Sometimes I wonder

Honestly, this is my gripe session. I started to post it on facebook and thought maybe not.
I wonder what goes through peoples brains when they say they will "coordinate" something then do everything but. If you are a food coordinator or a party coordinator, that does not entitle you to a personal secretary. Not in this business anyway. I have my job to do and plenty of it, the director has her job to do and plenty of it, the parent coordinator has her job to do and plenty of it. We assigned these other duties because we dont have the time to fool with it. Tehy are two things PARENTS want - not crew. so why is that you have everyone's email addresses and if you cant figure it out, you have a million gazillion you can tag onto (hit reply all and change the subject line), and you cant send a freakin' email????
I and a select others, don't need to receive emails saying "can you send this to all the parents..." "can you let the parents know...." "can you forward this" or my favorite - not even asking but TELLING me to do it. COME ON, in the length of time it took you to send me that - you could have sent it to everyone. I dont need to be the coordinator or the middle man. The Producer and Parent Coordinator are NOT your personal secretaries to call at 6:30 am and walk all over. If you are unable to do the job you volunteer to do - step down, dont volunteer for it again - PLEASE.
Okay done for now, needed to get it out even to just myself. Ahhh feel better.

What A Week!

It is Monday and I am already tired. We are down to opening week of Best Christmas Pageant Ever - it will be a great show I am sure. I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this production, the kids just make me grin ear to ear! One thing though, wow it's time consuming. Walker's lessons and K.E.E.N responsibilities have taken a back seat and I'm not sure I am altogether happy with that. The beauty is, we have no "end date" for our Home School and we can continue as long as needed. I have to remind myself of that. In my inevitable search for justification I also look at public school schedules and realize they take fall breaks, winter breaks and spring breaks. So I guess December will be all ours rolled into one. There I feel better now (at least for 5 minutes).

Pack Rat

The past two days I have spent time on what used to be my school room. I have thrown away 4 yes FOUR bags of garbage. I have kept every single piece of work Walker has ever done since Kindergarten. While it was hard to let go of somethings, others I couldnt figure out why in the world I would have saved every single piece of scratch paper. looking at four bags of accumulated papers I realized that I was keeping all this as some sort of "proof" that I do infact teach my child. No one in their right mind is ever going to ask to see every paper he has scribbled or written on - no one has ever asked for mine. The "proof" I need is in him. Anyone can plainly see after 5 minutes that he is a wonderful, creative and intelligent child. He has a very happy disposition and loves everyone. Those qualities in him are more enduring than any piece of paper ever could be. I am off now to tackle another abyss.

Relaxed

We actually got quite a bit accomplished today. Walker began a Thanksgiving unit, we started reading The Thanksgiving Treasure by Gail Rock (no I don't see the underline icon so I typed in bold), worked on Math and Language Arts.

This afternoon I was able to begin cleaning out my school room. We are wanting to redecorate/rearrange a bit. It will take some time to get it completely the way I want it but a little at a time is just fine. The plan is to make the scho ol room into a casual dining area/school room. It will be much more functional and I have realized that I don't need to have charts, bulletin boards and every possible thing known to man hanging on my walls in order to educate Walker.

I found out something else today. My blackberry stresses me. I left it off today and it was such a freeing feeling to not hear that chirp that makes me think I have to respond to someone's email immediately. It is the same reason I went all these years without an answering machine - I felt I had to return every call as soon as I heard the message. The emails waited until I had a break or a few minutes to look -when I was in control. I know not everyone feels as I do and can ignore the chirping and chiming but that is the way I am. You know what? No one is in dire need of me being readily available to answer them. I think from here on out I will keep every little tweeting chirp off except phone so I can continue to breathe as I have done today.

Reading

I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Walker read to me this morning. He has been making amazing progress lately. There is truth to each child having an individual "readiness switch". Often we attempt to flip that switch too early which only adds to everyone's frustration. I know, I did it. I had this crazy idea that I needed to "prove" something to all the nay sayers because I home school. I pushed so many concepts when he just wasn't ready. The thing that worked mostly on his path to reading was the fact that I read ALOUD to him. Not just bedtime stories and picture books. Literature such as The Little House series, Chronicles of Narnia, the entire Wizard of Oz series, we have read together over and over. He has developed a love for books and quality stories. Snuggled on my lap, looking at the pages whether there would be illustrations or not - really listening to the words and the story, forming his own images in his head, that's what worked most. He has developed a strong vocabulary and appreciation of the written word to convey any message or thought. I could kick myself for the time lost crying over phonetic work books. He's a sight reader - I should have picked up on that and spent more time reading.

All that matters now is Mom had a learning experience. PAY ATTENTION to what works for your child. Don't worry about what others in your family think, stop comparing and trying to prove that you as Mom are perfectly capable of teaching at home. You are - and you do.

And Walker did too, he learned to READ.

After realizing that just about everyone I know Blogs, I decided it was time. I will start by saying I am not a writer or even a journal keeper so this may be very boring indeed. If nothing else it will be a good way to record our Home school Happenings. That said, let this next endeavor begin...