Full Hands...Full Hearts: "ah ha" moment...

As every day draws to a close, I find myself in a cloud of exhaustion. However, I've come to realize that I decide exactly what the source of my exhaustion is. I can either wake up and hit the ground running: Interacting with the kids, planning various activities, keeping them busy, entertained, and happy OR I can wake up feeling drained and spend the entire day breaking up arguments and listening to screaming while I leave the children to fend for themselves, entertain themselves, and eventually drive me crazy. The first one is so much more fulfilling and much less stressful. And although I know everyday won't be an organized chaos of events and happy smiling children, I've made it my goal to have more of those than the other this summer. In an effort to not get lazy, I decided to team up with my good friend Jess and create some relaxed, fun, yet educational mini lessons for Beck and her son Jordan who is about the same age. Although the planning was sorta a pain, knowing I was working on it for someone other than just me and my kid, gave me a sense of responsibility and somehow made the time printing, cutting, laminating, and scouring the internet for ideas well worth it. I've had these lessons for weeks now, but with the move and ky's camps that followed, this was the first week I felt like we were going to be home enough and focused enough to dive in.

Each day we tried to create a craft, a song, a related snack, some sort of game/movement activity, and some educational practice (letters, numbers, handwriting, etc.). And I'm happy to say that Beck LOVED day one yesterday. The first week's lessons are all about farm animals. I know I won't be able to capture every moment and daily activity, but I made sure to keep my camera close by yesterday so I could give Jess a snapshot of the joy all her hard work has given Beckster. Here are a couple shots from yesterday's lesson. In all, it killed about 2 hrs. of the day where we were all focused, learning, happy, and excited. Ky was really good, participating when she was interested and helping entertain Stratton when she wasn't. She herself is on a schedule where we do about 45 minutes worth of school stuff monday-thursday. Her favorite is partner writing where we take turns writing a sentence each and create a story together. They usually end up silly and lacking much of a plot, but that's alright, I know she's learning as she practices her spelling, punctuation, and handwriting. Can't wait to see what else our lessons have in store!

Beck and Ky learning all about farm animals, the sounds they make, and the proper names for male/female/baby

Roll and graph time where they took turns tossing a block and filling in a spot on the graph depending on what animal it landed on.

filling in his graph. holding a writing utensil is one thing we really need to work on. but him being left handed makes it tough for me to know how to help!