Learning about Life, Learning about Him, Teaching about Life, Teaching about Him
Every year I try to get more organized when it comes to Christmas shopping. With 10 in our family, it can become quite an undertaking. In addition, I have taken over the grand kid gift buying for my parents. This year, to help myself out, I created a printable Christmas wish list.
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I have to admit that I do not currently have a problem getting my kids to eat their vegetables. In fact I once heard a few of them arguing over who was going to be able to eat the last of the roasted broccoli. That is music to a mom’s ears. For one of my kids, however, this wasn’t always the case. Spending the first two years in a Chinese orphanage, we guessed that she didn’t eat too much in the way of produce. She was suspicious of anything green that appeared on her plate. She would make sure she pushed it out with her tongue if it made it into her mouth. For her, we had to be stealthy and get creative. In my opinion, these are the five best veggies to sneak into your kids’ food:
Read moreWhen I started making these illustrated Mom Quotes, I wanted to give them some fun pithy alliterative name. I came up with “Monthly Mom Merriment.” It seemed clever at the time, but then I realized that the title was a little clunky. I decided to streamline the name to “Monthly Mom Quote.” A little more vanilla, but more descriptive. Then again there are those who prefer vanilla, which I don’t quite understand, because well, it’s not chocolate.
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I’m relatively new to the copywork scene even though I have been homeschooling for 15 years. After learning more about the merits of it, I decided to incorporate it more into our school work this year. You can click here to read more about the benefits of copywork, but the reasons that caught my eye were:
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Many moons ago I ran a Lego club for our homeschool group. We would gather at my church once a month. Each family would bring its own set of Legos and a blanket (to help prevent Legos from co-mingling with those of other families). I would give the kids a specific Lego challenge, or what I called a “theme.” The kids had a certain amount of time to create either on their own, or in teams according to the challenge. After I called time, the kids would gather in a group and share their creations with each other.
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My two youngest love to sort and match. They love to sort cards, socks (though they never wear a matching pair), crayons, you name it. Though they know their seasons, I thought it would still be fun to create this free seasons printable game to work on sorting and matching skills. To make it more versatile, I made one set (with all four seasons game boards and picture tiles) half-sized , and another set (with all four seasons) full sized, both shown below.
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Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)
The park is a great place to observe human behavior. Since I have a lot of humans, I do a lot of observing. As I watched my kids play at the park one day, I noticed that a little boy had fallen in with my pack and was running around with one of my then three-year-olds. As they ran past me, I heard the boy call back to my son, “Follow me!” My son replied with a very enthusiastic “Okay!” and dutifully followed the other boy’s lead. He didn’t know the other child, but it didn’t matter. He trusted that wherever his new friend went would lead to something good.
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Pumpkin spice lattes are back on the menu, so it must be fall!
I’ve rounded up a collection of free fall themed alphabet and number printables for you to use with your preschool or kindergartner. There are a few worksheets included, but most are activities to keep little hands busy. You can laminate or contact paper pieces to use again and again.
Read moreHappy October and Happy Fall! Fall weather likes to play tricks with us out here in California. It can be in the high 60s one day and almost 90 a few days later. We usually have to wait until November until we can get reliably cool temperatures. At that point, we’ll trade our shorts for, as one of my kids used to say, “long sleeved pants.” Or if you’re like most of my kids, you never trade shorts for anything else. I have polar bears living in my house.
This month’s installment is for homeschool moms. Some of us are in perpetual parent-teacher conferences, but at least we’ll always agree…unless you’re Gollum, but he’s neither a mom nor a teacher, so never mind.
Isn’t a truism in life, that when your kids (or husband) say they can’t find something, you go to look for it and in a nanosecond it’s found? The person who lost the item (I was going to say “the loser” but that sounded harsh), will then be amazed at your sleuthing skills and claim, “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it!” Yes, they looked everywhere…except where the item was actually located. This printable is for all of those She Sherlocks out there!
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