Tag: stay at home mom

September homeschool retrospective

by Ariana Peters, posted in homeschooling

Thursday September 7th

I woke up at 6:30am, the baby was just staying to stir in her crib. I got Ella up at 6:50 and made coffee.

Put Roberts and Ella’s entamology pen pal clubhouse letters in the mail. (We just started this from an Instagram account called Mornings together, we get a new little packet each week emailed to us, I print it out and the kids color it then we mail it to a family member. As they get older it has a few questions and some facts along with the coloring).

Robert woke up at about 7:15, I fed ella and snuggled with the kids for a bit. We had breakfast burritos just after 8:00. While we are I read the kids ‘How to Make Apple Pie and See the World’.

Then I unloaded the dishwasher while they played and colored. After that we worked on Robert’s good and beautiful math lesson number six. After that we went outside around 10:20am Robert fed chickens while I started laundry. We swung on our swing set and at popsicles. I watered the yard while they swung.

At 11 we walked to the corner market to get chips for lunch. The kids had tomato soup with grilled cheese and chips, I had a ham sandwich, soup and chips.
After lunch they played with daddy while he was on lunch, then we got ready for a nap run. I ran 3 miles while they napped.

When we got back I set them in front of the TV with some ice cream so I could take a quick shower. Daddy came out and sat with them for a couple minutes.

After I showered we did our tea time where I read to them and we have snacks. We read a few passages from what your preschooler needs to know and the book ‘H is for honey’. Then we completed all about reading pre-reading for the letter f. Then Robert did some practice with scissors while cutting papers and then they both did some dexterity work by threading animals.

After we finished our school work, my husband told us Starbucks having a deal on their foul drinks. So I loaded the kids in the car and we drove through Starbucks and then since we were out and it was close to dinner we drove through Taco Bell haha.

We ate dinner as a family. Then the kids took a bath then played with their daddy while we watched sea shanties and other songs on YouTube. My son is currently obsessed with the shanties.

My daughter was asleep by 7:25pm, and my son was asleep by 9. We have been having some big bedtime battles with our toddler. But I think it’s slowly going back to normal knock on wood.

Then my daughter was up from 10:30pm- 12am. I couldn’t get her back to sleep in her crib so she came into our room and took another 2+ hours to fall asleep…..it was horrible.

And that was our day.

Weekly workout

by Ariana Peters, posted in baby, kids, life, running, training

When life happens……

Sunday -OFF

Monday – 3 miles of walk/run intervals

Tuesday – 2 miles walking

Wednesday – 3 miles walk/run intervals

Thursday – OFF baby woke up with a fever

Friday – OFF baby had diarrhea all day with some blood, ended up in the ER with her

Saturday – baby sick and wanted mommy all day. No long run.

Thank goodness she seems to be on the mend. I was starting to get a little worried. Hopefully the upward trend continues and everything can get back to normal this coming week.

I am a Runner

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, kids, life, running, training

After so many years of not consistently running; moving in with my now husband, getting engaged, getting married, enjoying being married then kids. I find myself having to remind myself that I AM A RUNNER.

Even if I run slow, even if I have runs where I walk more than I run, even if I have bad training months, whether I finish first or last in a race (I have finished last lol) whether I run a marathon in 3 hours or 7 hours….I ran it…..I am a Runner.

For some reason now, I don’t know if it’s tackling the marathon or maybe having had kids, but I seem to be much harder on myself than I was 5 years ago when I was running. If I have a bad run or a run where I’m really tired or even a bad month of runs suddenly I think I’m not a good enough runner. I don’t remember ever feeling like that when I was training for half marathons before kids.

I think it might be because this has been such a bad month with my kids sleep and my stomach issues that I feel like I’ve backslid in my training a little. But I don’t ever want to be a perfectionist. So I have to continually remind myself that there will be seasons in life where it just doesn’t go the way I want it to.

But I am STILL a runner!!!!!

Weekly Workouts

by Ariana Peters, posted in kids, life, running, training

My kids sleep has been HORRIBLE the past 2 weeks and it is catching up with me. Almost every night I have been up between 2-4 hours with one or both my kids. We have had teething and sleep regressions and who knows what. And for half that time my husband was out of town. I stayed with my in-laws then my mom came to town to help but in the middle of the night it was all me. I am so tired and so frustrated. One day we will get back to normal…….I hope…….please.

Sunday – OFF

Monday – OFF

Tuesday – OFF

Wednesday – 2 miles

Thursday – OFF , went out to breakfast

Friday – OFF

Saturday – 13 miles

Total miles this week – 15

Pre-school homeschooling curriculum

by Ariana Peters, posted in homeschooling, kids, life, school/studying

Our first year of homeschooling is coming to an end. I loved almost every minute of it lol. Overall, my toddler did amazing with the curriculum. With a year under my belt now I kind of know how he learns and how he does things. So I will review the curriculum that we used for preschool and in a couple weeks I’ll post what we’re going to do for Pre-K.

