Wife, Then Mama

April has not been a particularly productive month for us.  I was going to say homeschooling-wise, but then I realized that it was pretty unproductive overall judging by how my house looked most days this month. Yesterday, on the homeschooling front anyways, we did some serious catching up on our Mother Goose Time .  Instead of doing one day's activities, we did a whole weeks worth!  There are only a couple of days left in April, so we are doing marathons! Little Guy was a little perturbed by the fact that we skipped all of the art projects, because, while art projects are his favorite part most days, they are also the most time consuming and therefore not conducive to productivity numbers.  However, I have warned him that if he can't participate nicely in Mother Goose Time, I will have to have them stop sending it to us.  This isn't because I am mean, but because I need to be able to blog regularly.  I think he had this in mind because he participa...

We have not had a great month with Mother Goose Time .  I was really excited about this month, and the activities were so, so fun!  Sadly, between taking a few days off to visit friends, and my getting lax on consistent discipline, we have not gotten much done, and we are more than halfway through the month. Little Guy was getting really good at obeying, after I finally got consistent, but since he was doing so well, I got lax again, and when I get bad at parenting, he gets bad at obeying.  Now we are back to square two, which is a little better than square one, but not where I like to be. What does this have to do with Mother Goose Time?  Well, every time we get started, after a few minutes, he decides he doesn't want to obey.  Like today.  We were playing a game where he rolled the pocket cube, and then either colored in a matching egg, or did an action, depending on what he rolled.  He did great at it.  His coloring was better than ever, he...

I know what you are thinking, "Why is she posting a picture of a burrito on a post about corsets?" Well, although this LOOKS like a burrito, it is actually how a corset from Orchard Corset arrives.  I was incredibly busy the day that my corset arrived, so this was the only way I was able to get a picture of the pretty packaging before ripping it open. As soon as I got the package out of the mailbox I was completely astounded by how heavy it is!  I don't have a lot of experience with foundation garments, but my only other corset I have owned was not even half the weight of this one.  This corset has real steel bones, so it can be used for waist training. What is waist training?  It is the process of slowly, and gently, reducing your waist to a smaller than natural size. I know what you are thinking: "Why does that corset fit her so terribly?"  Because apparently corsets are like cast iron pans, and you must season them.  You can't j...

Surprisingly, despite me allowing Little Guy to pick what we learn about most days this month, it took us until nearly the end of March to get to Crawfish day (crawfish will be referred to crawdads for the rest of this post).  My son loves The Andy Griffith Show, and as I shared in my What's In The Box posts for At the Pond , Andy and Opie sing a song in a couple episodes called The Crawdad Song.  If you were a fly on the wall at our house, you would hear Little Guy and I singing The Crawdad Song many, many times a day.  Since you are not a fly on the wall, I recorded Little Guy singing it.  Not me though, because that is to embarrassing. We also sang a song provided by Mother Goose Time called "Be a Crawfish" set to the tune of If You're Happy and You Know It. Our first activity of the day was called Crawdads and Ducks.  I realized soon after starting that I would need some rocks (who reads the Teacher Guide before starting for the day. Oh, every one...

This month we have been At the Pond with Mother Goose Time .  We have also taken a couple trips to the real pond, although the weather has been fighting us on that! Little Guy has also gotten a chance to make a few ponds of his own.  He LOVES each time he gets to make another kind of pond, in a different way.  The first pond he made was on Duck day.  We talked about where ducks live, and then he made a home for them.  I was supposed to get him nature supplies, but I didn't so it was a quick art project.  Also, I cut a terrible circle out of the cellophane.  Somehow I lost Little Guy's scissors, so I have been doing most of the cutting lately. He glued the water in the pond, then used a round paintbrush/stamp and added lily pads (emergent water plants).  For the pièce de résistance he added a yellow pom-pom to be the duck. On Floating Pond Plant day he made another pond.  This time I sent him outside to get grass to put ...

I don't want to jinx it or anything, but Little Guy and I are on track to finish our At the Pond preschool curriculum from Mother Goose Time AHEAD of schedule!  We have been having a lot of fun, and doing quite a bit of messy, sensory fun this month. Once again we have been jumping around, which is really difficult for me, because THEY PUT THE LESSONS IN ORDER FOR A REASON!!!, but seems to be working really well.  One day we learned about Bog Plants, which mostly meant learning about cattails.  Every month we get a puzzle, which Little Guy is getting pretty good at.  We put the puzzle pieces in Play Doh so they stood up like bog plants, then "picked" them and put the puzzle together.  I don't know if I have extra sticky Play Doh or what, but I had to wipe a LOT of it off each puzzle piece. Along with all the other things in our Mother Goose Time curriculum box, there are always manipulatives, this month we got a magnifying glass and duck counte...

Every month another theme with Mother Goose Time Preschool Curriculum !  As you know (if you read my blog on a semi-regular basis) this month we are learning all about things we find At the Pond .  I have to say, in the last 2-4 weeks, Little Guy has improved in his drawing immensely, FINALLY making representative drawings on a regular basis.  Before he had only done that a few times, but lately he is doing great!  I have been doing a lot better at something too!  Doing the explore parts of the activities.  Often times I skip right to the create or play parts, ignoring the free play introduction most of them have.  Little Guy loves them most of the time, so I am happy to be more on top of that! Today we learned all about tadpoles and frogs.  This was supposed to be two separate days, but we did both because we are that cool.  Or that behind, either way. Apparently I was really slacking on the picture taking, because we did six activitie...