Since surprises are the best, and our kids get rowdy with anticipation, we completely took them by surprise when taking them for a year-long-planned adventure to Arizona. We were “still unpacking” from our trip the weekend before, so the suitcases raised no suspicions. We got everything ready, and scooped them into the car at 4:00am. …
As I send my second son off to kindergarten, I realize it was this time 30 years ago that I started kindergarten. Some may be surprised at how much I remember about kindergarten. I was in the classroom closest to the playground, before they rebuilt that end of campus. My teacher was Miss Cathy, though…
Every year, I send my kids’ teachers a little profile about my little students. I started making them originally to aid in school assessments, but now I do them every year just to give the teacher a little background on how this student operates. I always get great feedback. Since the educators go on and…
I don’t know how I neglected to post about my baby going off to school last November, but I suppose the holidays got me distracted. It was super hard to say good-bye to him, but he loved it, and it was only for a few hours a day. He was so ready. Everyone continuously said…
Our wonderful group of second-graders-to-be got together again; this time for a lesson in cardinal directions. We talked about magnets and how they are pulled by the Earth’s magnetism. We then made our own compass by putting a magnet with the North and South ends labeled, into a tiny bowl, to float freely in a…
My seven year old is really enjoying swim lessons, to the point of taking it very seriously. I love watching him work this hard and truly feel good about it. To encourage his enthusiasm in his hobby, garner some Olympic spirit, and impress him with the results of hard work, I collected information about a…
Every year, we go to the river, and we see new animals each time. With my second grader-to-be interested in animals and writing about them, I decided it was time we learned about the animals we were looking at. There is very little information out there in the form a young child can digest (even…
Our fabulous group of educating moms and our second-graders-to-be got together again, and this time we learned about geography. We started with where we are and made their little worlds get bigger and bigger! I started by showing them a map of our city, and how our home and street fit into that. On the…
In honor of our nation’s birthday, during our “school at home” time, we’ve been studying the time surrounding the acceptance of the Declaration of Independence. Let me tell ya, the complexity of the events was greater than I remembered from school, but we did our best to zero in on the main ideas. We even…
As I go through pictures of my kids, I’m grateful to have so many, but can’t help but wonder if they will ever remember me as a young person, as I’m in almost none of them! I cherish my childhood photos with my young parents and grandparents. I want my kids to have that too.…