I’m apart of a local Facebook group for homeschooling
families and we had a someone ask how do you keep Littles occupied while
working with older kids. I was a part of a busy bag swap when we lived in TX
and thought I’d see if there was any interest in. There was more interest than
I anticipated and I ended up organizing 2 groups. Each group had 15 people. The
first group met up last Friday and next Friday the 2nd group will
meet and exchange their bags! I’m happy that so many families are benefiting! Here's a small sample of the finger puppets I made!
This week was also the first week of Awana at our church.
Sweetie Girl was in Sparks last year and she is again this year. She was beyond ecstatic to get the second book! She has been waiting for months, literally since she finished her first book in March! The first several verses are ones from the other book, so I'm anticipating her finishing early again this year. The verses do get a bit harder as she goes though, so we'll see. We are planning to add practice for our verses to our school day though! Daddy is
volunteering in her class this year. It’s our long day of the week with Homeschool Academy and Awana on the same day, but we’re planning to have a relaxed Thursday to make up for it.
Little Man started Cubbies this year and
Mommy is volunteering in his class. Baby Boy is in the nursery and he seemed to
have a great time! The whole family is involved this year and the first week went
really well! I forgot to take a picture, but I'll be sure to get one in a couple of weeks with Little Man gets his book and vest!
Sweetie Girl seems to really dislike handwriting and I’m had
to really push for her to do anything that involves writing. We have a lot of
friend all over the country, so one night I was trying to figure out how to
make handwriting a little more enjoyable. A penpal come to mind and I started
thinking about who would work for this. We have friends that we use to go to
church with in TX, they moved to the East Coast and we moved to Colorado. Marriage,
and all 3 of our children all happened within days to months of each other. We
married 1 week after them, and each of our kids, same gender each time were all
born within a year of each other. They are also homeschooling as well, so I
sent my friend a message asking if their daughter would be interested in being
penpals with Sweetie Girl and she said yes! Sweetie Girl sent out her first
letter last week and was really excited to start writing to a friend she played
with as a baby, but hasn’t seen in several years.
This weekend we went camping. The Hubs took Sweetie Girl and
Little Man in the fall and we’ve been meaning to all go as a family, but with
family visiting most of the summer, this was the first chance we got. We had
lots of fun! It got a bit cold and I didn’t get much sleep especially after
mini pooch and 2 little boys took over my sleeping bag! We hiked and played
near the water! We had hot dogs and s’mores! Daddy even got to do a little
fishing, though not as much as he would have liked. The kids had a blast and we’re
looking forward to more camping trips in the future!
This past week, the MOPS group that I was involved in
started! I love this group, because it’s the only one I’ve ever heard of that
meets every week. I was invited 2 years ago, right after we moved here and went
that year and last year I was on the ministry team. This year since we are
homeschooling, I decided to not attend. This was a difficult decision for me,
but I found we struggled to do any other school that day and it’s was more
difficult to get in a routine. Sweetie Girl is also getting to old to attend. I’m
missing it and have thrown around the idea of going back, but I don’t think I
will. It was super fun and I loved it, but now that I’m homeschooling, I feel
like I need to find something else that works for our family.
We’ve had a slow start to school this week, but since I can
count our camping trip toward our school days, I figured it was ok to spend a
day recouping. Sweetie girl did do some painting, cleaning and reading
yesterday, so we can still count it as school.
