Daily Photo–Tent Making

Nate got a set of PVC pipes and connectors for Christmas. What kid wouldn’t want that, right? Daddy showed them you can make a tent out of them; they now think he’s the coolest person ever.

Peek-a-boo!

~S

Tot School–“The Mitten”

Nathanael is currently 42  months.

I finished our tot school co-op that I was teaching at my house. Yep, I have all the pictures and plan sheets. Maybe someday I’ll get them all posted, it just didn’t seem like a priority at the time. We had a blast, but I’m glad to be done with it for now.

The new semester brings a new plan and new ideas for tot school. I am still co-oping first grade hands-on projects with a friend of mine, so I have her three year old once a week for two hours while she takes Kahlen to do the fun hands-on parts of Tapestry of Grace. I debated a really long time about what I should do with Nate and Tilly during this time, and finally settled on B4FIAR without actually using the book. I wanted something that requires very little planning time for me, and this fit perfectly because there are so many great resources available. I am mostly using Homeschool Creations and Homeschool Share as resources with a bit of Pinterest thrown in for good measure. We’ll be doing lap journals, kind of a cross between lapbooking and notebooking as explained at Delightful Learning.

This week was our first week back after winter break. Since we’re starting in the middle of winter, I decided to start with The Mitten. Here’s a few of the activities we did for co-op:

Roll and graph from 1+1+1=1 (Who was also doing The Mitten this week!)

 

Coloring mini books “This Mitten is…” I love the look on Tilly’s face while Nate vigorously scribbles away

Making snowball cookies from Totally Tots (Vanilla Wafers, Cream Cheese, and Coconut)

Mitten Lacing

They also did a puppet show with the story props from 1+1+1=1, but I didn’t get pictures since I was helping them.

Also this week, I introduced calendar time notebooks as a way to start off school each day. I got the printables from 1+1+1=1 here and here.

We’re doing tot trays with mild success. The main problem is that I want him to be an independent worker, and he’s really just not. I am working on some ideas to help him with this, but in the meantime, he just gets frustrated and has an extremely short attention span for each tray activity.

Here he’s working on a Montessori style tray with nuts, bolts, and washers that have to be matched up and put together. The first time he did this, he did great! Since then, he’s been less excited about it… :/

I also made a pompom stuff it activity for the tiny tot. I had this little takeout container sitting around, so I cut a hole in the top and stuffed some pompoms in it. Of course, he can’t do it by himself, and he’d rather try and eat them, but brother helped him fill and dump.

That’s what we’re working on so far. Next week, we’re going to read The Snowy Day and do activities around that book. What did you do with your tots this week?

~S

Speak Up Saturday–Book Review- Then Sings My Soul 3

Wow, it’s been a loooongggg time since I got this book! Remember what I said about 2012 not being nice to me? Yeah, book reviews are one of those things that fell aside…

From the Publisher:

The long-awaited third installment!

In 2003, Robert Morgan released what would become a future classic for over a million readers, a unique book entitled Then Sings My Soul.  This collection of the world’s greatest hymns and the stories behind them stirred an entire generation to better understand the heritage of our faith through song.

Now, in the long-awaited third volume of this series, Morgan expands his material to include the great history of worship, the first biblical hymns, biographical sketches of the most interesting composers, and almost 60 generations of hymn singing. The new book also includes a collection of the greatest hymns you’ve never heard, with lead-sheets included.

All of this is in addition to even more standard hymns and the stories of the composers behind them.

Morgan’s conclusion guides the reader into enjoying all of God’s music, blending the old and the new into a symphony of praise that keeps the worship alive for a new generation.

The first thing that you notice when you hold this book is the pages. They are thick, uneven in an antiqued sort of way. It’s comforting. Matches the theme of the book. I know each book in the series is like this, but I still like it :-)

The sections in this book are The History of Hymnody, Do You Know These Hymns?, Six Hymn Stories I Love to Tell, and Hymning in Private and in Public.

I appreciate his breadth of knowledge and research that went into this book. Each hymn has a full page of information about the hymn, which is interesting and relevant to the hymn. The music and words are included for each hymn, which if I ever get back to playing the piano, I will love having.

Not growing up singing hymns and not having many hymns in our current church, I really enjoy reading about the history of the hymns. The whole premise of the book, as stated on the front cover, is Drawing Strength from the Great Hymns of Our Faith. I agree. I think we have a lot to learn from hymns and can draw closer to God through them.

Thank you to Robert J. Morgan for allowing us young’ns to feel the power of the hymns through this book and the other two in the series.

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Daily Photo–Sick again?

Nate has been obsessed with throwing up since we were sick just before Christmas. Today, I found his stuffed lion, Rawr, in the sink. I asked Nate what Rawr was doing in the bathroom…he said “throwing up. He got sick again.” Right. Thanks, Nate.

Daily Photo–For my momma

Happy birthday, mom!

 

I can’t express how glad I am that you live so close. And you love on my kids. And me. And we get to have all kinds of adventures together.

