This summer has been so much fun so far. We have lots of friends whose schedules are more freed-up in the summer time, which allows for some awesome kid playdates (which comes with the wonderful side of adult conversation!), and so we have really enjoyed getting to spend time with some wonderful people in our lives. The past few weeks have also consisted of Natalie’s official birthday week celebration (post to come about all the fun activities), which overlapped with her three cousins spending the week at Harwood Camp. (Just in case there was any misconceptions – 5 is different than 2.) 🙂 We had a BLAST, but this mama was pretty exhausted come the end of the visit.

Needless to say, we have gone lax with our structured school schedules, and have found learning opportunities in the nooks and crannies of the day.

So once things slowed down a bit around here, after the return of the extra 3 kiddos, I excitedly jumped into The Alphabet House! We’re only a month ‘late’, but a few great things about homeschooling – flexibility to change schedules, no real fear of parent-teacher conflict due to last minute changes, and the freedom to really enjoy the people around us and allow relationships to be priority in our lives. I’m so thankful for this season of our lives!

I also have approached this month differently than my first with Mother Goose Time. Last month was my first baby-step into schooling with two, and so I was very grateful for a teacher’s guide and Little Goose Guide to walk me pretty much step-by-step through the process of the daily activities. I thrive on structure anyways, and so this was a reassuring benefit to this curriculum. However, now that we’ve gotten our toes wet, I feel more confident now to review and then pick and choose which activities seem the most appealing to this stage of life, that I feel like the kiddos will enjoy the most, and allow the rest of it to just be ‘extra’ if we have time. This is a HUGE step for this perfectionism-recovering mama who usually views a to-do list as set in stone, to be met or to be grieved over at the end of the day. Thank You, Jesus, for freedom and grace, and learning to choose the best over the good! Because Lord knows there are a MILLION and ONE choices out there for us homeschooling mamas (and anyone, really) to grab our time and attention and energies, and at the end of the day, was it even really fruitful?

Anyways, I could go on, but back to Alphabet House! So this month we’re pulling out a few days at a time and letting the themes flow together right before us. The amazing theme and design team from Mother Goose Time weaves the daily topics together so beautifully that it’s so easy for our discussion to flow from one daily topic to the next without much prep or work on my part. I love it in this season where I want to be available mentally, emotionally, and physically to my littles (who need so much) – I’ll gladly receive the benefit of others’ hard work in that.

So we started out the day with grabbing some books that I already had around the house, more for a visual to show them where we were headed and that books are always going to be a part of our learning process.

And I grabbed the awesome manipulative bag that came with this month’s box – foam shapes and cute little plastic keys!

These were the cute little doors that came with Day 6’s bag: Doors and Windows!

We built Peterman a little door out of our math manipulative blocks so he would have something to unlock.

I challenged Natalie to build something and she chose a rocket (R as in Rocket was a theme last month’s curriculum, so neat to see those ideas still being on the front of her mind).
However, now that I’m looking back at the pictures, I don’t think we ever quite made it. We got a little sidetracked once I pulled out the keys for Peter and started talking about doors. Oh well. The rocket will wait for another day!

I pulled out the number cards that came with this month’s focus, and Peter decided he wanted to share some of sissy’s foam shapes to fill in the circles on the page. So we spent a little time reviewing shapes and seeing if we had any other pieces that would fit his card.

Natalie decided to match her foam shapes to the Daily Topic Sheet, adding her own little doorknob. (Peter mimicked this addition in the pictures above, adding a quite large doorknob to his door.)

We talked a little about different doors and types of homes, and knowing they both love a good fairy tale, we focused on Day 5: Castles!

 

And then they wanted to feed the dragon, and so it ate some of the random manipulatives that we’ve collected so far: pom poms and keys (because dragons will eat anything). Peter didn’t like the idea of the dragon eating his precious little rabbits (one of the manipulatives from May’s Growing Gardens), so he saved those and moved to another activity.

 

Here was the fun dragon we built!

The discussion of what to feed the dragon

Peter had since accomplished the Rabbit Rescue mission and had left the scene

A girl and her dragon

 

We then moved on to this fun exercise from the day focused on RV’s. Peter matched all the shapes correctly, which was fun to see him excited in his success.

We wrapped up the morning by building the rest of our Alphabet House so that they could see it take shape (and because mama loves a finished board!).

After a really fun, relaxed morning, I was really giddy at the prospect of this fun month before us! With so much sweetness in my morning – from the super cute curriculum to these amazing two little children of God, I was pretty much ready for a soul sugar crash by lunch. It’s a fun season and I’m embracing it! I know they won’t all be like this, so I will take the good right now and store it away with all the other millions of ways the Lord has been so faithful to direct our steps, change our hearts, and reveal His goodness.

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