Wednesday morning we had a surprise...a rain storm! Tobin had slept in and was just waking around 8:30 for breakfast when it began pouring rain outside. Charis was about to begin her math practice sheet, and I decided to take advantage of being home schoolers and herd the kids outside to enjoy the rain. That we did! We watched the rain drops dancing on the pavement, listened to the swoosh of the "river" flowing along the curb, and breathed in the cool, fresh, sweet-smelling air. After awhile the rain let up enough for us to go walk in the "river," and the kids had more fun splashing around! I probably should have grabbed a camera, but I didn't think of it at the time. We probably played outside for about 20 minutes, then came back in to continue on with our morning.
Thursdays are non-school days at our house...at least for the fall semester. I've joined WOW, Women of the Word, and our first meeting was yesterday. I have been so excited to get involved with this group and begin a weekly Bible study again. Last year I chose to be a member of MOPS, and this year I decided I had to limit my involvement, so I dropped MOPS and committed to doing at least the first study with WOW to see how it would fit with our home school schedule. One big draw was the study itself--we're doing Beth Moore's Breaking Free study. I have never done one of her studies before, but I have heard wonderful things about them and have always wanted to do one. So, after praying about it, I decided to go ahead and sign up for this session of WOW, which will last 10 weeks. If, at that point, I think our home schooling activities are not suffering in the least for having a 4-day school week, then I'll probably continue on!
The first day was very fun! I had eaten a healthy breakfast, wanting to avoid the high-calorie foods that I had heard would be available for the meet and greet time...however, the table was full of tempting treats! I was good and had mostly fruit. :-) It was nice to have time to visit with some ladies I already knew, and then we went into a different room for a time of praise and worship. There were approximately 180 ladies packed into that room! It was a joy to sing and be surrounded by so many women who love God!
After that we were divided into our study groups. My friend Debi and I found ourselves in the same group, and we were excited to learn we could be together. I know all three of our leaders, although I just recently met one of the ladies, but it was also nice to have familiar faces there! Additionally, I had bumped into some other ladies from MOPS last year or by caring for their children during the 11:45 service. Still, our group has a total of 18 women in it, and there are a lot of ladies I've never even seen before! That's exciting to me, because I enjoy meeting new people, and I'm especially glad to be in a group of ladies with such a variety of experiences. MOPS is great, but the moms tend to be young mothers like myself...it will be nice to draw on the wisdom of those who have gone before!
This afternoon I sat down and did the first day's study. I'm so excited to begin an in-depth study again...I've just been following the read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year schedule, and I admit I'm getting in a rut. It will be nice to be challenged to think and apply God's Word in a tangible way.
After I picked the children up from their rooms, we came home and had lunch, and then we began our next major Thursday activity, which is Cleaning the House! Tobin helped me vacuum, Charis swept the chunks of food up from under the table, and I tried to keep Arden busy with little errands while I worked on cleaning all 3 bathrooms. Charis then helped me mop the tile floor and I finished vacuuming the carpet, since Tobin had kind of pooped out along the way. I don't blame him...I get pooped myself cleaning this big house! I've decided that I need to designate a different day to dust (haven't dusted to speak of since we moved in!), but other than that, I think our plan worked pretty well, as we were totally finished with chores close to 2 p.m. and then had a story time before nap/quiet room time.
Not that there's any napping to speak of going on around here. I've long given up on Charis and Tobin napping, and they do well with quiet room time, playing with whatever toys they want from the play room, doing puzzles, or reading. I still feel that Arden needs to take a nap, as he gets extremely whiny and grumpy in the evenings. He averages maybe 1-2 actual naps per week, at the MOST. He just will not sleep! Even if I act like the Nap Police and camp outside of his door, he just doesn't settle down. He may technically be obeying--lying down and being quiet--but he figures out ways to keep himself awake. Any ideas?! I'd give up on the nap thing and let him do quiet room time IF he would sleep until 8 or 8:30 every morning. Unfortunately, this morning he was up at 5:30 a.m.! Typically it's between 6:30 and 7, but still...that seems to me too early, especially when he's so grumpy starting around 5 or 5:30 p.m.
Anyway, our last day of this first week of school went rather well. Charis hasn't forgotten TOO much math, and Tobin is doing pretty well with writing numerals...just wants help with 5s and 8s. Tobin's reading is coming along very well, and Charis continues to amaze me with her writing and spelling abilities, though we aren't doing a particular spelling program per se, just Phonics Pathways. The kids seemed to enjoy the Machines & Transportation theme, and we look forward to learning about music next week (maybe taking 2 weeks to work on it...we have a LOT of extra library books for this theme, and they are all very good!).
Speaking of books...I pulled a bunch of machine/transportation-related books off our own book shelves for some fun reading this afternoon, and I promised the kids we'd read whatever they want out of the stack before I make our pizza for the night. So, I'd better close here before the troops get all riled up waiting for me to come read!
2 comments:
Your Bible study sounds wonderful. I have missed being in a regular ladies' Bible study (although Bob and I are in a couples' OCF one), but I already have one day where we have our homeschool co-op. As fun as that is, I really can't count it as "school", so I don't want to take another morning. (A 4-day week works great for us, by the way!) My good friend Elizabeth is starting a small Bible study that just meets every other Tuesday evening at her house, and so I'm going to start doing that--I hope it will fill a need for me!
I enjoyed reading about your first day of school activities! What fun!! We've continued schooling on and off this summer, but we're starting some new things on Monday.
A thought about Arden and the non-napping. Can you just put him to bed at 6 p.m. for a while? "Theoretically" an early bedtime produces a later wake time, but maybe this only applies to babies, because my toddler went to bed at 6 p.m. the other night (after not napping) and was up at 6 a.m., which is just a wee bit too early for me. But I figure that when she is definitely dropping her nap, I'm going to have to aim for an early bedtime since we're maintaining a 7 a.m. wake-up time for her these days, and she does best with 14 hours of sleep per day.
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