A month of blogging

I made it! Today is June 30th and I have posted at least once every day since June 1! So here's what I have learned so far:

1)I really don't have something to talk about every single day. There were days when it was all I could do to write a quick "This happened today," at the end of the night.

2) I have more to say than I thought I did. Especially about saving money and education. I am passionate about both, because both feed into my role as a mom, which is my ultimate passion.

3) Blogging from the iPad isn't fun. I don't like the blog docs app at all, and blogging from safari isn't ideal either. There are some things that just need to be done old school.

4) While I may not be ready to take my blog to a professional level, I have really enjoyed interacting with others who have been able to do that. I am enjoying sharing their posts with others and helping them with their goals. I hope that, even though I don't have any major goals yet, I have at least given them something interesting to read every now and then!

So, happy end of June! I hope that I can keep up posting during July :)

One more day!

After today, only one more day of the daily post challenge! I am happy that I haven't missed a single day! Go me!

It is going to be a busy weekend. Matthew's parents are here, so we are enjoying our time with them. I won't have time to write about much until Monday, unless I can post on the road tomorrow. I have plenty to say, but time is elusive. Especially this week!

Here's hoping for a restful night and a day of fun tomorrow!

Make any wall a word wall!

If you have a wall with nothing hanging on it, and a preschool aged kiddo that loves books and language play, you have got to check out word walls.  If you Google "word wall," all kinds of images come up.  Word walls are exactly what they sound like - they are an area where you display words, usually.  All you need is some alphabet cards and some word cards, and something to stick them to the wall.

I have done a different twist on it in my own classroom when I was teaching 2's. I used pictures.

Picture "word" wall

The only words I used in this picture word wall were the kids' names.  The rest were pictures of things that began with each letter's sound.  We did short vowel sounds - A for Alligator, E for Elephant, I for Igloo, O for Octopus, U for Umbrella.  With consonants we focused on the most common sound - for example, the hard "k" sound of the letter C.


RJ is three and is ready for sight words.  Sight words are the most common words you see in print.  Since the English language has some pretty complicated rules, "sound it out" isn't always an option for beginning readers.  Just like we memorize addition fact and multiplication tables in order to speed up the process of doing more complicated math, we memorize sight words in order to built speed and fluency with reading. 


RJ has been working with a great teacher all year, and I have been working with him this summer, so I decided to check out and see what sight words he knows and put those words on our word wall to start with.  Boy was I surprised!

Sight Words Word Wall

These are the words RJ knows so far.  Most of them are sight words but he also knows milk, hit, and play. All together, there are 27 words on the wall!  He knows many of the words on the Preprimer list of Dolch Sight Words. 


We are using our word wall to reinforce the words RJ already knows, and then he is using those words in other learning situations.  When we read a book, I trail my finger along the print and pause when I come to a word he knows, so we do a shared reading of the text.  We take words like at, it, and in and play word addition - for example, c + at = cat. You write C, make the sound, write at, and say "at," then blend the word together to make "cat."


I love working with my beginning reader.  He is so excited about his word wall, and I can't wait to see what words we add next!

Daily recap

Today was challenging. My boys are learning how to fight. T is six months old! Yet, there they sat, bugging each other in the cart at SAMs.

My accomplishments for the day: Registered RJ for pre-school, ran errands, made baby food, got some exercise in.

Failures: forgot multiple things on my grocery list, got too frustrated with the kids, didn't get any housework done.

Tomorrow is another busy day. Sure hope I'm up for it!!!

I stay at home, and I won't apologize for it!

The whole age-old debate: Who has it harder? Working moms or Stay-at-home-moms? WMs work all day and still have to pick up kids from daycare, make dinner, do all of the things an at-home mom does.  SAHMs have a 24/7 job of house keeping, taking care of others before themselves, no sick days, no vacation days. Both have their perks as well. WM's have a career, hopefully a fulfilling one that provides extra income and makes the family comfortable.  She has life outside of her home and family.  A SAHM doesn't miss out on any of the big milestones of her children, because she's right there with them most of the time. I'm a SAHM and my sister is a WM.  We each have things we envy about each others lifestyles. We each have things that we know we wouldn't be able to stand. Both of us work hard and have healthy, happy families to show for it.

