This week we are wrapping out the October In The Orchard theme from Mother Goose Time with some critter fun. We have been learning about turtles through Natalie’s Kindergarten curriculum and so we decided to make some turtle pets out of previous MGT materials that we have had laying around for a couple of months.

These were what we came up with and I think they turned turned out pretty well.

 (Peter’s turtle)

 (Natalie’s turtle & one of the cute airplanes that came with next month’s manipulative set)

 

While the kids were decorating, I was able to discuss some turtle facts and ask questions. It was a great way to sneak in some info while they were engaged in their creations.

Some of the things we learned are

• Turtles live in water (rivers, lakes, or larger bodies of water like oceans) and tortoises live on land.If you run across what seems to be a turtle that does both, they are called a terrapin.
• As turtles can stick their head and limbs into their shell, but all use their shell for protection.
• And a turtle’s shell is attached to their backbone.And since we had just been to the Scarium at the Chattanooga Aquarium (Halloween event), we had just been able to see a lot of different types of turtles. Although at this moment, Peter was more interested in Mario than the sea turtle passing by.

Of course we did a lot of focusing on the letter T as well.
(The little ball next to Peter became Peter’s little hedgehog pet.)
And I made up a few color by number sheets for Peter out of some coloring sheets I found on Pinterest and our good ‘ole dot to markers.

Although turtles don’t tend to live in orchards, we expanded our conversation to other animals and how they protect themselves from predators.

Natalie had seen the Porcupine day baggie earlier this month as I was flipping through our MGT materials, and had been hounding me about talking about it. So she was quite excited to get into the content.

(Natalie’s little purple hedgehog pet)

We made our puppets and discussed the differences between porcupines and hedgehogs. I honestly didn’t know, so it was really interesting for me to be able to identify some of the distinguishing features. 

In case you didn’t know, hedgehogs are smaller than porcupines and and not naturally found in North or South America. Unlike the hedgehog (and spiny anteater), the porcupine does not curl up into a ball when threatened, but backs up into its predator, releasing the quills on its back once it strikes its attacker. It also has longer quills than a hedgehog.

Overall, it was a really fun way to close out our October curriculum.

Next up: On The Go

And so far, our weeks have followed suit. Although we haven’t started yet and it is Nov 7th, we have been traveling the past two weeks and our conversations have really paved the way (haha, transportation humor) for our focus this month, pointing out different types of vehicles (cars, trucks, RVs, trains) and more than enough road signs.

Fun things ahead! Check out these projects!

 

And I’ll leave you with two sweet moments from the past week. While my kids are not like this pretty much 95% of the time, it is the moments like this that encourage me to keep going. I know God has called me down this path, and it is so easy to question it sometimes, but I am thankful for these moments, and by faith, choosing to the thankful for the hard times, too, knowing He is faithfully orchestrating our lives for His purpose.

These two. One of the benefits that we heard in testimony after testimony at the Teaching Them Diligently Homeschool Conference we attended last spring was the close relationships that siblings can have when they are homeschooled and really only have each other primarily to learn social skills, how to serve, how to hopefully be peacemakers, etc. We loved that idea and it’s been our prayer that we can foster an environment where they can find that type of friendship with each other. Most days, it doesn’t feel like we are making any progress. But then we have sweet moments like this and I see a glimmer of hope.

These little trees are gonna be our reminders to count the blessings during this season. For me, that is a practical way that I can fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of my faith, and to remember there is purpose in the mundane and routine of my days.

What do you hold onto when life gets hard?
What do you use to remind you of what God has called you to in the rough seasons?
I would love to hear!

 As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.

This was such a fun activity! We’ve been studying nests this past week through my daughter’s Kindergarten curriculum, and so when I ran across Day 12’s “Baby Nest” activity in our Mother Goose Time curriciulum, I was so excited how well it would flow into our lesson plan for the day.

Here is a glimpse into the Teacher’s Guide. I love that it’s so visually appealing, as well as practical and educational. It doesn’t have to be, but the extra effort the development team puts into making the Teacher’s Guide more attractive is a huge investment in the parents and teachers that use them. It’s all the attention to the small things and their diligence to continually approve upon their product that I love about Mother Goose Time!

