Friday, March 23, 2007

Peeks of homeschooling fun

I've recently been listening to a series of lectures on education by Lisa VanDamme. The CD I've just started focuses on motivation in education. My big take away so far (I'm maybe 20 minutes into it), is that if you provide children with appropriate material presented in an interesting and engaging manner, there is no need for motivating them. Of course, she explains it much better and qualifies things like "appropriate", "interesting" and "engaging."

Here are some pictures of the kids loving what we do and doing what they love.







Six year old cuteness

One of the major rights of passage when one is six is losing teeth. Theo swallowed the first lost tooth while eating ice cream. The second one he carefully extracted himself to insure he would get to put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy.

His mommy can't get over how cute he is!


Saturday, March 10, 2007

Do I get some sorta prize?

Imagine this: it’s 9:45 pm. It’s been a long day that topped off a long week that has just wrapped up a complex and overwhelming month that required me to pull over and cry more than once while driving the kids around town. Tomorrow is Sunday. It is my morning off from kids, hubby and life. I’ve just snuggled up to my sweetie, got all the blanket and pillows just so when suddenly, “UGH” I remember I’ve forgotten to do my daily workout. In normal life this wouldn’t be a problem, right? Just pull the blanket up a little closer to my chin and promise myself I’ll do it tomorrow.

Except this is me and my life is never normal.

So problem one, hubby and I have this agreement that I’ll do my workouts 5 days a week and that he’ll support me steadfastly in this.

Problem two is that I’m not just committed to these workouts for academic reasons. They make a noticeable improvement in my life: My body is stronger. Back and neck pain are a rare occurrence these days. I’m much more relaxed and easy going with the kids. I have this new sleek, shapely body that is really fun to live in. So it’s hard to ignore the benefit of the workout.

The biggest problem, number 3, is that in my distress, I said that “UGH” out loud. “What?” from the other side of the pillow materializes into me and my pink nightie doing my interpretation of split snatches and brachiating at 10pm.

Now it turns out the snatches were fun and amazingly somehow I managed to ooze myself across the brachiation ladder 4 times for the first time since junior high.

But still, do I get some sorta prize for this?