Love you! Can’t wait to celebrate with you!

Love, Sela

Goodbye and good riddance 2012…On to 2013!

2012 was not very nice to me. Nothing catastrophic or genuinely bad happened last year, I just felt like I was barely keeping my head above drowning. All. Year. Mothering, spousing (yep, I just made up a word), managing my household, homeschooling, not to mention my own well being. All were just overwhelming.

So, good riddance, I say! On to a new year! This year, I choose to make it a good year. I choose to see joy and thanksgiving in the daily. I choose to have self discipline and routine. I choose to believe that I am blessed!

That sounds lovely, right? So here’s what I’m doing to that end:

1. I am going to read the bible through. Again. This time, I am using youversion.com and the ESV Study Bible reading plan. You can also print it in PDF here. Each day’s reading is a passage from Psalms and Wisdom, History of Israel, Chronicles and Prophets, and Gospels and Epistles. This is a nice slow reading so I don’t have to rush and I don’t have to be overwhelmed.

2. Memorizing the Mount. Memorize Matthew chapters 5-7. Every verse. I’ll be taking a year to do it, and I have friends who are on the journey with me, but it still will be a huge challenge. Just think, though, if you have all those Blesseds in your brain, all the time. Wouldn’t it be hard not to remember how blessed we really are?

3. The Joy Dare. I choose to see my blessings, the graces in my life, and be thankful for them. The joy dare is a follow up to the book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, which I read last year and really enjoyed, as I’ve posted about before. The challenge now is to think of other things besides the obvious. This is where the Joy Dare jumps in to save the day. Each day for the whole year, she has three graces to look for, to write down. I plan to tweet these as well as writing them down. By the end of the year, I’ll be at 1000!!

3. A Year of Date nights. A few friends of mine were doing this, so I jumped in with them. Each month, there is a large manilla envelope with instructions and supplies for a fun and out of the ordinary date night. We got most of the ideas from here but redid a few to meet our needs better. I gave them to him for Christmas with a few rules attached. We successfully executed our first one last week: we went bowling, but first we stopped at the thrift store and picked out shirts for each other to wear. We then wrote on the back with a sharpie our “bowling names” for each other.

 Yep, I won :-) Both games, I might add. Can’t wait for next month’s date!

4. I will be starting a new book study with my fellowship team. It just came out and looks amazing! Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe by Sarah Mae and Sally Clarkson. I may not feel desperate all the time, but having three kids certainly can push me there quick fast in a hurry. If you don’t have a local group to study with, try GranolaMom4God, she is starting an online study of the book with another blogger and would LOVE for you to join them.

 

5. Funny that I would be reading Desperate with my girlfriends, because I’m also going to go through Sarah Mae’s other book, 31 Days to Clean - Having a Martha House the Mary Way. I have a bad attitude about cleaning, and I don’t want to any more. But I decided I needed outside help with that, so I purchased this book on my kindle with Christmas money (it’s all of $5). I will be starting this next Monday.

6. I have a revamped routine and renewed vigor for school this semester. I’ll share the routine and how I designed it a bit later. We also purchased All About Spelling and All About Reading, which I am SOOO excited to start using! They just came in the mail today, yippee! We’ll be doing the first lesson tomorrow at the appointed time in our routine :-) Kahlen is excited too, she got to help me get it all set up today. (definitely my daughter! Had more fun than should be allowed just separating the cards and applying the magnets)

7. Running. I will be RUNNING the Warrior Dash this year. I had some not so great experiences with it last year, but that about sums up the whole year. Next week, I am going to get at least one run in, and more as the weather comes up above freezing. You know that routine I just mentioned? Yep, my runs are scheduled in there. Twice a week anyway. I’m hoping for more once it’s warmer and easier for me to run outside. For now, I plan to head to the senior center and run on the track there.

8. The Lord’s Table. Two years ago, I did this eating plan along with the book A Woman of Moderation by Dee Brestin. I loved it at the time, felt great, lost a bunch of weight, then immediately got pregnant (guess he liked it too, heehee). I haven’t wanted to or been able to get back on an eating plan until now, but Shane is about done with me, so now’s a good time to start. I’ll be starting this in February, giving me time to settle into some of these other things first. I think I have some friends who will join me in this too, which makes it so much easier!

Seems like a lot, but having a plan is so much better for me than not. I also want to share some ways I’m helping myself keep track of all this, but this post is already long and I need to head to bed (trying to get over a head cold, boo). Tomorrow I’m hoping to post more about our routine and my new brain book (aka household notebook, aka day planner). See you then!

~S

Wordless Wednesday–Chaos in the kitchen

Shane has discovered the drawers in the kitchen. While I don’t really mind him getting into the bottom two that just hold towels, I would really rather he didn’t dump the kid silverware all over the floor. *sigh* ah well, that’s the life of an (almost) one year old!

Nate wanted to make cookies, so we made two kinds: oatmeal scotchies for me and the kids and chocolate chip for daddy.

~S

Linking up at: