August is closing, and it’s hard to believe that Autumn is almost here.  It’s been a busy month.  During the first week we were still in Chicago visiting relatives and going to all the places that I shared in this, this and this post.  Right before we left Chicago, my boys’ grandparents threw them a big birthday bash, and when we returned, we geared up for a couple of smaller celebrations on their actual birthdays.

My boys were born exactly one week apart, so we celebrated a new 2-year-old one night with my parents, and then repeated that for a new 5-year-old one week later!  So now I’ll be referring to “the 2-year-old” and “the 5-year-old.

I bragged a little about my boys and why I love them so much in my recent column for the Barrow Journal, and I hope you’ll take a moment to read it by clicking here.

Then perhaps you can tell me how all this happened?!  It was only yesterday that I left the hospital with that little baby feeling absolutely helpless and traumatized from the experience of my first labor.  I pretended I was fine because I knew I would be, but I desperately wanted someone wiser to help my husband and I through those first few days.  I guess it’s an experience every new parent has to go through.

Now it’s five years later and I’m a much more confident mama, but sometimes I still worry and wonder if I’m making the right choices.  It wasn’t long ago that I debated if I should send my 5-year-old to Kindergarten this Fall, but now I’m so glad I listened to my gut.  I’m working on “Kindergarten” with my son, and we’re both having fun, which is how learning should be.

“It is estimated that 95% of kindergarteners feel good about their learning potential.  However, 98% of seniors in high school have lost their creative, inquisitive spirits.  So, what has happened to all but 2% of these seniors?” — Discover Your Child’s Learning Style, Mariaemma Willis, M.S., and Victoria Kindle Hodson, M.A.

The more I think about it, the happier I am with my decision to homeschool.  Realistically, I believe there are both pros and cons to homeschooling and to sending a child to school.  Each family has to weigh those pros and cons and decide what is best for their children.

With that said, I thought I’d list some of what I’m hoping to blog about in the coming months.  These are projects we are working on right now or that I’m planning to work on, and I’m excited to share our results with you. Here they are in no particular order: (UPDATE: Click on the links to go to these posts.)

• A review of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and how it worked for my Kindergartener.
• How I taught my Kindergartener about the solar system.
• My Kindergartener’s gardening and seed sprouting experiments.
• Beginning Math for my Kindergartener
• Everyday Geography Lessons
• Character Building with a Responsibility Chart (which is not working at the moment)
• Science Classes at the Sandy Creek Nature Center
• Mama’s Storytelling/Storytelling as a Teaching Tool
• My Kindergartener’s natural interest in nature and animals and where that has led us.
• My Kindergartener wants to study the human anatomy!
• A review of Discover Your Child’s Learning Style and an assessment of my family’s learning styles.
•  ….and more!

So I hope you’ll subscribe to my blog or come back often.  Unfortunately, I can’t promise that I’ll blog regularly or often.  My boys keep me too busy.  But you can bet some of these topics will be fodder for my newspaper columns, and I have to write those every week, so something will get done!  Hopefully.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you’ll tell me that you were here.