April 5, 2012
by Juliet
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I never thought I’d still be pregnant today, even though I’m 2 days from my due date. I had my last baby 3 days early and thought for sure this baby would be earlier than that. I’ve been dilated to 6 cm for 5 days now and I’m tired of walking on pins and needles thinking the dam could burst at any moment, so I decided to stop thinking about it. I have accepted that I will be pregnant forever. By so doing, I stand to be very pleasantly surprised when this baby makes his/her appearance. 
April 4, 2012
by Juliet
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Since Easter is approaching and my kids are so anxious for the upcoming egg hunts, we thought we’d have our own egg hunt during school. I wrote out a story and found clip art pictures to go with each sentence, then I printed it all out, cut out the pictures and each individual sentence of the story and folded them up inside plastic eggs, and hid them all over our yard. After the kids found all the eggs we sat down and went through the papers. First, we matched each sentence with an illustration, then we put the sentences in order to make a logical story and taped them inside our own homemade book. They all colored the pages together and collectively decided on a title for the book. They ended up with a story book they could be proud of!
March 22, 2012
by Juliet
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As I get closer and closer to what will likely be my last time giving birth, I am feeling rushed and unprepared. I’ve spent all my energy getting things in order so that I won’t be playing (as much) catch up after this baby comes. Now that the children are asleep, the house is quiet and dark, and today’s last load of laundry is in the dryer, I feel the need to unwind and reflect on spiritual things. When I’ve felt nervous or anxious about this upcoming birth I have pushed the thought aside by staying busy. In doing so, I have neglected the most important thing I can do to prepare for this baby, and that is to work daily at being in tune with the Holy Spirit. Today I am setting a goal to invite the Spirit into my daily life and to take the time to be still and listen to it’s promptings.
Speaking of the gift and responsibility of motherhood, President Thomas S. Monson once said: “Who can comprehend in its entirety the lofty role of a mother? With perfect trust in God, she walks, her hand in His, into the valley of the shadow of death, that you and I might come forth into light.” When I begin this journey of becoming mother one last time, I want nothing else but to begin this new life with my hand in Christ’s. I don’t want to miss my chance to experience this spirituality of this birth to the fullest.
March 19, 2012
by Juliet
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One of our favorite winter story books is Snowmen at Night
We did a fun art project with this book where we found jars and lids in various sizes to trace and then used them to draw our own snowmen. I had the children paint the dark sky with watercolors (the more pigment the better) and sprinkle salt on top. This created a crackly effect in the sky that made it appear as if it were snowing.
One of our happy snowmen
A close-up of the salt on watercolors effect
What you’ll need:
Be sure to sprinkle the salt on quickly, while the paint is still very wet. Any table salt works but Kosher Salt is great since it has nice big grains. The more pigment you have the better. Crayola watercolors aren’t the best for this project, since it’s hard to get much color out of them. I like to use Prang Watercolors
March 17, 2012
by Juliet
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We’re getting ready to welcome our 5th baby to the family. I have always wanted a convenient co-sleeper, where I could just roll over and pick up the baby instead of standing/sitting up to reach into a bassinet next to my bed. My creative and handy husband built this co-sleeper for me that attaches to our bed frame and we just finished it today! He did everything but the sewing… glad I could help with something. I’ll be wishing we’d have made one of these a few babies ago. Thanks Honey!
All stocked up with our Oh Katy cloth diapers.
March 17, 2012
by Juliet
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March 10, 2012
by Juliet
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When Beetle was attending first grade at the local public school, she often mentioned how sad she was that she wasn’t able to spend more time with her family. She told her younger brother, Toni, that he was so lucky he got to stay home with Brighty (her baby sister) while she had to go to school all day. Beetle would often come home to find that we had been to someplace as simple as the grocery store without her, and she would feel left out.
When I first asked her if she would like to be home schooled she practically jumped out of her skin with excitement!
