Friday Fun Classes Start Again

 Some of the kids decided to curl up on a shelf to wait for the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance the signal the start of our day.

After a nice long Christmas break, our home school group started up their Friday Fun Classes again for our second session of the year. I am still teaching Lincoln's class first hour. My goal this go-around is to simplify. In other words, I am trying to come up with activities that are still educational and fun, but don't require as much prep time or money out of me. I think today went well.

I'm supposed to teaching ABCs/Early Reading. It's a little bit of a challenge for me because the class consists of a mix in ages of 4, 5, and 6 year olds. And there are about 18 kids in the class. So we have some who read fluently, and others who don't know their letter sounds. I generally try to shoot for reaching the kids that are somewhere in the middle.

Today we were doing the letter D, so I made this cool dragon fly game. Basically I printed out a bunch of simple words that started with D (Dad, dog, dim, etc.) on to dragon fly shapes, then glued the dragon flies onto a piece of poster board. Then I made up cards with each of the words on it. To play the game, I would give two kids each a fly swatter, then I'd choose a card and read it out loud. The first kid to find the dragonfly with the matching word on it and smack it with the fly swatter was the winner. The kids got really into it. And for the kids who couldn't read, I'd hold up the card and spell the letters out for them, so they could try and match. They did surprisingly well with this method, so everyone was able to play, and everyone was happy.

Since being pregnant, I always come home from Friday Fun completely wiped out. I fed the kids lunch and put the younger two down for naps, and told Lincoln that I was really really tired and needed to lay down. Next thing I know, he's crawling into the bed beside me and telling me that he's going to read me a story to help me rest. :) What a sweetheart.

I'm not sure how restful listening to the Jr. National Geographic book on storms was...but it was definitely the thought that counted. Thanks Linc.

One of the sections he read talked all about monsoons. So I mentioned to him that when I was pregnant with him, we lived in Arizona and got to experience a monsoon season there. When we were finished resting, I showed him some pictures of Aaron and Jake and Rob (Aaron's brothers-in-law) playing in the monsoons in Phoenix.

Later, after Lincoln had gone to bed, I was flipping through his notebook. He's recently started wearing  a backpack everywhere he goes and carrying a notebook and pencil inside of it. Every so often he'll pull out the notebook and take "notes". He started doing this all on his own, (though I think it might have been inspired by the Magic Tree House books he's been listening to on CD), and I am loving it. It's fun to go back and see what he considered worthy of jotting down. Anyway, so I was flipping through his notebook after he went to bed, and I saw this picture:

It made my heart happy.

I love my kids. And I like those rare moments when I can spend some one on one time with them, like I did with Lincoln today. Sometimes I wish I could clone myself, so their were three of me, so that I could give each of my kids the one on one time I feel like they need. Aaron and I try really hard to be good in this area of parenting, but so much of the time I feel like I fall short.

And here I go adding another child to the mix. As excited as I am, sometimes my head hurts to think about trying to split myself one more way.