Just a few scant weeks into the beginning of Mommie School/ Pre-Homeschooling Noah I came to a realization.  I was waaay too overplanned for what I was wanting to do with him.  Worked into my schedule were two week and one week themes, which made sense during the planning phase of summer.  I wanted to have one theme per alphabet letter and follow a  lot of the Tot School and other online curriculum for toddlers was guiding me to.

However, with only one child  and the abundance of  activities and games available out there, I was finding it hard to print it all, ready it all and to keep Noah's attention to simple do the number of good activities out there during our daily time down in the family room.  So my choice was to either forget some activities or forget some themes: I opted for the latter.

Not that the information out there on Tot School and other sites is bad, but for us I really wanted to opt for a more relaxed plan for this special time.  I want Noah to know that the time I spend teaching him is, from the beginning, a time for him to explore and have fun, and that I am willing to learn at his pace and in the way that suits us best.  I want to be spending more time with him and less time planning and cutting and laminating (although I do love my laminator that the Hubs got me for my birthday a ridiculous amount.)

So we found ourselves with a second week of Apples in my revised plan, and we had a wonderful time outside playing in the apples at Minnetonka Orchards with a great group I am involved with from Meetup.com.  It is a haul from up here in the north metro of the Twin Cities, but it was a wonderful getaway from our daily routine and Noah loved the trees, the train play-structure as well as the animals in the small farm area.





We rounded out our week's activities with one of the classic preschool apple activities- apple painting.  Noah used the halved apples for stamping, but actually enjoyed using a brush to paint the apples themselves more than anything.  Noah is still somewhat phobic when it comes to getting his hands sticky, so I like to allow him the freedom to use a brush or use his hands when it is time to get messy. 

(This is also one of the last activities we did on our old breakfast table that we recently replaced.  Chair recovering and table refinishing posts coming soon!) :)

This week marks the first full week of my pre-homeschooling Noah.  I have struggled with what to even call it, because obviously he is too young for traditional school, but he is to the point of loving more structured play and games. 

We began last week with calendar, stories and games.  I am keeping it simple and only working with Noah for as long as he is interested in the activities I have planned.  I have been pleasantly surprised with how much he seems to look forward to these times, and with how he is always excited whenever I say, "Noah, should we go downstairs and play some games?" 

"Okay!"  (For some reason this is how he always answers when we ask him if he wants to do something.  We're working on a more polite version, but this is so cute I'm not trying too hard.)

We are beginning with the classic preschool first theme of Apples, and doing apple crafts, counting apples and most of all-- eating apples.  There have been several activities that just haven't happened, either because of Noah's 2 year old attention span, or because he happens to be teething and just wants a, "Cu-ddle," which is the main thing he needs at his age. 

Typically we do an extremely simple calendar, where he puts the number on the calendar, we sing the days of the week, a few other songs and read a few stories.  Then we play a few games which transitions into working in the rest of the room. 

One of Noah's favorite activities is looking in his nature bowl.  We put things that he has collected on recent walks in the bowl along with some magnifying glasses and a couple paint brush.  You wouldn't believe how dirty those stones seem to be and how much cleaning they need.  :)  I will be occasionally adding water to this to add another sensory element and let him brush the rocks, twigs etc. and notice the changes in color and feel. 

One word of caution-- be sure that the acorns, rocks etc. have no bugs or other things growing on them or you could have quite a mess.  Sadly in a few short weeks we will not have to worry as much as temperatures drop and the world outside begins to hibernate.  A nature table or bowl is a great way to avoid having anything hatch in your little one's room and confine the collecting to a reasonable amount.  As a child I was always known for gathering a bit too many rocks and things from the outdoors.  I soon had to keep my collection under the deck of my parent's home, where many of my former treasures remain to this day.

Over the summer we have been taking it pretty easy-- busy summer schedule or swimming and park visits not included.  However, summer is coming to a close and with it Noah and I will be moving into a time of more focused learning and reading.  
I won't say that we are homeschooling per-se, but we are at least going to be using this year to pursue the possibility and see how it feels.   A part of that is having a greater sense of a theme, and with it thematic books.  However, I have been debating how I would like to present these books to Noah.  We aren't in a formal classroom, and I don't think that he would flourish under falsely created school-like conditions.  Instead I have been looking for a way to make sure that we are really getting to know the stories that we are pulling from our shelves and the library shelves and get to know the characters therein. 

Imagine my delight to come across a recent post at The Imagination Tree detailing her weekly link party of 5 In a Row Books.  As Anna Ranson on Imagination Tree states,

"The idea is that you choose 5 titles from among your usual books (or from the library) and read them every single day for at least a week....short picture books which feature strong rhythm and/ or repeated refrain so that the children can quickly memorise the words and join in with the story-telling. This empowers them to be able to "read" and re-tell stories from a young age, and also makes them very fluent in a range of text types and literature styles."

It is great to see other families interested in this and read of their experiences with reading the same books over and over for a week and seeing how their child responds.  Now, reading at least 5 a day isn't a problem out here for Momma Weston.  Often Noah will move between Jim and I having a book read 2 or three times in a row, and every night he knows he gets 4 books before bed, and catches me on it if I try to skimp. 

Some nights when I am exhausted before we go in there to read I wish I had set it up from the beginning as 3 before bed, but most nights I am curious what he will choose and excited as he notices more and more detail in the illustrations.  I won't be limiting myself at bedtime to read these selections every day, but it helps to have that built in time to focus on Noah and his burgeoning love of the written word.