As Beetle began spending more time at home with us, her relationship with her younger siblings grew. Her then 2-year-old brother Hoodoo, would wake up from his naps, walk out into the hall, and the first thing he would do was call her name. One day, after finishing our lessons, Beetle gave Brighty a bath in the kitchen sink and helped get her diapered and dressed. She got so much pleasure out of helping with such a simple task. I remember thinking what a blessing it was to have her home with us and not miss out on all the potential bonding time together. Few things are more rewarding to me than seeing my children enjoy each other.
March 10, 2012
by Juliet
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When my children began learning the value of each coin, I purchased some realistic money window stickers for them to play with. They enjoyed that, but then I had the novel idea to teach them using real money. This was so exciting for them! I let them set up a “store” full of their own toys. They decided on prices and labeled each toy. Each child had a turn being the shopkeeper and the customer. I gave them some money, they chose some toys to buy and counted out the coins to pay for them. They played this game repeatedly for weeks.
The great thing about this game is that you can continue to use it as your child grows and teach countless lessons with it. They could learn about anything from addition, subtraction & multiplication, to budgeting and even debt!
March 10, 2012
by Juliet
1 Comment
Busy writing in their journals
The transition from public school to home school can be a challenge. When I first pulled Beetle out of public school (because she was so unhappy there) I made the classic newbie mistake of trying to have “school at home”. It’s still difficult not to fall into that habit again occasionally. When you grew up in the public school system, it’s very hard to change your mindset and realize that a more personalized approach (lead by the child, inspiration, and love) is possible when you are at home. The first “ah-ha!” moment I had with Beetle was when I realized that she would not learn anything until she was good and ready to learn it… and that was okay! She needed time to “de-school” and I needed to relax and let it happen. Here is the journal entry I made that day, back in January 2011, shortly after I removed her from first grade to teach her at home:
I’ve been struggling to make Beetle happily write in her daily journal. No matter what I say, she is NOT excited about it. She always used to say she didn’t know what to write so I made her a journal jar with questions in it that she could draw from and write about. That worked for a few days and then we were back to the moping and pouting at journal time. It was like pulling teeth and it took f o r e v e r ! So I sent a plea out on a forum of other homeschooling mommies asking for advice. Among other things they mentioned that learning at this age should be mostly play and my job is to help distill in her a love for learning, not make her dread it! This is where the personalized attention of a mother at home can make all the difference. They suggested I allow her to illustrate a picture (always her favorite thing to do) and ask her to tell me what she’d like to say while I write it down. She LOVED it. Once she knew I would write for her she asked to do her journal first thing today. What a difference! Eventually, as it gets easier for her, she’ll want to write it herself but as long as she prefers it, this is what we’ll do!
I am happy to report now that Beetle loves to write! She and her brother, Toni, write in their journals regularly. Their entries are always accompanied by creative illustrations. I never correct misspellings in their journals because I don’t want to discourage them. But I do make a note for myself of the words they are struggling with so we can go over those words in our lessons.
March 7, 2012
by Juliet
6 Comments
Last night, I met a woman at a bridal shower, we’ll call her Sarah, and we struck up a conversation. I learned that Sarah is an elementary school teacher. Sarah told me about her sister-in-law who recently had her fifth child and happens to home school as well. Since Sarah recently had the opportunity to stay with her sister-in-law and help with the children after their baby was born, she observed what their home school was like. Sarah told me she had many reservations about home schooling. I asked her, “Why?” and her response was this:
“There was a lot of down time.”
We were interrupted right at that moment and didn’t get to finish our conversation. Her words have been replaying in my mind over and over again. Oh how I wish we could have finished our conversation.
Down time. Isn’t that one of the beauties of home schooling? Because quality book learning takes a fraction of the time when a child has such individualized attention, there is so much time left over for children to be children! Since when did play time become a waste of time and book learning become the only valuable form of education? Are children not learning when they use their cleverness to create alternate worlds where imaginary characters live intricate lives together? Or when they write welcome home letters to their daddy on the driveway with sidewalk chalk? Or help make dinner, or bake cookies? As far as I’m concerned, their play time is sacred time. It’s a time where they take what they’ve learned through books and apply it to their lives.
