When Time Moves as Fast as a Turtle

If you know us, you know we go to Walt Disney World often. We've visited seven times in the past ten years. Almost seven years ago, we began a tradition of visiting Disney for our children's first birthdays. Our youngest was born last December, so we have one last first birthday to celebrate.

Of course, our kids know that we always go for birthdays; there's no surprise there. But the two middle ones can't quite comprehend "in X months," or "we'll go in December." It had gotten to the point that every time we got in the car, the three year old would say, "Us going Dizzy World?"

I've been pinning ideas on Pinterest for awhile now, and I came across a few ideas for countdown chains that looked like the characters. I looked them over, but realized my kids' favorite characters hadn't been made (or pictured, at least), other than Mickey. So I put a little thought into it, and I asked them their favorites (just for confirmation; they haven't changed in two years), and we pulled out the construction paper, scissors, and stapler.

We're still four months out, but I have three kids that are old enough to understand, so I needed to make four months into six chains. Easy enough; I made three month-long chains, and three "third-of-a-month" long chains.

The oldest's favorite princess is Rapunzel, as she looks a lot like her.

Number two daughter had to make a tough choice between Ariel and Tiana, but Ariel seems to have the slight lead this year.

And my boy loves his Mickey, so that was an easy choice.

But, as with most of the little Disney fans right now, their favorites are the Frozen characters. My oldest daughters look like the sisters, and my son follows them everywhere, like Olaf. So it was a no-brainer to make the smaller chains the Frozen gang.The kids are excited to begin tearing strips, and I'm happy to not have to constantly answer the "how much longer" question.

Do you have a trip to Disney coming up soon? This was an easy project for my kids to work on patterns, major color choices, counting, and motor skills. It will also be a test of their patience in whether or not they can refrain from tearing them too soon. If you've got young kids and a trip coming up, this is a quick, easy project, and it's not difficult to make up a chain for favorite characters. (Pinterest has multiple pins for the old-school princesses).

Happy crafting, and I hope your next trip isn't too far off!

A girl after my own shell

This blog was supposed to be about homeschooling and working full time. But as I barely have time to do those two things, I definitely don't have time to blog about it. What I do have are lots of thoughts running through my head late at night while I should be sleeping. So for now, this is just a place to collect those.

This afternoon, I was sitting at the park, watching the girls play, and I found myself thinking about how much Sammie is like me. She doesn't particularly like being alone, yet she absolutely can't stand being in a crowd. She's very friendly, but takes her time making friends, and once she does, she holds onto them tightly. She longs to "go" and "do," yet she wants to be with her family more than anywhere in the world. She's most definitely intelligent, but will shut down if she's told to learn (I always read my book report books and wrote my college papers the night before they were due). Though she's loud and outspoken at home, she's typically quiet in a group setting. And tonight, when she'd disappeared from the living room after most of the family had dozed off, I found her organizing the filing drawers, just because.
And yet...

She has David's sense of adventure.
Her favorite thing at the park is the monkey bars, and she zooms across them. I was always afraid to let go. She climbs to the top of multiple story waterfalls without assistance from anyone. I always stayed at the bottom, too unsure of my footing. She learns with her hands and often gets in trouble for touching everything. I would rather sit back and read a book.

It's amazing how God blends children; making a mixture of their parents' genes that not only secures their physical features but also determines the beginnings of their personalities. He knew exactly the right amounts of each of us to pour into the mold to make Sammie perfectly herself. I can't wait to see the end result!

Flying solo

It's been a while since I've posted, but this has been on my mind a lot lately, and well, it's a little too long for a Facebook post.


"Whoa. Kill the motor, dude. Let us see what Squirt does flying solo." - Crush (Finding Nemo)

I really wish someone could explain to me how parenting has changed so much these days. When I was a child, not so very long ago, my parents left us home alone at the ages of 12 and 8. We rode our bikes to the end of the road (a mile) and back. We hiked through the woods and came home hours later. We sat in the car while they ran into the store. We had our own keys and went completely unsupervised for 10 hours a day.

Now, parents are arrested for leaving a 9 year old in the car while they go into the gas station for 2 minutes. CPS is called when latch-key kids forget their key and (gasp!) play outside until their parents get home from work. Delivery men peak in the window if they hear kids inside but no parent answers the door.
*All real (recent) cases.