Reading 5 a day is no issue, but it will be a challenge to be faithful and read each of these books every day, as Noah is lately scattered in his book choices, where he used to want to read the same books every day several times for months.  (I'm a bit happy to have the variety.) 

For our first week I am picking books from Noah's regular selections that he has been choosing lately and as we proceed into the month of September I will try to choose books more on theme.

Tonight was my second day of reading all 5, and this evening Noah had a minor meltdown at bedtime.  His Da is working a show at the Convention Center right now, which means he
 is up and away before Noah wakes, working the weekend and staying later in the evening, and Noah was enjoying some Da-snuggle time on the couch when it was time to go to bed and he wasn't very happy, but the meltdown showed just how much he needed the sleep. 

But, I digress.  I asked him what he wanted to read as his first book; usually something transportation themed wins out, but tonight he sniffed and told me,  "Bunny-- flower."  It took me a minute, but then I realized he had been speaking of Margaret Wise Brown's adorable book about a Mother Bunny whose son is threatening to run away. In one page her little one tells her that he will hide as a crocus in a hidden garden, and she tells him that if he does that, she will follow and be a gardener. 

Yup, after a meltdown all that would soothe my usual rough and tumble boy is reading about a bunny that turns into a flower-- he even sniffs the pages of books when he sees flowers on them, which is about the most adorably, achingly cute thing ever! 

Our Selections:

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown

Curious George and the Bunny  by H.A. Rey

5 Little Monkies Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow

5 Little Ducks Went Out One Day by Pamela Paparone

Bill Grogan's Goat byMary Ann Hoberman

 Noah and I took advantage of the lovely weather we've been having at the end of this summer to full advantage.  We have had one of the hottest/coldest/wettest/ most humid summers I've seen and there has always been something interfering with us enjoying ourselves too much.  In fact, even tonight it has been storming here in Fridley. 

However, this morning was sunny and beautiful and mercifully in the low 80s for a trip to nearby Eidem Homestead-- a historical farm of the city of Brooklyn Park that was having a free event.  In spite of some serious busyness we couldn't pass up the chance to see real animals.

After wandering and seeing the sheep, goats, cow, chickens and ducks, we met up with Sharon and her son Matthew, who are members of a Meetup group I am involved in.  Our boys hadn't seen each other in quite some time, but in that way that little kids do, they were back to being friends in seconds.  Matthew took Noah by the hand and led him to the farm's large sleigh and they spent quite some time figuring out how to best conquer the mountainous wooden seat.  There was some unintentional apple eating from one of the apple trees on the property, and our stroller was almost eaten by a goat, but Noah was so brave with touching and feeding the animals and no fingers were eaten, so a wonderful morning was had by all.

 Are there ever small things that you never thought would annoy you, and then this little annoyance becomes a great big pet peeve? 

In our home my current annoyance has been the way that bills seem to accumulate and are never where I need them when the time comes to pay.  When bills enter our house, they typically go into a folder that hangs on a shelf in our kitchen until they head downstairs to the office to be filed.  Some bills we no longer get paper notifications for, and usually get paid as we get the notice in our inboxes. 

However, the phone is upstairs, my computer may be up or down, and it all results in bills that have been paid being in the same pile as bills waiting to be paid and much more paperwork than seems reasonable for a small family of three to have to deal with on a regular basis. 

To combat this I made this quick little sheet to help me organize due dates, amounts etc. and not have to wonder if I can carry that stack of papers or if I am forgetting something.  Now, when a bill comes into the house, I look at them each day, and write on this sheet the next due date, and when it is due.  When I pay a particular bill, I write the actual date it was paid, the amount and confirmation number.  This way I don't have to break out my computer or the filing system to know that we're keeping our budget buttoned up.

This is not a typical budget spreadsheet as it contains no way to add or subtract and no formulas.  I have simply laminated the sheet using my lovely recent birthday gift, and we write in permanent marker as the bills arrive.  Quick tip: If you run over permanent marker on many laminated or white board surfaces with a white board erasable marker, then the permanent marker will wipe right off. 

You can simply print off one of these sheets for each month as well, if it is easier to do so that way and have a permanent record.  Around every payday when we do bills and actually file the bills, I run the sheet downstairs to the office and enter in the info. into our actual budget. 

Download the jpg. here. 

Download the psd. here.

I used this lovely airplane doodle from lil blue boo and the yellow background fabric is a PS Action from the Coffee Shop Blog.  All the rest is mine and may be used for personal usage only. 

My parents, who never spoil their only grandchild at all. *wink* were kind enough to get him his own little studry camera from Discovery Kids.  It has rubbery blue sides and it has worked grat for us other than it going through batteries a bit quickly, and the no sound for video.  It is so cute to see the videos that Noah has taken-- mostly unconsciously, but he is pretty proficient at taking photos, and scrunches up his face to the eye hole, even though the LCD would tell him what he is photographing. 


I have heard that the camera has had some bad reviews, but for Noah for whom the camera is mostly just to keep him from trying to get mine, it has been great.  He loves paging through the images and especially loves looking at his Da when he is at work.  He also enjoys shouting, "Cam-a!"  and running around and taking video of us without our knowledge, but we won't show that video here.  :)


I'm not going to say that they are well taken at this point, or that they are great art or anything, but it does something wonderful for me to be able to see him emulate me taking photographs, and for him to be able to do something that he sees his mommy do so often.