Once upon a blog.....

Once upon a blog....I intended to keep a fun running account of our homeschool journey. I think we did pretty well until Karson reached toddlerhood.....

Now there's been no time! Little buddy is constantly on the go, climbing the stairs, the pantry shelves, dragging out the potatoes to carry something heavy around.....unfolding laundry, drawing on sissy's posted schoolwork, playing with his cars, trucks or trains, or removing/inserting dvd's. We've decided that a little movie time each day isn't actually such a bad thing after all. We gave in and let him watch only "Your Baby Can Read" movies for a while (they have actions to repeat, recite fingerplays, etc, not letters necessarily but words in context). Now we've progressed to Veggie Tales. If I have to watch Lord of the Beans one more time.........I'll turn into a bean. It's so bad that we sing the songs when we don't want to (all of us!!!) and if Karson so much as hears a word that reminds him of the movie (ie-"Hey honey, how do green beans sound with dinner?"), he runs to the living room, opens the dvd player changer and rotates it to find the movie, then closes the drawer so it will start. The whole time he says "DAT! DAT! (razzberry) Trees! (razzberry) Bob! (razzberry) Ohhhhh DAT! (chuckle chuckle)". It is so darn cute. And annoying! He really doesn't need to see it any more. Movie time is the only time he sits still though. We certainly read a bunch of stories every day, play basketball, cars, trucks, trains, catch, color, look at letters, do a craft.....anything until I can get him tired enough for a nap. A bit more outside time would help, too. Can't wait until summer!

So homeschooling, yes it does actually happen! While Karson watches his reading movie, I work with Grace on her reading/spelling/latin/etc. Then it's time for a mad minute and math introduction, and I play with Karson while she does her lesson. I used to be able to take him for his nap, but now he's coming into the kitchen/dining room with me instead and working at his desk coloring. This lasts about 3 minutes. Then he's moving the stepstool to the dry erase board. While I put the stepstool in the laundry room, he colors the posters. Then I help Grace again by feeding them a snack and having read aloud time.

Other great distractions that are also learning activities for Karson that also keep me close to Grace are vacuuming (in the room next door), "washing" dishes, the sink, surfaces, sweeping, dusting, "folding laundry". He really just likes to transfer (water from cup to cup, laundry from basket to basket). Once I gave him a little snackbowl with a handful of Bugles in it. He opened the cupboards until he found a wide mouth mason jar and spent a solid 10 minutes transferring them between the two containers. You know those paint with water type coloring books you can get? Those are also perfect beginner art projects that aren't too messy. He also enjoys gluesticks and scraps of paper. Have a paper punch of any shape? Make lots of one shape, teach the name of the shape, and let him paste it to his heart's content. He loves it. He loves playdough, too, but I've had about enough of playdough for a while....all I can say is I never had it near carpet before and now that we do, it's a whole new experience.

That's how we're homeschooling with a toddler. Once he's finally down for an afternon nap, I can get out the sewing/cooking/embroidery type projects with Grace. There is definately a rhythm to our day and certain "field trips" every week that help make things manageable. Toddler storytime at the library, Women's Bible study, enrichment classes.... When does blogging fit in? Maybe once bathtimes/bedtimes are over?? So! Here's to rejoining the blog world, haphazardly anyway. I'm not promising daily postings. But let's see if I can shoot for once a week at least for a while.