It’s hard to tell by my lacking photography skills, but as you can see, most of the materials were provided for the activity. (Thank you, Mother Goose Time!) I just needed to supply the glue and scissors.

We used plastic eggs to create little birds.

Look at that sweet face! And of course, the baby bird as well.

Natalie wanted an excited (or possibly horrified) baby bird.

Bonus: See that rolling cart in the background. Again, hard to tell from my photography skills, but each tray is labeled according to four different categories that pretty much encompass the reusable materials that I get each month in our MGT boxes. Thanks to the awesome tip at the end of Leslie Falconer’s Introduction video, we are able to have our supplies accessible and easily managed in our living space. As you can see, our manipulatives drawer at the every bottom is pretty much overflowing. And I love that because that is Peter’s go-to place whenever Natalie and I are going a little bit longer than he would like with a topic. He can jump down, grab some math blocks (or little trains like we just got in November’s box themed On The Go).

The baby birds were hungry, so we decided to feed them. We had been given so many different seeds in this month’s materials that it was easy to make this an addition to our activity, providing an opportunity to role play with the kiddos.

And once they were finished eating, we taped them close, and voila! Instant baby bird shaker.

We added feathers to their heads, and then settled them down in their nests, made from a brown paper sack, cut in half and rolled down. The top half that we cut off was then cut into pieces to represent the extra twigs and other materials that birds may use to line their nests. (SUCH a  great application to all we’d be learning about nest building.)

Peter’s happy little bird, for now.

Peter’s bird didn’t stay happy for long. He decided that he wanted to pick off the eyes, and then of course wanted to change his mind and put them back on. They didn’t want to reapply very easily, and so I scrapped off what I could of the adhesive residue and pulled out my black sharpee. I added some eyes over the smile.

Peter resisted and said that the bird wasn’t happy anymore. So I turned the bird around to the back, added another pair of eyes, accompanied by a frown.

So all of a sudden, we had this Jekyl and Hyde action going on, and our little bird was sudden bi-polar.

So that was a fun little creative path we took today to reinforce what we had been learning about nests and birds this past week. And we have these cute little shakers to continue to play with and remind us of the fun morning.

As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.

 

This week we rejoiced in the little things. And for me, that is a BIG thing. Let me explain…

This week was hard. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or try to put a positive spin on things. It was just hard.

I saw a lot of my selfishness, my lack of patience, my short temper. And it’s never easy to come face to face with your own sin.

Parenting is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done (and I’m only 5 years & 2 kids in!).

This week I was reminded that I am in the middle of the ocean.

Because of God’s tremendous grace in some many various forms (curriculum, supportive friends, other mamas-in-the-trenches, to name a few), this season of newly homeschooling hasn’t been as scary as I had anticipated. His strength has been apparent, His guidance confirming and comforting, and His mercy new every day.  Great is His faithfulness.

And like I tend to do, I get comfortable in this.

I don’t think that in and of itself this is bad. I think we’re called to abide in God’s grace, to rest and cozy up in it. However, for me, comfortable usually leads to complacency. And complacency looks a whole lot like laziness, forgetfulness, and overall getting me back to a place where I am unconsciously trying to do this thing on my own.

I forget that it’s His grace that has been sufficient and it was His grace that was sustaining. And I slowly unplug from the Source. Life gets a little bit busier as I am taking on ‘extra’ things that seem really good and beneficial, because hey – things are going well and I think I can do a little bit more.  And I forget to consider and pray to see if that is what God has for us in this season. I stop having necessary time in God’s Word, in soaking in His Truth to renew and remind my heart and mind. I stop asking for the strength that I so desperately need, and start trying to pull it from other sources – coffee, friends, quick devos here and there, naps. Whatever seems to offer the quickest fix so that I can get back on to all.the.things.

Man oh man, same story, different season. This is my pattern.

So, like I mentioned, this week, in His grace, God reminded me that I really am in the deep end. I’ve been swimming and enjoying life, and now I’m getting a little tired. I’m trying to float and bob along with the waves, but because I’m not relying on His Presence in the same capacity as before, I’m exhausted. Pretty much just barely keeping my head above water.