Recently I saw this floating around on Facebook: 

"Yes, my house can be a little messy at times, but I work a full time job, commute 4 hours round trip, and only have two days off a week. My husband works, too. If you work, and support your family, you understand. If you don't work, maybe you should get a job and see how the rest of us live, instead of making statements. Repost if you support the "real" working mothers out there!"

The first thing I thought when I read this was "Wow... I'm a measly husband-moocher-offer, and my house is STILL messy..." But the more I read it, the more it kind of offended me. "If you don't work, maybe you should get a job and see how the rest of us live.." 

I don't know that it is possible for me to have more respect for working moms and single moms. I cannot imagine doing what I do plus going to a 9 to 5, or doing it by myself.  But ALL MOMS WORK! My kids ARE my job, and I take them seriously. I work hard for them. That means that my house isn't always perfectly clean.  That means that there are days where I am ready to drop by the time my husband walks in the door. I don't keep a crazy schedule.  I don't try to line out my day.  I have a 3 year old and a 6 month old.  They are the schedule setters.  Some days they give me an easy schedule - they nap, they entertain themselves, and they are happy.  Other days they are sick, teething, don't sleep at night, are grouchy, and I spend my whole day hopping from one to the next trying to take care of what they need.  When I'm sick, I suck it up, unless I happen to get lucky enough to get sick on a weekend (ha!) in which case I have help.

I kind of miss the 9 to 5, but I don't envy WMs.  I know many of them get stuck with everything I just described, and more, on top of their careers.  But I won't apologize for being a SAHM, and I will absolutely defend my "job." SAHMs may not get a comment on their messy house (ha, I would), but I have heard all of the following:

"You're JUST a SAHM??" (incredulous look of shock) Yup. I am, and I love it.


"How do you find your life fulfilling when you have no career to show for it?" Well I guess happy healthy kids just can't top a successful career or anything...


"Are you going to go back to work when they start school?" Funny, I didn't realize I had ever LEFT work....

"You're a SAHM and your child goes to preschool?! Don't you feel lazy?"Yup... giving my kids social interaction for a few hours a day, a few days a week.... running errands without hauling them both in and out of strollers and carts.. Yup, you can call me lazy, works for me!

I am happy for you if you are a working mother who is happy.  I'm sad for you if you're a working mother that wants to stay home, because I know it sucks to be stuck doing something you don't want to do.  If  you have a career outside of the home, I applaud you. If you're a single mom, you rock!  Just please remember - I don't provide "financial" support to my family, but I provide all kinds of other support.  You support your family the best way you can, I will do the same. 

Word wall surprise!

I am going to set out to write about word walls tomorrow, since I just put one up in my house. RJ and I have been working on sight words, and I have been surprised at how many he knows. I shouldn't be, because his teacher this year was ah-maaaaa-zing. He can write all of his letters, upper and lower case, and he knows all of their sounds. He is learning how to sound words out. He can count on and on and can identify numbers as high as 9,999. Actually he can do 10,999 because we are working on anything to the left of the column is thousands.

So after I put up the letters for the word wall today,I decided to start off by putting only the ones he can identify up on the wall. I took out my set of pre-primer Dolch words and started showing him each one. He identified about half of them. He identified four words from the primer set. He also knows words that aren't in my cards like ball, milk, play, etc. I made cards for those words. He also knows the "it" family - he know i-t says "it" and that if you put an s in front of it, it says "sit," etc. Sit and hit also went up in the wall.

When we got all the cards up there and counted them, we had 27 words all together. I texted his teacher excitedly. She texted back "Don't forget the it, at, and an families. He knows all of those. And his friends' names."

I think I am going to have to find a bigger wall....

Long day of cleaning today. I finally restored my kitchen and living areas to their normal state of cleanliness. Hope I can keep it up. Tomorrow will be laundry catch-up.

T is trying to get a tooth, so close! Where has the time gone? He changes every day. He has filled out, jumped to the 5th percentile in weight. He isn't crawling, but he is mobile. I got a bunch of toys out today and started checking batteries. We will have lots of fun tomorrow. RJ is loving exploring the toys with him. I am also looking forward to setting up a word wall for RJ tomorrow. He knows 17 words now, plus he can read his classmates' names. So big! I asked him if he wanted his new teacher to call him by his name or RJ. He said his name. Aaaw. Of course, then I called him by his name a few minutes later and he didn't answer lol!

Other than that, we had dinner with friends and just chilled. What a nice Sunday :)