to work on selfish expectations that morph into thoughts of “but I wanted to…” or “why do I have to do this?” or “I should be the one sleeping, not him”. But on a whole, I love being married to my best friend. Our marriage is simply amazing, not because it’s always fun and easy and perfect, but because we’re in on this together. I still marvel that I, of all people, have been blessed with the Aaron Prentice.

Motherhood…. Hmmm… motherhood has been QUITE the challenge for me. I don’t know. I just…. hmmmm…. never thought I’d be where I am… so totally overwhelmed… so not loving it… so tired… so slushy headed… so stressed every.single.minute of the day. How did I get here? I wasn’t always this way. I loved every minute of motherhood when I had one and two babies. But I don’t remember waking up one morning and deciding I wanted to be an overtired, over stressed, impatient mother. And I don’t know what to do about it. But I do know I want to change.

Please, please don’t ask about home management. I can’t get a handle on housework and keeping up with laundry and dishes. I try. I really do. But I just feel like I’m chasing my tail (or a three year old, two year old, and 7 month old). Just let me know if you plan to stop by. I’ll lock the kids up for a day and clean for ya.

Weight loss… Pahahahaha! Wow. This is hard this time around. Every other time, I’ve lost much more by the time my kidlet was 7 months.

I’m loving homeschooling, but realizing that good planning is a must. I’ve got the entire year generally planned, but not down to the T. And I don’t do real good schooling on the fly. Something I must improve on.

Now I don’t put a lot of confidence into New Year Resolutions (because I’m awful at follow through), but the beginning of a new year certainly seems like a good time to take a good look at what needs to change. I’m not setting goals, per say. Just realizing where my weak spots are and trying to put together a plan to make them strength spots or at least a little less weak.

I’m hoping that getting a handle on a good daily/weekly/monthly schedule will help with many of these areas. We’ll see.

Speaking of the new year, I’m hoping to be able to blog more. Blogging is important to me, because it gives me a chance to empty my brain. And I guess I’m just conceited enough to think that everyone else out there wants to be there when I do.

I’m wanting to do a once a week post for OYOL (which I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about). But I also want to continue with the baby and toddler sleep issues. I also have another idea bopping around in my head that I’m super duper excited about.

We shall see what the new year brings. I have high hopes.

Incredible Online Thanksgiving Resource for All Grades

I was casually searching online for some sort of activity or lesson plan for Thanksgiving. I wasn't liking what I was finding. There were lots of fun crafts and activities centering around turkeys and pumpkins, but I was looking for the true story of the pilgrims. Then I stumbled upon this incredible resource from Scholastic. Oh my word!!! There's so much there! There are video clips on the journey to America, what life was like in the new land, and the first Thanksgiving. So many interactive aspects. This can be adapted to any age level. Just do as much or as little as they can handle. I'm super excited this!

Operation K-10: Wk. 1-2 Review

I am loving, loving, loving school time with my girlie. And apparently, my little men are loving it too. It's so cute to sit down with Cherith and all of a sudden there's two little guys right there too, with Ethan chanting, "'ant skoo, 'ant skoo" (want school). The boys join along with all the Bible and Character stuffs, then go their way when we move on to reading, math, and science/social studies.

Without further ado, here's the pile o' books we're using, otherwise known as the cirriculum.

The whole sha-bang:

My Teacher Book (as the kids call it):

My handy dandy pocket for holding small bits of paper that a lot of kdg projects and games seem to consist of.

List of resources (what I'm using for each subject):

Lesson plans for each day of the week:

The character trait page (one for each week):
We are using the character line up (and printable character pages) from Mother Hubbard. We learn what the character means, the Bible verse that goes with it, and sing the song. Ethan LOVES the songs. We then read a Bible story that goes along with that trait and do a project that goes along with it.


The Character/Bible activity pages pocket: (I use this pocket to store the printed pages I will use that week.)
Some highlights of the last two weeks' character/Bible time:

Name puzzles (ordering letters correctly to spell their name)

-This picture is actually a bit embarrassing. My three year old (who is potty trained) is wearing a diaper because I was so behind on laundry there was no underwear.

Noah's Ark (follow directions to make an ark),

Order the days of creation

Nehemiah's Wall (be a good planner and leader to build a wall)

Bible verse for attentive

Stick puppets for the story of Mary (attentive) and Martha (busy with good things at the wrong time)

Character review books

Math: (The workbook I found at Sam's Club. We skip the first pages that cover the easy stuff.)

Our Calendar Book: (explained here and here)

How many days in school: (hundreds chart)

Months of the year chart and song:

Days of the week song:

Monthly Calendar:

Weather graph:

Tempature graph:

Observation worksheet for each month's weather graph:

Social Studies: (A family journal that I put together. It also somewhat coordinates with the character line up.)

Some social studies pics:

Science: (A workbook/textbook about the human body that my sister in law and I are putting together that matches up with the character trait schedule)

Some science pics from the last couple weeks:

Observation report from our listening walk:

Homemade kazoos demonstrating how sound vibrates:

And I saved this for last, because I need some help...

Our reading stuffs:

The Tinkerbell notebook is Cherith's kidwriting book, explained here:

I like a lot of things about the 100ez lessons book. It's easy enough for me and Cherith. She's learning to read from it, but she finds it very boring. I'm needing to add more hands on/active learning besides a big book with lots of black print. Any ideas or help here? She's not a total beginner reader. She knows all the sounds of the consonants, vowels (short and long), and some blends and dipthongs. She can read short vowel words and a few long vowel words. She does not read smoothly yet. She still has to sound out each word. So, we're not needing alphabet work. I'm just not sure exactly what direction to go in. I would love any reccomendations.

Time for Some Procrastination

We're having a yard sale this weekend, starting tomorrow. I think I have almost everything together and priced. But as a result, my kitchen smells from piles and piles of dirty dishes. There are probably five loads of laundry sitting in the walk way behind the couch that need put away. My bathroom needs cleaned and the floors need some serious vacuuming. But rather than deal with all that, I just took a bunch of pictures for my next blog post: Operation K-10: Wk. 1-2 Review. K-10 being "kindgergarten 2010". So now I should probably get busy.