Wow. Completely unpremeditated hiatus. Updates...

So. There's the little matter of the entirely unplanned four month hiatus from blogging and I can't promise that things will get better any time soon. I did spontaneously decide to pop in and let you all know that I am fine. Still here. No sudden accident or illness to blame. Life just got ahead of me.

I shifted into preparing for homeschooling mode. The end of the school year was coming for me and I knew I wanted to begin homeschooling mid-May. I needed to prepare a schoolroom and get a curriculum ready to go. To be honest, I had also pushed a little too hard on the blogging front and burned out.

So, updates... let me think.

Ava was discharged from speech therapy. Discharged. Really, who would have thought that about two years after beginning to receive services that she would no longer qualify? She still has speech errors, but her remaining errors are now in the "age appropriate zone". Honestly, it was ok with me. Next year she will be at home with me, and we will begin incorporating speech work into our homeschooling schedule.

I have a school room. It is a mess, but I love it. It has been recently repainted a cheerful yellow thanks to the hard work of my husband. The old ceiling fan with its three dim bulbs has been replaced with a fancy light fixture that closely resembles a giant spider on the ceiling, but provides tons of light (Eight 60 watt bulbs from one light fixture - let there be light!) Soon there will be new curtains that will provide a cheerful splash of color. There's shelving for storage, a table for school work, a desk for me and a computer station cobbled together from bits and pieces of old computers for the children. We have a circle shaped rug by a calendar for circle time. I will show you all pictures at some point when things are a bit less messy and I'm a bit more organized.

I reworked my homeschool planner a little and it is working super well for me. Again, I will try to provide pictures at some point for anyone who is interested. After about 6 weeks of full-time homeschooling we're falling into something of a predictable routine. We begin our morning at about 8:30 am with circle time. During the approximately 20 minutes of circle time we sing a welcome song (a completely dorky song I made up, but we all like it), do calendar work, graph the weather, and learn a word, poem, and song of the day. After circle time we complete two pages of our writing journals (again, pictures and sharing to come later...). Their writing journals have a handwriting page on the left and a writing prompt with space to draw a picture and write a sentence or two underneath on the right. Then we do a math lesson (RightStart Math Level A).

At that point we are about two hours in and we all need a break. We have a small nutritious snack and then come back to the school room for reading/spelling. The children take turns now. Ava goes first with her All About Reading Pre-Reading lesson which I supplement with some great alphabet songs I got from Scholastic. Then Michael does an All About Spelling Level 1 lesson and an All About Reading Level 2 lesson. I cannot say enough good things about the All About Reading and All About Spelling programs and I hope to find the time to share more about them in the future.

After reading we take an extended break for lunch and free time. I admit it. I often throw in a little television here. After our lunch/sanity break, depending on the day of the week, we meet up with some friends for play or do bonus lessons in science, social studies, art music, etc.

I squeeze in lesson planning and the creation of new materials here and there. I'm also still trying to whip the school room into a completely organized state that doesn't involve huge piles of random supplies piled up on level surfaces and in corners. Notice, this new schedule leaves no time left over for blogging. I will try to work on it. I'd love to share our homeschooling adventures and materials with those who would find them useful. I'd also love to finally wrap up the newest speech kit and maybe even find time to create more.

But for now, hello. :-) Don't worry about us. We are fine over here. I hope all of you are enjoying your summer as well.

Initial Z Printable Speech Activity: Color By Word

Practice /z/ in Initial Position

Click on the image to open it to full size and then right click to save it to your computer.

Enjoy! If you like this activity, look for other free printables and therapy ideas or my comprehensive speech therapy kits.

Patched Pants

My son had a pair of pants that were torn almost as badly as this (yet to be repaired) pair.

I had been ignoring the holes in the knees for several weeks as they steadily worsened, but it really had gotten to the point where sending him to school in them was embarrassing. I remembered a pin on pinterest that led to a page with an adorable monster patch for a child's pair of pants.

At the bright shiny beginning of the project I enthusiastically searched through my scrap bin of too-small kids clothing for just the right things to cut up for scraps. I spent an hour cutting out the background for the mouth (from an old corduroy button down shirt of Michael's), teeth (from an old swaddling blanket), and the eyes (from an old onesie). I fray checked all the edges of the monster components, cut a huge hole out of the knee around the hole/tear/worn material, and carefully pinned everything in place.

I sat down excitedly at my sewing machine to sew the new patch in place thinking I'd be able to hand Michael his "new" upcycled pants in 20 minutes and realized I had overlooked something rather important. I couldn't fit the leg of his teeny tiny jeans over my sewing machine - much less turn the material around in the ways necessary to do the applique. (!*!!!$@#) However, I was not going to be defeated. A little hunting online led me to the conclusion that I was going to have to rip out a huge section of the inseam on that leg so I could lay it out flat.

So that took... a long time. And then they are fleece lined jeans so I had to rip open the lining too. Then I spent 20-30 minutes sewing on the monster pieces with Michael at my side asking when I would be done. He wanted to know if he could wear them right away. It was so adorable. I needed his enthusiasm at that point to keep me motivated.

Finally I was done with the patch itself. I was thinking I was home free. Only two straight lines left. One to repair the inseam of the lining and another to repair the inseam of the jeans. Because I am brilliant and naturally crafty, I only then realized that just as I couldn't fit the jeans on my sewing machine to sew on the patch, I couldn't fit the darned things on to repair the inseam either. I sent more than a few uncharitable thoughts towards the jeans, my sewing machine, and the entirety of the so-close but not finished project. I scrunched up the ankle and managed to sew up four inches of the inseam that way. Then I just pinched the darned thing closed and sewed it from the outside. It's not like anyone is going to be staring at his inner thigh anyway.

And tada!

The boy is so excited. He couldn't wait to wear them to school today. As for me, well... It may have taken three hours, but I'm pretty pleased. I didn't have to throw out one of Michael's favorite pairs of pants and he sees it as a significant upgrade so I'm calling it a win and a learning experience. Now I just have to take on about two other pairs of jeans with similar knees...