Why is it that an 8 year old in Chicago can ride the subway alone to and from school, but an 8 year old in Nashville can't play in the yard without mom or dad sitting on the porch? Why can't kids sit in a car for 2 minutes while mom walks to the ATM and back?

Call me old-school. Call me free-range. I want my kids to learn independence. I want them to test their boundaries and learn their lessons. I want them to have the freedom to explore without my hovering over them every minute. And I don't want to live in fear that Nosy McNeighbor is going to call the law because I send my kids outside to play so the baby can sleep longer than 15 minutes at a time.

I know the world is full of predators. I know there are more cars on the roads now. And I know that too many kids die in locked cars on a sunny day. But at what point does it go too far? Can we label our kids "fragile" so many times, that as an adult, they shatter the first time we wander away? When do we give up our freedom as parents to the government and let Nosy McNeighbor decide our future? 

I'm all for keeping our kids safe, but I want to raise my kids the way my parents raised me. I don't need someone else to dictate my house rules. And I'm tired of constantly being worried about Nosy seeing my kids playing alone. 

Disclaimer: Yes, I did let my child wear his shoes on the wrong feet. I don't think that's against the law... Yet.

Terrapin, Tortoise, or Turtle

We know that tortoises are actually the ones that swim in the water, and terrapins are the ones that live on land; but how many of us just call them all turtles?  I know I do.  But what makes them different?  For one thing, it's the shell.  Most sea turtles have a soft, flexible shell.  This week, we've had to learn to have a flexible shell, too. 

I knew that my husband was supposed to get a four-day weekend for Labor day, but we were quite surprised to hear, on Wednesday, that he would be off for a full week, going back to work the next Wednesday.  Needless to say, that threw our routine off, one that we'd worked hard to maintain for the first three weeks of school, and one that is quite important when the teacher also has to go to work at night. 

Thursday wasn't difficult.  We headed to co-op and my husband went fishing.  Friday wasn't too bad, as it's our non-traditional day; we practiced our phone number, until she could write it from memory, and talked about what to do in case of a fire; she watched Monster Math on Netflix, and we called it a day.  Of course the weekend wasn't going to throw a wrench into our plans, but I knew that Monday and Tuesday would. 

So what did we do?

We changed our days around.  I typically work on Sunday nights, but I had take a few hours off, so when we got home from church, we had school.  We did a full day's work, then we went to the park, where we had science with Daddy, while he fished.  We changed our school day so that we could spend Labor Day together.  I had to work that night, but we wanted to be able to have a family day on the holiday. 

Since we'd done our work on Sunday, we were able to skip the schoolwork and head to Montgomery Bell State Park for the day.  Nine years ago, we'd gotten married here, and our kids hadn't been here since they were too young to remember.  We took time to show them where we'd gotten married, play in the creek, catch crawdads, chase minnows, and take a hike through the woods. 

We got married under this tree nine years ago.

 

Technically, we could have called that a school day, since we talked about poisonous versus non-poisonous mushrooms, fungi, how waterways flow into one another, and of course, the marine life we played with in the creek.  Learning can be so much fun!

She loved finding acorns, mushrooms, and iron ore in the forest.

We didn't actually let her hike barefoot, this is just off the edge of the creek.



Tuesday was no big deal.  My husband took time to help around the house, while I taught.  We still made time for family time, going to the park to meet up with Grandma and have lunch and a playdate. 

Flexibility is one of the beauties of homeschooling, I'm learning. What I foresaw as a completely messed up schedule, and a week behind work, turned into no big deal at all, and a little extra science time. 

 We had to drag them out of the water.  I think we'll be back soon.

Joining the Bale

Did you know that a group of turtles is called a "bale?" I didn't either, until I decided on this week's topic. See, you can learn something new everyday. We ventured out of our shell this week to join the bale, but more on that later.

Last week, I talked a lot about how much my oldest does not want to learn to read. After much worry on my part, I have decided that it's not so much that she doesn't want to learn to read, she just doesn't like the monotonous weeks of learning sounds. She wants to read; she just wants to go from nothing to full words in a day. After explaining how unlikely that is, she's a little more willing to practice sounds this week.  Taking the advice of those who've gone before me, I made reading a little more hands on.  She loves to paint, so I'm letting her paint her own alphabet, with matching sound pictures. She loves making it, is very proud of it, and refers to it while studying her phonics lessons.  Woohoo!