Language Arts

Part of timberdoodle curriculum

These were fantastic much more like playing games and doing fun little projects then worksheets

The Good and the Beautiful language arts curriculum

We started this about 2/3rds of the way through the year and will be continuing it through pre-K. These are much more lesson like so we tend to break them up into smaller sections but I have become a big fan of the Good and the Beautiful.

Math

Mathematical reasoning

I didn’t like this at all and neither did my toddler. We found it to be very dry and boring. I wasn’t going to make either of us suffer through it after I decided we didn’t like it. We got about halfway through it then I chucked it in the recycling bin.

Farm land math from Timberdoodle

My son loved this in the beginning and even asked for it regularly to play it. However once his new little sister was big enough to start taking pieces it started turning into a battle so we set this aside as well. But, it did lay a great foundation for us.

Also from Timberdoodle

This was fantastic. Timberdoodle actually added this in their 2023-2024 preschool curriculum kit so I only ordered it about 2 months ago but we are almost done with it. If you do it weekly it is not a full year’s worth of curriculum but it has added a little bit of math back into our study.

Thinking skills

Super sticker

My toddler loved this!!!!!

Bought the trio off Timberdoodle

These were fantastic just like the alphabet books by the same company. They were fun and engaging and quick.

Thinking skills

Another one that my toddler and I thought was really boring and dry. Just like the math we got about halfway through the book and I chucked it.

History and social studies

Love this puzzle, it is super adorable. For a long time my toddler had little to no interest in doing anything except jumping on the pieces to get them together when I set them in the correct place. But in the last 6 weeks that has started to change, with me helping him identify which pieces go where he is assembling it entirely himself.
I thought this book was super cool and interesting, my toddler generally just tolerated it lol. We did not finish it. I might throw it in here and there in our pre-K unit and see if he likes it better.

Nature and science

Love, love, love this. This curriculum is meant to be used year after year after year layering in more information and learning each year. Right now we keep it very basic but I look forward to using it for years to come with the kids.
This is really great for kids that aren’t ready for a full curriculum. We started with this entire program which is made of units. Now we use it mainly for it’s great book lists as well as a science project here and there.

Art

Eh, super cute idea but my toddler was just kind of meh about it. Maybe he’ll become more artistic in the future (though I’m not sooooo….I wish I was but was not blessed in that area)

Skills

This was great in the beginning of the year to get my son interested in learning to use scissors but we didn’t finish it because once he semi knew what he was doing he wanted to do his own cutting lol.

Overall, it was a great year. I loved watching my son grow in leaps and bounds. Which is exactly how it came. He would not get something and suddenly it would click. He was really did go in leaps and bounds and stops and starts.

The great thing about homeschooling his preschool is I was really able to follow his rhythm and our rhythm as a family. There were weeks where we didn’t do anything. We kind of fell out of our rhythm and then we’d pick it back up and have a couple of great weeks, couple great months and then kind of fall off again which worked out great for us. We’re still finishing on time and I just love the entire experience.

We started a little before he returned 2 years old. So it was by no means always easy sunshine but it was rewarding and wonderful. Occasionally I did resort to a little bit of bribery or coercion sort of to get him to come over and start. Once he started. He usually loved everything. But it would occasionally be oh. Can you help Mommy do this? Or do you want to come eat a chip with me while we look at this picture and talk about it? Lol.

Book review- The Brave Learner

by Ariana Peters, posted in books, homeschooling, kids, life
Spoiler! I loved it!!!!

This book was so fantastic. It gave so many options and ideas to add creativity to your homeschooling. Take away some of the pressure and add confidence in yourself.

It talks about a lot of different versions of homeschooling, a lot of different options. It gives lots of encouragement and really just is an amazing resource. I checked this out of the library but I fully intend to buy it. Actually. I asked my best friend to give it to me for Christmas lol.

But it’s not just for homeschooling parents. In my opinion. I think it’s really just any family or parents who want to enhance their child’s learning and life. This book will really give you ideas and ways to embrace the spontaneous love of learning kids have.

August 2023 homeschooling reflective

by Ariana Peters, posted in homeschooling, kids, life, school/studying

I put on some Nat Geo in the morning while we all relaxed and woke up

I read them a book from the construction unit we are doing from playing preschool

We talked about the date, weather, season, the months of the year and the days of the week

We did some stickers in our math sticker book

And of course we couldn’t leave my 15 month old out of it lol.
They played a little in the sink
Daddy came out for lunch to play
Then he had a meltdown and rage colored lol
I actually did my hair (don’t look at the post partum flyaways lol) and put some mascara on
We hit the library and I got way too many books for me hahaha
Nap walk. This is how I get them both to take a nap currently
Did some worksheet pages
Attempted our first teatime……..ummmmm id call it a half success. He had a huge tantrum (he had a hard toddler day) but we did get 3 short sections and 1 longer section read in the preschooler book
Got a Good and the Beautiful lesson done.

