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| Linking up this week with Frontier Dreams, Magic Onions, Natural Suburbia, and Crafty Moms Share and a few others! Please check out my 'where I party' page! |
Right now I am......wishing we were still phone and internet free on vacation in Hatteras. While I love this place and our home, it was divine to be so untethered for a week. Also on our first day home, I broke my right pinky toe in 2 places and now have to wear a boot for 8 weeks. OUCH!
...planning our home school year. I am almost done and there is still more to be done along the way but I feel good about where I am right now. I finished our home school year calender- pictured above. It's a nice visual reminder of our overall yearly rhythm using watercolor paper and folding it into the 12 months.
...digging up my summer garden and getting a late start on my Autumn garden. I hope I still do have time to get it right! Bring on the broccoli, spinach, and potatoes!
...pondering our school room this year. I just finished reading "Playful Learning" by Mariah Bruehl and am loving her Reggio Emilia 'atelier' station.
...trying to not buy more school supplies than I really need. It's hard. The good thing is that most of the supplies I need are art ones and the ones I bought last year- Stockmar crayons, paints, and Lyra colored pencils- have all held up super well and I don't need to get new ones!
...learning to finger knit. I can knit fine but I've never finger knitted. And I need to teach Deirdre this year, so here I go!
...drinking lots of coffee. I feel as if I have lots to do. I know I don't. But it feels like a mountain. Coffee for me is like giving me a rope to help me climb that mountain!
...thanking the Lord for our lovely family time together. Sometimes I get all tangled up in the 'stuff' I need to do instead of looking back on our vacation and just praising him for our sweet moments together.
Thank You.
Until next time,
Thanks so much for this lovely post. I really relate to many aspects of this post. I totally relate to the internet/phone/techno break bliss! We had it for one weekend and it was heavenly. I am hoping to start home-schooling in January and so have been looking into that and found your year plan so beautiful and simplified - it easily overwhelms me! I too have just been asking friends about finger-knitting. I knit but don't know how to fingerknit and would like to learn so I can teach my daughter if she shows interest. I never used to drink coffee but these days it helps get me through the day.
ReplyDeleteThanks for another beautiful post. Hope that your toe heals quickly and that the 8 weeks in cast are not too cumbersome!
Thank you so much Willow! Good luck on beginning your home schooling journey later this year :) Coffee is the best!
DeleteI just stumbled across your blog and I'm so glad! I love how you organized your school year with all the holidays listed below (I was especially excited to see St. Lucia, one of my favorite holidays).
ReplyDeleteAnyway finger knitting is super easy. I taught my daughter (5) this summer. We all now have yarn bracelets that we MUST wear.
Good luck!
Thanks MamaHuss! I have got the hang our finger knitting now! The toe however still is on the mend. Who knew a toe was so important or could hurt so much!
Deleteouch on the toe!
ReplyDeleteand your homeschool plan looks great. i love the yearly calendar idea. that is really wonderful.
Thank you :) Doing the calendar that way helped anchor me and give a better starting point vs being overwhelmed.
DeleteOh, I just adore your school year calendar! Beautiful! Do you do storytelling with your kids or just use seasonal books? I have been deciding if I should "let go" of the storytelling for now and just read from books, because I just don't feel like I have time to do all that memorization at this stage in my life. What is the book in 3rd photo down? I have way too many books of songs/verses/stories but I don't recognize that one! So sorry to hear about your injury! I hope the 8 weeks fly by and things get less painful as the weeks progress.
ReplyDeleteHi! Thank you so much for visiting. :) So I do a bit of both. I story tell with the kids at bed time. I have a long ongoing story about David the gnome (3+ years) with them and I tell them one every night based of what David does each day. But for circle time I try to stick with one story, song, finger play, and rhyme. I change each monthly. I try to build on my monthly story and add to it and do little puppet plays with it, but that comes out naturally. I do not pre-plan for it. I found the one story was plenty to build from. We're book lovers here so I think if you'd feel better and more at peace using books, then go for it! I also write my verse and songs in a little notebook if I can't memorize them and it works great! I think your kids will enjoy circle time more if you're feeling better about it using a book vs being stressed ect from memorizing :) And I bet you'll memorize it a week or so in just from repetition! The book in the 3rd picture is Betty Jones' Seasonal Treasury. I Cannot recommend it enough. It is the only book you need it get for all your songs rhymes finger plays ect for the early years hands down. I wish I got it sooner. I hope this helps!!
DeleteThanks, Nicole! You are so right that a stressed mommy at circle time is not going to make for a good experience for anyone. :) I actually have the Seasonal Treasury so not sure why that page looked unfamiliar to me! I am wondering if it is because I have the softcover version? Maybe there are differences? I was just saying to someone the other day that I wish I had gotten the hardcover version. I can only find it used on Amazon though and I have had some very bad experiences buying used on Amazon (books in much worse condition than described, etc). Do you know if it is available new anywhere in hardcover? I have actually been considering dwindling down my collection of books that are resources for verses, etc, and only keeping a few select great ones like the Seasonal Treasury. Sometimes more is definitely not better and just becomes overwhelming! There are so many wonderful resources for this sort of thing that i sometimes get into this mindset of feeling like I need them all because I don't want to "miss" anything great.
DeleteOne more question. :) Do you repeat the monthly books that you use from year to year?
DeleteJust stopping by for the first time (from Sharing Saturday). Can I just say, I LOVE the design of your blog! Glad to have found it, and am now following on Facebook! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Kali! Come back anytime!!!
DeleteLove your yearly planning calendar and will be "borrowing" the idea to do mine, thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the toe, not fun.
Thanks Kim, it is on the mend! Let me know if the calendar works well for you!!
DeleteOh, no!! I hope you toe is feeling better!! Love your beautiful planner and ideas! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!
ReplyDeleteThank you Carrie!
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