 

Reading with our hands



Running with what works, we also made science even more hands on this week.  I'd been letting her draw a picture after discussing the lesson, but we moved on to drawing out the lesson this week, literally.  She let me outline her, colored herself in, and then pinpointed body parts as we talked about them.  Her sister even had to get in on the act with this one.

I had to tell her to use a color other than pink.  That's my girly-girl.



Speaking of siblings in the middle of things, baby brother decided that sissy was a good chair while she was making her family tree.



As for joining the "bale," this was our first week of co-op!  We met up for a play date last week, but this week began our bi-weekly meetings for classes.  My friendly girl became super shy when she realized she knew no one there, and begged her teacher to come see me often.  I'm not sure if it helped or hindered to know I was right down the hall.  She loved finding new people to play with, but is still worried that she doesn't have friends there, yet.  I told her to give it time.  She's very amiable, so I'm sure she'll have plenty in another week or two.  I helped in the 3-yr old class, and was reminded that while I love my young 'uns, I'm still a high school teacher at heart.  I also helped in the Latin and drawing classes.  I was quite content to add four new words to my foreign language vocabulary. It was enlightening to see how other homeschooling families work, and enjoyable to have others with whom to talk.

Animal crackers and new friends!

I did promise to discuss being a full-time working mom who also homeschools, so I will begin addressing that with this post.  It has become obvious to me that our house will never be clean.  Of course, I knew that before this venture, but it's even more clear now.  Between breakfast, three hours of schooling (dad does an hour of "homework"/review in the evenings), lunch, an hour or two of naptime for the youngest (in which he demands to be held), and afternoon snack/playtime outside, there isn't any time left before I begin working.
However, I do find time to clean on my off days, and my husband has pitched in some this week.  We tacked the girls' room and lightened their load by 3 Hefty bags.  We'll donate those and have less to clean, until the next birthday. ;-)
I also have found that while I may not get kid-free time, I do get quasi-free time while the baby naps. He wants to be held, limiting my ability to work around the house, but it gives me an hour or two to read, my favorite past time, or to catch up on social media.
Having more to do is actually causing me to get more done, as well, if that makes any sense at all.  I no longer can lie in the bed for an extra 30 minutes while the kids play, or sit in front of the tv or computer for an hour.  However, that means that I am not wasting any part of my day, also.  I get up, get going, and am motivated all day (for the most part).  I've even decided to kick the caffeine habit, and have been successful so far.  For a mom that works until midnight and then gets up to school early the next morning, that's not too bad.
And lastly, being a working and schooling mom, has caused me to re-examine my priorities.  I couldn't tell you the last tv show or movie I watched (other than one with my hubby on an evening off), but my kids and I are being active together all the time.  I'm putting more thought into their activities, and scheduling our days to matter more.  Actually, I feel less stressed than I did before I added a "part-time job" to my week.  Although, it might just be that I can say, "Yeah, I know the house is a mess, I work full time and homeschool." ;-)

Back to work.  See you next week.

Learning from the Student

As I mentioned before, I am new to homeschooling. My oldest daughter is the guinea pig, whether or not she wants to be. That said, it wasn't a horrible first week. She was excited to get started, and we had fun, most of the time.

One thing I've already figured out is that my daughter will not be the only one learning this year. Of course, I'm learning how to homeschool, but she's teaching me more than that. In the matter of one day, she taught me that she can be just as stubborn as me.  Along with that, she has taught me a good bit of patience this week. I've learned that we butt heads easily, but it's because we're so very much alike. However, one of our major differences is that she doesn't give a care one about learning to read. Reading is my favorite past time, and she loves to be read to, so this one threw me for a loop. But back to that in a minute.

