The Library

I would like to admit my addiction to books.  Children's books, specifically.  I sold thousands of books when I first stopped being a classroom teacher.  Then I bought hundreds (?) of books for my own growing children.  Then I bought hundreds (at least) of books for preschool themes.  Now, I need to reorganize it so we can access what we want.  I've decided to make our home library similar to a real library.  Each book has (or will have) a home on a specific shelf, even in a specific bin.  They have stickers to identify where they belong and will have matching shelf labels.  I've sorted them into categories.  There are ten overarching categories and then subcategories within those 10.  Each of the 10 categories is assigned a specific color to help with re-shelving.  I've even scanned barcodes (ISBN numbers) into a system so I can "Check Out" books to students and friends who are borrowing items.  Sounds awesome, right?  Problem is, it's the finished project that will be awesome and the AWFUL mess isn't so awesome.  I'm working on it, and I've made a lot of progress over the last couple of days, but I don't actually have book shelves yet and I've run out of book boxes.  I guess I need to head back to Ikea to get more.  In the mean time, my basement looks like this:

 We have regular preschool tomorrow morning....

 And I've run out of motivation to figure out how the rest of the books should be organized....

For now, it's a great start.  And yes, I'm blogging because I don't want to clean up the mess...

Mud and Worms

It is one of my favorite things to give my kids hands on experiences.  It is quite often my house that we play at with our homeschool group because messes can happen here.  I look forward to mud and worms day every year.  Honestly, I also dread the clean up at the same time, but it is so worth it!  We learn about worms and what they eat, how they help the garden, and their physical characteristics. 

 We squish and make mud, exploring all the mud safe kitchen toys, playing with the water barrel and making mud pies.

 There is nothing better than friendship and messy, muddy, exploration!  Plus, sitting on the swing relaxing and occasionally guiding my children or answering questions is a perk of being this type of teacher.  Yay!

Growing Up

Unfortunately we've reached a point in time where CJ is growing up too fast. This became evident last night when he experienced his first major migraine that ended him ill in the bathroom. Today we decided was the day to teach him how to swallow a medicine pill. Mr. Steve's mom taught him how to swallow pills with this same tactic. I purchased a bag of M&M's and Mr. Steve gave the instructions. "If you can swallow an M&M without chewing it 10 times you can have the whole bag." 

He needed to break it into two segments 6 and then 4, but he earned his bag of M&M's. Hopefully with the "pleasure" of sweet child's ibuprofen a thing of the past he can correctly regulate his need for medicine and swallow a pill to prevent future extreme migraines. Wish us luck!