Vocation of Motherhood

Jamberry Lapbook

Here is one of our favorite books, lapbook-style! Red really enjoyed this project, "Jamberry" is one of the best rhyming books we've ever come across! The boys have pretty much memorized this book over the years. We always pull it out when strawberry-picking season arrives.

From Lapbooks

To make this lapbook, we simply copied the front of the book using our color copier. The inside of the lapbook consists of:

Left hand side:

• Pictures of a boy and a bear (main characters in the book)

Middle:

• A printout of "compound word" pictures (printed off a website, I can't remember where!)


• Favorite berry foods


• A blueberry pie with blueberries colored on it and counted

Right hand side:

• A strawberry with a little rhyme printed on the inside


• Rhyme


• Coloring of a canoe

Pretty simple, but for his first lapbook we think he did a fine job!

I do remember visiting www.homeschoolshare.com for some inspiration.

Professional Development

The other day Mr. Dreamy and I were talking about going to an upcoming conference. He asked if I thought that "I really needed to go." Well, I guess I don't have to. However as a homeschooling mom I would hope that improving and inspiring myself to be a better person, a better mother, a better wife and to be inspired spiritually would be important for our family goals. I was just reading a book about entrepreneurship. One thing that struck me was one of the reasons why women wanted to start their own business: to add a "professional development" expense account to their yearly budget. They felt that "professional development" was missing in their current work career and wanted to make that a priority in running their own business.

My view of "professional development" is obviously much different from that of a woman with a career outside the home. Still, the idea crosses boundaries into other vocations; especially mine. I can see my professional development plan including a yearly spiritual retreat, morning prayer time, my monthly book club, journal time, a conference or two here and there, and even making dates with Mr. Dreamy a priority in our marriage. Looks like I'll need to sign up for the above conference and our absolute favorite!

Easter Baskets

Now while we choose to focus on the Resurrection of Christ as our Easter celebration, the Easter bunny still leaves some surprises for the boys. Here is this year's basket collection:

Nature Boy's Basket Includes: A Guide to MN Bird's & CD, Colored Pencils, Band-Aids, and of course, lots of chocolates!

Yona's Basket Includes: "Nobunny's Perfect" book, Easter Egg Coloring Kit (to do tomorrow), Mini-Whinnies (little toy horses), crayon-themed Band-Aids and a Peter Rabbit Bunny.

Red's Basket Includes: Playmobil Toys (Romans), a Cowboy Nightlight, Colored Pencils, Band-Aids, and chocolate.

Why am I listing all of this? Simply so I can remember for next Easter of course! This was so much fun to put together, and of course Granny helped before she left to go to the salt mine LOL.

Math Anxiety= Lack of financial planning

Here's an interesting tidbit from Marketplace Money today about math anxiety. According to the Women's College Coalition, girls who learn in a single-sex environment actually do much better in the math and sciences. Just another plug for Cottey!

Feeding My Passion for Organizing

I recently browsed online at the ContainerStore.com and saw this. I think I see an upcoming fieldtrip with my friend Christine! We both loved going to the Container Store in Colorado (those were the days!) and now we'll get to do it in Minnesota, too!

This weekend there is major organizing on my agenda of things-to-do. The boys will be slaying dragons (or bad virtues) at Blue Knights tomorrow morning with Dad. So baby and I will have some time to sleep in get some projects done around the house.

My number one task is to get my homeschool/craft ideas/faith ideas/home whatever-you-want-to-call-it planner done. I purchased a beautiful binder with matching index divider tabs today and now I'm itching to get going. Although I do have Pride & Prejudice to watch, too. Hmm. Hard choices to make but I'll suffer through it. We also have to create our math notebooks for our Math Gnomes project.

I also just received my first issue of Organize and am duly impressed. They had a great article on creating your own recipe organizer, which is exactly what I've been wanting to do! Then I found this recipe organizer and knew there was no looking back. Kind of like when Mr. Dreamy and I started dating. I just knew. So I won't be creating my own recipe organizer, I'll simply be getting this. Hopefully. After we balance the checking account.