Cultivating Childhood

When I first started this blog, I went on an Internet rampage trying to find other bloggers who were trying to do the same thing I was.  I hoped to find some ideas of things that we could use in our own "classroom" and feel like I'm not alone in my quest to home educate my son.*  What I discovered was a host of amazing resources!  Apparently, homeschoolers like to blog and blog A LOT.  I thought I'd share some of my favorites. Totally Tots I think this has got to be my favorite blog out there.  It's a group blog with a number of different features that relate to young children.  For example, they have a feature called "Once Upon a Book" that focuses on one book and then gives a number of activities to go along with it including a craft, memory verse, and maybe a math or science lesson.  Other examples of features they include: "Crafty Corner," "Now I Know My ABCs," and "In My Heart - Bible Verse Memory." Links to All Things

I'm going to be doing something different here for the month of December.  We will be a doing a fair bit of traveling and a lot of festivities are about!  I know that I'm not going to be able to keep up with all that's going on here on the blog so I thought I'd just share with you up front what we are going to be doing to celebrate Advent and Christmas.   First of all, this time of year is always crazy for our family.  Not only is December 25th the day that we celebrate Jesus' birthday, but it is also Noah's birthday.  We want to make our almost 3 year old feel special that he is another year older, but the holiday is super important too!  It feels hard to not overlook our precious son.  We hope to do a few things special for him, and will probably let him open up his birthday presents a few weeks early.  At this age, he doesn't understand yet when exactly his birthday is, and I'm sure he'll accept gifts at any time.  ;-) Second, we are going to be t

SNOW!  Yes, the "bit of snow" that we "might" get turned into us starting the week with two full days of snowing.  We ended up with 6 inches of snow on the ground, and we didn't even try to venture out in our car for a couple of nights.  I was so thankful that my husband now works from home as there were poor people in Seattle that spent over 5 hours getting home on a commute that takes less than 20 minutes sans traffic!  One person we know actually gave up and went back to his office to sleep!  Despite the horrible driving conditions, Noah was SO EXCITED to get snow.  From his first sight of snow he screamed  out of pure delight for over an hour.  I've never seen him so excited about anything before.  Sorry Thomas the Tank Engine!  You've been replaced by frozen water droplets! The first picture is what our yard looked like on Monday morning.  The second is it on Tuesday morning. Once Zach decided the snow wasn't so bad after all, we had a good time

It's going to be a cold week up here in the Pacific Northwest.  We may even get a bit of snow.  I definitely need to find more for us to keep busy with in the afternoons as I want to limit our screen time as much as possible, but going outside seems to be getting more and more difficult.  The high for Tuesday is only supposed to be 29 degrees.  That temperature is hard for this SoCal girl to wrap her mind around.  Yikes!  Noah is loving movement songs ("Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" anyone?) so we might be doing a bit more of that.   This week is also THANKSGIVING!  I love this holiday.  I'm hoping that we can do a lot of Thanksgiving activities and talk about Thankfulness.  We just got Madame Blueberry: A Lesson in Thankfulness from the library, and we have a number of Thanksgiving books to use. Here are our activities for this week.... Everyday - these unfortunately haven't been happening as much recently.  I think I'm going to have to re-evaluate our m

I don't know how some bloggers do it.  They somehow are able to create amazing curriculums for their preschoolers AND get gorgeous pictures of their children doing said activities.  I find that I have to be extremely hands on with Noah in each of his activities.  I wonder if this is because he isn't yet three, and this is just the way kids at this stage are.  Or, is it that I'm having him do things that are slightly harder than he is ready for?  Or, maybe it's just that I have a toddler as well as a preschooler.  Or, maybe it's that I don't want to pull out the big camera (my beloved little point-and-shoot took a bath a couple of weeks ago).  Whatever the reason, you will find that I did not get many pictures this week. Despite the lack of pictures, Noah had a VERY productive week.  We got through most of our "boxes," and he has learned his letters by leaps and bounds this week.  This is largely owed to the DVD we checked out at the library: Leapfrog

This week we are going to move math up earlier in the week.  I like the sound of Math Monday, so Monday it is.  The alphabet theme has been easily worked into our week with the library kit so I don't think it will suffer from being moved back. This will also be Noah's last week of traditional preschool.  We will be taking him out for both financial reasons, and so that we can have more time together.  I know he will miss going, but I'm hoping to supplement with doing other fun community classes from time to time.  Our city has some wonderful music, art, and gym/sport lessons for preschool aged children. Everyday Listen to  The Four Seasons  or  Ring of Mystery  by Vivaldi Talk more about what we are hearing Read about Norman Rockwell and look through our big coffee table book of his pictures Devotions and Bible Verse Review Monday Seasonal Workbox - Read Fall Books Rotating (Math) - Leaf Counting Book from Totally Tots Instructions from Totally Tots - "Gather 15 leave

Aren't time changes fun at this age?  Our sleep patterns have been pretty irregular this week.  Kids napping at 10ish some days, not napping other days.  Falling asleep for the night super early and then late.  Consequently moods have been affected for both boys and Mama.   Despite the disruption, we did have a pretty good week.  This was mostly because of all the help that Daddy gave in supporting Mama.  I'm hoping that life will get into more routine again next week. Monday was one of those perfectly imperfect preschool days.  Mama felt like there was learning happening and lots of fun was had by all but not in the way that was expected.  I think the best way to give you an idea of our adventures on Monday is to give a play-by-play of our first activity.  I hope all you mothers of preschoolers can appreciate the humor in this: Mama gives Noah and Zach the leaf outline. Noah is then given a bunch of torn colored pieces of paper to make his leaf mosaic while Zach is given washa