What this looks like on a day to day basis is the sin I talked about before. Snapping at my kids for being kids, because when it comes down to it, that’s what it is. My impatience manifesting itself because their need for direction and training and correction is requiring what is left of my slowly emptying energy tank.

But as He always does, God doesn’t leave me alone. He doesn’t leave me to my own devices because I am His, and He has better for me than what I have been settling for, better for my family than what I have to offer them on my own.

Through the Holy Spirit’s small, soft voice, I started to identify that part of my struggle with this pattern that I see cropping up in my life: I have a hard time celebrating and receiving the little victories in my life. Because I am detail-oriented, I see the whole myriad of tasks and work that go into bringing a project/event/whatever to completion. And so it makes it really hard for me to be thankful and grateful for the progress of two completed steps when I see the thirty that still need to be done. I want to rest when things are done, sit back and enjoy the completion and bask in that.

BUT, because I’m relying on my own perspective and understanding, what I don’t often realize is that God’s portion for that day may just be those two steps. The other remaining thirty may be the next year’s work for me to walk out. But I take on the burden of what I see and what is undone and I carry it around. And I allow that lack of perspective to steal my joy, and ultimately steal my praise and gratitude for what God has accomplished in my life already.

So, this week, being reminded that I am in fact in the middle of this huge calling that I have no ability to fulfill on my own, I started seeing the miraculous in the small glimpses of progress. I started seeing how God was and is moving in my mundane, day-to-day life by accomplishing the ‘little’ tasks that I thought I should be able to do on my own, but now realize that it’s been Him all along. And I stopped long enough to enjoy that – to thank the Lord for His Presence and faithfulness in our everyday lives -that may have just looked like a morning without losing my patience, but for me, that is huge.

(HUGE side note: I have to remove the just’s from my vocabulary and allow it to be a big thing, because even a subtle statement like that can and often does  minimize God’s work in my life. What do you just do? Are you just a stay-at-home-mama? Are you just a wife? Are you just an employee? Are you just a friend? When we remove the just’s, we can stand in the fullness of that position and let it define itself, without that little justifier.)

And then, as I stopped to take in the little successes,  I asked Him to continue to do what only He can do.

And He did!

Natalie is Reading! (click here for a sweet video!)

This week I was able to recognize a little bit more confidence in Natalie’s pre-reading skills, as you can tell from the video. Usually she resorts to a ‘baby voice,’ as we call it, when she feels a little shy or insecure about something she is trying to do or say. It shows a little in the video, but this is by far the most confident I have seen her so quickly. It’s exciting to be able to watch her pre-reading skills develop along with her confidence in this area.

When I pulled out the book this past week (included in October’s Mother Goose Time Box), I expected that I would read it to her first, and then give her a chance to explore and sound out the words. However, as we got started, Natalie asked if she could read the words she knew, and I, of course, supported that idea. The first page definitely helped, giving her some vocabulary right off the bat with the picture clues. The only word I needed to help her with after that was “have.” I don’t believe this is a sight word we covered earlier this year through the Confessions of a Homeschooler curriculum that we were using for a  few months, and so she really didn’t have any frame of reference for it. But after that, she was off and running.

As challenging as some days can be – and not just with homeschooling, but parenting in general -it is the moments like this that help me keep perspective and remember just how blessed I am to get to witness first-hand how my daughter is learning and growing. Today, by God’s grace, I took in the moment.  I rejoiced in my daughter’s progress and celebrated her courage to let me video her doing something new (she struggles with perfectionism as well, and often has a hard time sharing unless she feels she can do it well). So what may appear little here, with insider knowledge, I know isn’t quite so small.

So today we rejoiced in the ‘little’-little steps, little pep-talks, little lessons that have added up to a big step for my little girl.

And I am thankful and expectant to see what other ‘little’ things the Lord has for us this week!

As an official Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador,
I receive curriculum in exchange for posting about our honest and authentic experiences with the curriculum.
Click here for more information on Mother Goose Time.