Caffeinated Homeschooler

One thing that we have been focusing on this month for Preston is number recognition and counting to 10. He can usually count to 10, but about half the time he gets a little confused with numbers 5-9. It looks something like this 1,2,3,4,6,8,7,10. Then other times he counts to 10 with no problems at all. Our  Mother Goose Time  curriculum luckily provides plenty of opportunity for practice with numbers and counting. We have been pretty much counting everything we can and we use the pig counters that came with Januarys Baby Animal theme all the time. This practice is seeming to be paying off, today he counted to 10 twice by himself and even threw 11 and 12 in there! sometimes I think he is giving me a hard time and that he can probably count to a thousand or something crazy but just enjoys confusing me. He was super proud of himself though and his sister and I each gave him a high five. Yesterday we did day 18 which was about growing smarter. We played a great game called Smart Bear a

I'm going to just put this out there... 4 year olds are hard! At least mine is. He is very difficult, about 50% of the time. He is so emotional and angry, anything will set him off. He doesn't want to hug me with sweatshirts on, he doesn't want his food warm, but wait now he does, and now he wants it cold again. He also doesn't like to be wrong, or feel like he can't do something. It is a storm of emotions and feelings around here. I would like to formally offer an apology to my daughter at this time, but also remind her that she herself was a stinker around this age as well. With all this rage and insecurity also comes love and sweetness that is like no other. He can be the nicest most caring boy around. It is up to us as a family to show him how to equalize all these feelings. He needs to know how to be angry and upset just as much as he needs to know how to show kindness, compassion, and love. So for now we lead by example and give him as much patience and love a

As a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador we are given a focus topic to blog about each month. I was so excited when I got the email informing me that January's topic was about Routines. As a homeschooler you would think we might not need a routine, and some homeschoolers probably function just fine without one. My family however needs routine, I need a routine. Without it there is lots of wasted time and fighting to get any type of schooling done. My kids seem to work better when they know what is going to happen and what is expected of them. That being said, our routine is definitely not set in stone. I do not live by the routine or the time frame. I use it as a guideline for how I want most days to flow. I am also constantly revising the routine and making it fit for whatever is happening in our lives at the time. We homeschool year round so I have the flexibility to decide if we need to take a mental health day, or have an easy week periodically. Having a base daily routine to ref

January brings a new year as well as a new and exciting month of Mother Goose Time ! This month is all about Baby Animals and my kids get pretty excited about anything involving animals. A favorite make believe game around here lately is playing dog. Another recent favorite thing to do is to ask sweetly if we can get a dog, wish wistfully but loud enough for me to hear for a dog, and beg sadly for a dog and inform me about how much fun they would have. You can imagine how much fun Day 5 was this week which was all about adopting animals and taking care of them.... Maybe they need a fish or hamster. Guess the Caffeinated Homeschooler Vice Principal (Husband) and I will have to have a meeting about this in the near future. We focused on shapes and colors this week mostly. The last few months the shape of the month has been familiar to my son, he already new what they were and could recognize them instantly. This month however came with a hexagon which wasn't one he was real fami