Feeding Giants

We made it through Week 3!

The honeymoon period is definitely over and this week called for some quick thinking, some creative solutions, and some apologizing for yelling too much.

Also, I finished off the big bag of peanut M&Ms my husband sent me the first week of school, so that may have affected my stress a little…I need to replenish my stash! I’ve never really had a mom-only chocolate stash before, but man – THAT IS WHERE IT’S AT!

Despite a few rough moments, it was a overall a good week.

A few highlights:

 

Containment Zones & an A-HA Moment

When I say “the end of the honeymoon period”, I mean “the start of children trying to weasel out of their work and dinking around a lot”. One child in particular, was doing that thing where it takes 60 minutes to do every 5 minute activity. After a little frustration, some prayer, and some thinking…I had one of those moments where inspiration, innovation, and insight all came together at once. I realized that my constantly-moving, easily-distracted child transitions a LOT better  between subjects when he can physically move to a new area for the new activity. Just switching out supplies and getting up between tasks wasn’t cutting it – he needs to physically move to a new place to get his brain switched to the new thing. So…”Spelling Center” was born, set up at its own table across the room from his regular work space. We made a couple “desk corrals” out of cardboard to help him mentally shift gears and physically move from one thing to another. IT IS WORKING! He is going back and forth between the Spelling Center, his desk, and the couch for each subject and it is making life SO much better for both of us.

Egg Geodes – sort of

 

A few weeks ago, we did this experiment – poorly. The idea was to make solutions out of water and various substances – sugar, salt, baking soda, etc. – and put them in empty eggshells to evaporate. We were supposed to be left with glittering crystals lining the inside of the eggshells…but…we over-saturated the solutions and ended up basically making bath bombs instead of geodes. It took 3 weeks for them to dry out, but they FINALLY did. The other day, the kids took off the shells and inspected their work. Not the intended results, but cool nonetheless.

 

Pre-Pre-School Activities

 

I have been making up a lot of a letter recognition games for the pre-schoolers. Neither one of them is getting the letter-sound concept yet, so we are going back a step further. I have them identify letters vs. other shapes and match like letters to each other. They do a lot of fine motor skills tasks (like using tweezers to sort puff balls) and puzzles. We will go back to our regular pre-school curriculum in a while and try the sounds again later.

 

Halloween

 

I LOOOOOOVE decorating for two holidays, and only two holidays. Halloween is up from mid-September to early November…then a week off to separate the two…then Christmas goes up!  Amazing how some holiday decorating lifted our spirits this week…and having a little Apothecary up makes us feel like we live at Hogwarts, so…I should probably leave it up all year…

Lamination is my jam…

 

There are two kinds of people in this world…those that appreciate well-organized, laminated classroom materials…and those that didn’t even know that was a thing. For those of you in the first camp, you can understand how happy I was to finally get some laminating film. I have been laminating everything in sight this week. As a girl who thought one of the most romantic gifts her husband ever gave her was a label maker (He gets me. He really gets me.), this was a great consolation prize for finishing off the bag of M&Ms too early in the week…

 

Reminders that THIS IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

 

 Despite the snags, we had a week full of solid learning, inspired solutions, and shared experiences. For every rough day – the kind where it feels like I’m herding cats through a whack-a-mole game – there are more good ones (some weeks its feels more like a 1:1/2 ratio…but the good ones ARE there!). For every moment that I feel my blood pressure rise, there are 10 moments that melt my heart. I love seeing these kids working and learning together. In this picture, my 4 year old is helping his 14 year old sister do a science experiment. They had a blast and both learned more by doing it together. This isn’t always easy, guys, but it is so, so, so worth it.