Friday, April 13, 2012

The Beauty of Motherhood Part 1



Raise your hands out there if you have days where the thought of running away from home crosses your mind? Let's be honest! If you're a stay at home mom, I'm sure that you raised your hand a little, if only halfway. The moments come for all of us, don't they? When we ring our hands together and want to scream (and sometimes do)? On the flip side, there are so many more moments when I just grab onto my kids and hug them so tight they have to remind me, "Mom, you have to let go now." Oh the crazy, mixed up world of motherhood!
I have had many moments in the last week when I have been in awe of my kids and so thankful that God has tasked me with the gift of raising these beautiful people.
Levi is such a "boy." He's wild and crazy and I don't know how he makes some of those sound effects come out of his mouth, but he does it constantly. The noises he makes as he plays are never ending. I don't even think he realizes he's making them. And when he gets the giggles, it makes my day. He has a laugh he does when something is funny that causes him to lose his breath. He loves people. Making friends is what energizes him. I actually had to take away outside time (where he plays with all his buddies) as punishment the other day and it almost broke my heart to see how far his face fell. He was crushed! Hopefully, he learned his lesson though. And he's a thinker. He mulls things around in his head for awhile and brings things up hours/days/weeks later. James opened presents for his birthday on Wednesday and then the kids had to go to Awanas. While gifts were being opened, Levi wanted to know which was the favorite. James commented that the he loved the gifts he got from Levi and Lilly. On the way home from Awanas (2-3 hours later), he said to James in the car, "Dad, I think you should like mommy's present too. We don't want her feelings to get hurt." You could tell he had been thinking this over and was concerned for my feelings. Such a tender heart!

Monday, April 9, 2012

Review of Time4learning

We just finished our 30 day trial of time4 learning and I am ready to review! First, the good things. I really enjoyed all the options to choose from for learning time. My preschooler asked to do it almost every day and she was able to maneuver through without much help from me. I liked the way that the student was able to pick their own pace and would sometimes find my kindergartner doing it long after "school time" was over. I'm not sure that he even realized he was working on his phonics rules. So my kids enjoyed it most of the time which is always a good thing when it comes to learning.
On the negative side, I had a hard time figuring out how to track what they were doing. They're still young, so I watched over their shoulder a lot to see how they were coming along, but I thought there was a way to log on as the parent and just see how they had been doing. I couldn't figure it out and I consider myself pretty computer savvy. Also, we are already using a curriculum, but if time4learning was our core choice for curriculum, I feel it would be repetitive and lacking a little. My preschooler went through most of the games in 30 days and I'm not sure that they would have held her attention for a full year. The kindergarten level was the same thing.
I really liked the time4learning for supplemental, educational fun for kids. They could easily understand everything, the directions were clear, and they could work through most of it on their own. However, we would not use it for a core curriculum even in kindergarten. There just is not enough material, in my opinion, for it to stay interesting to them for a year of school.