I really wanted to make some of our experiences like those of non-homeschoolers. Hence, I plan to document our year in a yearbook (using a digital photobook).  Of course, all my like-aged friends were posting their kids "first day of school" pics on Facebook, so I had to, also.  I'd found a few ideas on Pinterest, my new homeschooling idea resource, so I copied them to the best of my ability, and we began our first day like this:

 

Then we dove right in. I had planned to teach Bible, Manners, Reading/Phonics, and Math everyday. Then I planned to rotate Reading Comprehension, Science, and Art/Music, so that we did each twice a week. For the most part, we stuck to that. Then Wednesday came. I knew my daughter had made it fairly clear that she wasn't interested in learning the sounds letters make, but wow. She made it painfully obvious that she didn't want to learn to read at all! It was a long morning! And my patience was being tested!

"I'll learn to read in college!"

So the next afternoon, we went to see a lady I greatly respect, my former seventh grade teacher, and she gave me lots of ideas for making reading more active, since my daughter loves  doing much more than sitting or listening.  But probably the best information she gave me was that her own daughter got a slow start to reading, and she is now a lover of books, and an incredibly smart young woman. It definitely helped to hear that! I know my girl is smart, but I want her to love to read like me; I'm just going to have to learn more patience!

She loves math and science, though!

Lastly, I've learned that when all else fails, and we're both feeling unsuccessful, that is the time to pull out something totally different, and something right up her alley. On Wednesday, after our not-actually-a-failure phonics lesson, I chose to go off the lesson plan, and come up with something hands-on.  I knew that tying shoes was something she needed to learn eventually, so I thought we'd give it a try. She mastered it in less than five minutes! I showed her step-by-step, and she was doing it by herself five tries later.  She went from feeling down about the phonics, to feeling like a million bucks in a matter of minutes! Lesson learned!

At homeschool, it's perfectly acceptable to wear Christmas tree shirts and tutus in August.

Starting Off Slowly

I decided to start a new blog. I like changing things around often, and often get bored with the same ol,' same ol.'  When I was a kid, cleaning my room took hours, if not the entire day, because I would completely rearrange my room while cleaning. I still often do that in my own house, now.  I just can't leave well enough alone.

When trying to come up with a name for my blog, I found myself with writer's block. I wanted something catchy (in case I ever actually attempt to do this professionally), and yet something meaningful to myself.  After thinking for a while, I decided to look where all answers can be found, Google.  Most of the references were for business blogs, but one site said to think of things you like, then subject matter, then try to marry the two.  Well, I like Disney, but I plan to mostly blog about my experiences as a working homeschooling family, and Disney doesn't fit the bill.  And when I tried to come up with a schooling-themed name, well, let's just say there are no new ideas under the sun.

Finally, I thought about my love for turtles, and kicked that idea around for a while.  "Chasing Turtles" was my first thought, but it's the name of a band, although a small one.  "Running with Turtles" sounded funny, but didn't flow with my (un)planned topics.  Again, off to Google, where I found the quote by Bill Copeland: "Try to be like the turtle - at ease in your own shell."  That described what I want perfectly!  We'll be schooling from the comfort of our own shell, sometimes sticking our necks out, and sometimes pulling them back under cover.  Of course, I'll be discussing "us," not so much "me," so I changed it to "our shell," and voilá, my blog is named!

A shell made of shells!

I'm a first time homeschooler, with my oldest beginning kindergarten in just over a week. I went to the same private school for 14 years, then to a public university for six more; so I have never experienced homeschooling.  My husband was homeschooled for the last three years of high school, but it was quite a while ago, a lot of self-schooling, and not kindergarten. I also work a full 40 hours a week, from home, but not for myself, and on the clock, which means we'll be held to a stricter routine, and my husband may have to help out some days.  Both of these things mean I'll be starting off slowly, mostly from scratch.

I have had little success finding blogs, pins, or any other "helps" for that matter, written from a working AND homeschooling mom's perspective. Most homeschooling moms seem to be stay-at-home moms, and those that do work, work from home in a setting where they set their own schedule.  I daresay, I'm not the only one in my boat, though.

Having said that, if you choose to follow my blog, you may find insight and you may find grief.  I taught in a classroom for eight years, so I know it won't all be easy peasy. I also know there will be days when I'll question my decision, if not my sanity.  However, I'm not a negative person by nature, so expect lots more insight than grief.

So there you have it, a blog from a work-while-stay-at-home mom.  See you in a week for the first day of school.

I promise, there will still be Disney references.