Tuplips, Toddlers, and Teachable Moments!

Hello everyone and I hope that there is someone at least reading this blog! :) Today I was out at the park with Julie and her kidos and we were letting the little ones play on the playground. My Lily, fearless and curious as she is, needed me to constantly watch her! She always does, so its no surprise. As usual she was eating more things then she should, dirt, sticks, rocks, etc. As I sat there thinking about how hard it is to always be trying to keep her out of things, I realized that she offered so many opportunities for me to teach her. Thats right, teach! I realized that I should be telling her about dirt (shes trying to learn about it anyway), I should tell her the color name, the textures, what grows in it, what lives it (dont eat the ant, the ant lives in the dirt). I realized that it takes more time, but think of all that she will grow up learning! At home, instead of grabbing her and yelling no when she tears apart the flowers, I should let her look and touch, I should tell her the colors she is seeing, tell her about the smells and the bees, etc. If I can really do that, first of all I'm a better parent because I'm encouraging her and paying attention to her, and second of all I'll have helped her love to learn and want to try new things (not just be afraid that mom will come racing over to yell at her! lol). To me that is what homeschooling is all about~ loving the learning and have a real excitement about life! So remember to embrace those teachable moments, not just for the older kids, but the little ones to. They are capable of far more learning then we sometimes give them credit for! Remember, Have FUN! :)

Miss Liberty!!!

Well I thought I would update the blog while Carly and James are out an adventure and I am home with Lily ( both of us are sick). We have started our around the world discovery days and so far its been fun! We are of course starting with the USA. and Carly now knows that it is called the United States of America! :) Yesterday we talked about the statue of Liberty and she really like her! So our craft was to make the torch and the crown. Carly was kinda into it and I wasnt sure how much she was paying attention, but when I put the crown on her and she held the torch, she stood just like Lady Liberty! It was so cute! I took one pic, but she told me that it was wrong cause she needed to hold a book too. After she got a book she made me take the pic again!

So she was paying attention! It always good when you realize that they do listen to you after all! :)

Another cute thing happened this week, Carly has decided that her life's calling is to be a teacher and teach babies! :) So she set up a school in the playroom and proceeded to teach her babies. She read stories, wrote "words" up on the little chalk board she had, and taught them to wash their hands! It was really cute to watch. I did however see bits and pieces of the lectures I give her repeated to her "kids" about sharing and being nice! 4 Year olds are SO CUTE! I hope you all are remembering to have fun too! :)

Preperation, Preperation!

Well we finished our Bird discovery days here! We had a ton of fun! Carly wanted to know why we did all the projects. She even said that she wanted her next birthday party to be a bird birthday! lol I guess that means it was successful! :)

So with that done I'm on to a ton of preparations! We are starting our Around the World Discovery this week. I have finally gotten my plans written down and I have been keeping the Library in business single handedly! We are starting with the USA and then moving down to Mexico. The Unit Study will take us about 8 weeks with one country a week. We have our books to ready for the next two weeks. I hope she likes it. It was her idea, so I think that she will. Each week we are going to color a paper doll, and glue it, and the flag into a "passport". We will do all of this on the first day. We are also going to look at art from the culture and we are going to cook their food. Carly told me that she wanted to learn about different kinds of people and eat like them, and write about them. So thats the plan here. Now I just need to get a world map for the wall so she can see where the countries are at in relation to each other. Any ideas of where to get a good one?

The other preparations that I'm working on is the Healthy Eating Discovery that we are doing with Julie and Caroline. We are going to learn about healthy food and what food does for our bodies! This was inspired by the "Food Revolution" show with Jamie Oliver! He showed why chicken nuggets aren't healthy by showing how they are made! Yikes! I will never eat another chicken nugget ever! lol

So that is what is happening here! There is of course the Easter Preparations to do here. The Easter Bunny comes tomorrow and Carly is Super excited! I dont know if she'll make it! lol She loves holidays! Well Happy Easter to all of you! I hope that you all have a great and blessed holiday!