Past, present, future

Well, with me working now, I've definitely been slacking a lot more than usual. But we're trying to get all caught up on our Advent calendar, which is currently ~11 days overdue (PAST).

But in the meantime, we're doing a lot of other winter/Christmas things! (PRESENT) Here are a couple pictures -


Kennady wasn't too fond of the big furry dude, but alas, she never has, so I wasn't surprised.

We're headed home to MN Christmas Eve day, so we've got lots to catch up on and do before we go. Still have to figure out when "Santa" will be coming to our house, pack our bags and get our family's presents finished! Whew ... we'll be busy! (FUTURE)

:)

ADVENTure updates

Look at that turn around baby! I'm thinking I've got to publically declare my procrastination more often haha ...

Here's my idea laid out, I think it's ammature, but it certainly will do :)


Kennady's will have to wait for tomorrow though, that stressed me out a little lol!

ADVENTures of getting Mommy's butt in gear

I'm having a hard time working on the kids' Advent calendars. I bought huge posterboards yesterday and they have just been haunting me, as to how I want to display the lessons we're doing everyday. So progress is better than no progress and here's the idea I came up with (now, actually doing it will be REAL progress) -

That's just the outline I came up with. The table is of the days we're going thru, counting down til Christmas. The little boxes inside there, are the coloring squares they are doing, pictured here -


It's not as glorious as other peoples' ideas, but for our 1st year doing this, I think it's good. They have something daily to learn and color and in the end, they will have a beautifully colored calendar of Advent! I'm excited ...

Now off to get my idea in motion!

ADVENTures of the Fritz's

I wanted to share what we're doing for Advent!

Check it out here!

I am planning on doing the little lesson with the kids, then having them color the little pictures that I have individually printed out. After that, I would like to glue them onto a piece of cardstock that's been covered in Christmas wrapping paper, so that it's got a Christmas present feel. Then I was thinking I could either paste them to a large piece of cardstock that I've already numbered 1-25 or I could have them clothes pin them to a line, one at a time. I'm not sure exactly what I'll do, but I've gotta figure it out today :) haha

If anyone's done this or something similar, could you share with me what you did and your results?

Yes, we're lazy bums!

Call me a bad mom, but surprisingly, I don't feel guilty one bit for doing absolutely nothing with the kids lately. We have been such bums and it feels fine for once. I'm tired of feeling guilty for not being like "other" moms, doing x,y,z every single day, exasperating themselves over lesson plans and laminating lol. I may not be teaching them viable facts everyday, but we have been busy bonding, being lazy together, and enjoying each others' company. That seems so much more important to me.

So that's why you haven't seen much of us lately, we're busy being lazy bums :)

I'm hoping we'll have something to share soon however, as we start learning about Advent. This is the first year I've actually gotten off my butt relatively early (even though I'm already 2 days behind), and prepared some little lessons to teach the kids, one day at a time, about Christmas. So be on the lookout.

*Disclaimer to all you over-achieving moms - you will no longer make me feel guilty or less of a mother for not stressing myself out over being a good teacher. I am so happy being a relaxed family who really loves each other and being together, even if it means doing nothing at all :)

14 Days Worth

Wow, that makes it seem like I've REALLY been slacking! But to give an appropriate excuse, we've had grand parents and great grand parents visiting for the last week and a half-ish...so I think the progress we've made is pretty good given. We're still hangin' on to that Letter A since we've yet to have a full week to devote to all the activities, usually I just pull something out of the binder and spend a half hour or so working on that and then it's onto our daily activities. But now that family's gone and the house is getting somewhat back to normal, we have some good quality weeks ahead of us to move on...

Here's our last 14 days of semi-homeschooling :)

The kids playing with their Shape Puzzles

Lady K making an A in her squishy bag!

Bug and his Cut & Paste activity, and even tho he has a strange smile here, he was super proud of his art work!

The kids playing with the new feltboard I bought at a consignment sale for $10!!!
I was a happy Mommy!

I love this picture, like father, like son! Practicing his tracing ...

Kenna taking a shot at the lacing boards, she's not yet gotten the hang of em... we'll get there!

Pyrogram (I think that's what they're called) fun, again, cheapness from the consignment sale!

A trip to the apple orchard, and trust me, TONS of talking about apples and A's was done here :) Had to make it productive haha!

Letter A craft - Alligator

Cutting practice, and this girl needs it! I'm determined that she will learn to cut along the lines SOON - not just create 500 little paper pieces, simply to be flung around the room, creating a mess for ME to pick up! lol


As much as I'd like to be the super savvy homeschooling mom blogger, and link up everyone for their ideas, I'm just not there yet...so if you saw something you liked, chances are I got it from one of my favorite mom blogs, which you can view on my profile page!

Wish us luck in the next coming weeks, we're praying for discipline and desire...please join us!

Accomplished Something

Our semi-cleaned, messily organized play/school room (I'm pretty excited about it!) -

Today, before naps and since I don't have their curriculum printed off yet, we were messing around with our new cool-shaped buttons. First I had them put them in piles by color, then shape, then count them and put them away the same way. I also had Noah counting, I'd ask him how many his plus Kenna's equaled and he got it right everytime! Small little things like this make me so proud of them :)

And then we finished by breaking out the doctor box and played Dr/patient, the kids LOOOVED this -