7Cubed

As part of our health studies, we’re using SAMHSA’s Building Blocks curriculum. It’s pretty fantastic. Not only is it free, but it’s pretty well done. The music is cheesy, as any children’s music is, but it’s nicely put together. The books are enough to keep my son entertained, the activity book is cute, and the know kit cards are great openers for discussions.

We’re currently working our way through the 3-4 Know Kit cards. The first was about medication. When to take it, not sharing it, and not taking it from other people. Since the grandparents were fantastic enough to gift us a subscription to Discovery Education Streaming I found a video that goes right along with it, titled, “Sniffy Escapes Poisoning”. Thankfully, you don’t have to have a DE Streaming account to view it, you can also view it from archive.org.

Now, this is an utterly ridiculous and strange movie, but my son found it hilarious and it fit right in with what we were learning. As strange as it is, it works.

How’s that for alliteration! Hah! My dorkiness knows no bounds.

We’re lucky to be a part of a preschool co-op in the new town we moved to. There are, thus far, 7 families, which is fantastic. We rotate hosting duties, which may or may not be an additional reason we took week 2 off. I had a whole ton of cleaning to do.

After wracking my brain to figure out something good to do for the co-op (yes, I had the need to impress a group of 4 and under children…), I decided we’d put together a simple “Aa” sounds placemat.

First, I cut posterboards from The Dollar Tree into 4 pieces. I put together a few bits of clip art and coloring pages from around the web into one document, all things beginning with the short a sound. I also put together a basket of art supplies, glue, and scissors.

The kids colored in the pages and then we cut out the pictures.

We glued them into place on the posterboard, and got out the contact paper.

And covered them not nearly as haphazardly as I did this one. It was quick, and held the kids’ attentions for all of 15 minutes before they tore off for more toy time. I’d call that a success.

(I have low standards for success…)

You can download the pdf I used above. If any of these images are copyrighted by you, please let me know. It wasn’t my intention to infringe on any copyrights. I’ll take it down immediately.

While we were supposed to be doing week 2 of Core A, we opted instead to spend our time with family and friends. We enjoyed a couple of park days, a co-op day, and a day with grandma and grandpa. I’d like to pretend I wasn’t totally freaked out that we weren’t getting any school done. Type A personalities and homeschooling? Well, they can butt heads.

There are days when he just doesn’t want to do school. Days where he’s clearly not going to learn anything when all he wants to do is pretend to be Bumblebee attacking the Decepticons. Which is good. I know it’s good. He’s 4, for goodness sake, he needs to be Bumblebee. He needs to spend some time not spelling, not reading, and not trying to figure out how to find the beat in a song*. I’m really okay with that, and on those days? We don’t do school. We take it off and play.

But the whole time? The whole time I am sitting there thinking, “How am I going to work this week out so we don’t have weeks broken apart? I don’t want to have to do Friday’s assignment Monday because they Monday’s work is going to be done Tuesday, and THAT Friday is going to be the following Monday and OMG! THE WORLD IS GOING TO EXPLODE!”

So, we end up taking off the entire week just to salvage the schedule. Right. I don’t move days over. I don’t re-route and reform. I just shut the whole dang thing down and start fresh the next week. Is it rough? Sometimes. He usually is ready and gung-ho to get back to school on Monday. Sometimes, it takes a little prodding. A little, “Are you sure you don’t want to hear what happens next in ‘My Father’s Dragon’?” goes a long way around here.

For me, on the other hand, it’s a little harder. Homeschooling with a 3 month old around isn’t the easiest thing I’ve done. I spend a lot of time bouncing on the yoga ball with the baby in the Ergo, trying to read without sounding like I’m homeschooling while riding bareback. Being that I’m nursing half the time, it isn’t all that poor of a comparison.

So, after time off, how do you come back? How do your kids come back? Is it a struggle or do they come back refreshed and ready?

*Really, really frustrating to teach, btw. Especially when you realize you can’t keep beat yourself when you’re actively trying to teach it. Suddenly you become that weirdo in the concert that’s clapping to some random song you know very well no one else is hearing, but you just.can’t.find.the.bass., throwing everyone else in the room off in the process.

I’ve always been a sewer. Not like a “carries waste water” sort of sewer, a “sews stuff” sort of sewer. You can’t imagine how happy I was to see that one of the Handle on the Arts suggestions this week was to have the Bean sew a shirt. I got him a plastic needle and away he went.

My only suggestion, if you do use HOTA, is to cut the holes for the needle instead of using a hole punch. Unless, of course, you don’t have weakling hands like me. In which case, do as you wish, He-Woman!