Grawe Land

Uh-oh #1: About three months into the school year we pulled the girls from school and I started homeschooling them... WHAT WAS I THINKING?! I was thinking that Lord had been telling me this was going to happen since the year started and I just couldn't ignore it anymore. The impression I was getting to do it was getting stronger and stronger. So strong that when we finally did pull them from school we didn't even have a curriculum picked out yet. So we basically had a week of sitting around watching magic school bus and reading.

The longer the kids are out of school the more I understand why Heavenly Father asked me to take on this great task.

The hard parts are spreading my attention to two girls that need a mommy and a teacher, while also entertaining a two year old who has only one volume; LOUD, and a five month old who just needs his mommy to sing and read books to him.

The easy part is much shorter, but definitely out weighs the hard part. It's the bond! Wow, I can not begin to explain the strong bond that the kids and I have. I feel like I have always been close to my kids, but I never understood just how close I could be. Then there is the bond that the 4 of them have.

Rae and Bea were always fighting when they were in school, it was crazy. But now they are hands down each others best friends. Rudy loves to torment his sisters but man will he defend them right down to yelling at me if he has to. They are also already including Monte in their little circle. They are always asking to hold and play with him, even Rudy has started asking to hold Monte and share his toys with him. His biggest problem with Monte is that when the girls don't let Rudy play, Monte is just not old enough yet to hang with him and follow him around.

It's been great for Ki too, or so he says. He says that even on hard days when I am texting him non stop about the kids being crazy that when he gets home we are all in a better mood.

Uh-oh #2: This year I really wanted to be more hands on in homeschooling, again I ask you... WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

We are doing the Latter Day Learning curriculum, and I am really enjoying it and feel like not only are the girls learning more but so am I. It's easy enough to teach because of the way it is laid out, and that it's on the internet so it has all the links in the lesson that you could ever need. It will explain about sea sponges for example, and then it will have a link to a video, or a song, or an article about sea sponges. It's really neat and very helpful, plus it really reinforces what we are learning.

The prep work really isn't bad either because again it has links to all the print outs for the lesson, but it does take a while to get through the lessons, (then again that could also be the 2 year old and the 5 month old playing into the distraction card and not letting us focus on our lesson, haha).

We are playing around with a few different schedules to see what we like best and to see what is most productive for them, not necessarily for the time management. In the upcoming weeks we are going to try and do one subject a week so we can really explore all the different angles of the subject.

Uh-oh #3: The last but not least uh-oh that I have signed on for is writing at least once a week in my "journal". Say it with me: WHAT WAS I THINKING?! I am the absolute worse at writing in a journal or a blog or a diary or an email or anything like that. I have a journal that I started in 2010 and wrote maybe in about 1/4 of it and still have yet to complete it.

I have this blog and I am proud of myself if I write on it once a year, haha. I still have so many things that I need to upload and write about. But I have a feeling that if I ever get around to blogging about those things it will be mainly pictures.

So the last lesson in History was about Adam and Eve and how they kept journals and and how if they hadn't and if no one did we wouldn't know anything about history or how we came to the point in the world that we are in now. The lesson challenged us to write everyday, I said we should try once a week because "ain't nobody got time for that" j/k. I just want to try and ease into it. I was much better at journal keeping when I was in high school and if my girls become good at it then that will be great! The asked me to participate in this challenge with them so that when they grow up they can show their kids what I was like as their mommy and teacher, luckily the grand kids will see my point of view too and not just their journals where it's all about me screaming, hehe).

So those are my 3 uh-ohs and hopefully I can hold my promise to my girlies, I would hate to disappoint them.

-Stressed and Blessed is best..... that may be a little too cheesy for me to sign off with but we will try it. (=

Rudy's early pre-k thinking activities