Then we played outside until daddy got off work

Overall I’d call it a pretty good day.

Book review: Balanced and Barefoot

by Ariana Peters, posted in baby, books, healthy lifestyle, kids, life

I skipped through a lot of this book. Just sort of reading some of the section headings and a few sentences here and there. I thought it was pretty dry. But that could be because a lot of the information I feel like I already read in “There’s no such thing as bad weather”.

But there was a lot of good information and some very interesting things. I found it really interesting where they talked about how many teachers now have to tell kids no to so many things on the playground that they can’t do anything during recess. There was a teacher in New Zealand who decided to get rid of all the rules for recess and just let the kids go wild like they used to and they saw a bullying go down, concentration go up, etc

Another thing that was really interesting and I saw translated to our real life is talking about how kids used to play in the early 1900s and even late 90s and how strong the kids were because they weren’t restricted to what they could do on playgrounds or at recess and they were climbing on top of things, around things, swinging, and going crazy. I actually had a mom in my son’s gymnastics class, be somewhat amazed at how strong my son is. And how his gross motor skills are so well developed for a two and a half year old. And I think that’s because we don’t restrict his play. We let him climb on things we let him run around. We let him be crazy. We try and do it as safely as possible but we do not restrict or overly helicopter parent.

I do see how in America we have become more and more restrictive on what we deem safe for our children. And as a mom, I absolutely understand that it’s a balance between raining in my own fear and keeping them safe. We’ve also become a very litigious society which makes it so difficult for caregivers to give children that freedom to be children and run around and climb and jump and bounce and be crazy.

It’s overall I found it to be a very dry book and I skipped and jumped through a lot of it. But I think it’s definitely worth parents taking a peek at it and maybe doing the same kind of skipping, jumping, and stopping and reading where you are interested and skipping the parts that you find boring or redundant.

A week of homeschooling

by Ariana Peters, posted in homeschooling, kids, life, school/studying

Wednesday –

AM – 3 worksheets done and 1 book read

Then gymnastics and the library

Thursday – AM

Two worksheets and 1 spread in ‘things to spot’ as he ran around the house hahaha

Then into the stroller the kids went for a 2 mile run. Then some time to run around the backyard.

Back inside we ‘worked’ on a puzzle, which means I put the pieces in place and he stomped them down hahaha. But I do try and get him to point out 1 or 2 things to me each time and I name the continents and oceans.

We also played with the bunny boo game. It works on spacial awareness and directionality

PM – I read to them for 15 min

Friday AM – 3 worksheets

Saturday – OFF

Sunday – OFF some Sundays we will do a little bit but today we went to visit the grandparents

Monday AM

4 worksheets and 1 spread in our ocean math workbook

After this he had a lovely toddler meltdown compete with ear splitting screaming.

After he calmed down I loaded the kids in the stroller and went for a 3 mile run then we did some exploring and gardening in the backyard.

Tuesday – AM

Got 2 worksheets done, and even that was like pulling teeth lol.

And that is a wrap! That is a week of homeschooling with us. Some weeks we get more done and some less. This month we are really busy with swim lessons so each week we have 1 gymnastics class and 2 swim lessons. Since we are so busy I am pushing school a little less.

Because it is preschool level and he is only 2.5 I try and keep it light and not make him do things he isn’t feeling that day or time, I want to foster a love for learning not destroy it.

Thanks for joining us!!!

Homeschooling

by Ariana Peters, posted in kids, life, school/studying

Homeschooling a 2.5 yr old can be challenging, very trying on my patience, frustrating and so very rewarding. Watching him progress and take leaps and bounds forward is wonderful.

Butterfly grow kit
This was a good introduction to life cycles

The nice thing about homeschooling is that I can tailor our days to the kids. On days he is having a hard time we can do no schooling or just 1 or 2 things. On days he is doing well we can bust the work out.

This morning was sort of a good morning. The baby woke up early (not the good part hahahaha) and my husband got up with her after I fed her. I stayed in bed but realized I wasn’t going to fall back asleep easily and figured 30 extra min of sleep would probably end up making me more tired so I got up and went for a run.

We then had a slow morning of watching some cartoons and relaxing. After breakfast we busted the work out cause he was focused.

Baby colored while we worked.

I also read aloud to them for 10min from a magic treehouse book.

Every day is different, what we do and what we get done is different.

The next day was a good morning and we busted it out again. He had some excess energy to burn so he would run a lap around the house and I’d stop him to answer a school question then he’d take another lap. We got through 4 workbook pages and a spread in our things to spot book this way and he laughed the whole time.