Home School Take 2

After a rough first week of homeschooling preschool, week 2 went much better.  By this time, I had already made a call to a public preschool and signed Ella up.  I have to give mom's who home school full time and with multiple children a ton of respect.  I don't know how they do it but I'd admire them greatly.  Even though Ella will be going to preschool two days a week, I am still planning on continuing as much homeschooling as possible.
I'm trying to keep the goal in mind, giving my kids a ton of fun learning experiences and my time.  It is so hard when there is laundry, cleaning, cooking, photography, soccer, upcoming wedding events, a new baby coming, and graduate work on my mind.  I have to often stop, take a deep breath, and remember what is important. 
This past week was our camping theme and the kids had so much fun with it.  I set up a tent in the playroom and they spent hours playing in it.  When I took it down this weekend, there were a bunch of tears.

Our letter this week was F for fire, campfire that is.  So I used Popsicle sticks, paint, a straw, and a q-tip for a fun craft.  Ella was working hard at building her campfire with wood (Popsicle sticks).

 They used straws the blow the fire (paint).  Yes, that is spit coming out of Mason's straw. :-)

 Then, they used q-tips to spread it around since they were getting a little light headed from blowing the paint.  I think Ella would of kept going but I stopped her in fear that she was going to pass out. :-)

Our sensory bin this week was dried split peas to look like grass.  I put in camping vocabulary cards under the peas and the kids had to find them and then find their match that was laid out on the floor. 

 We had a cookout and roasted marshmallows with our friends the Dunigan's and Hume's.  She let her kids have marshmallows? Gasp!  Yes, I did.  I even let them make s'mores.  Notice our "campfire" didn't hold up too well.



We read a bunch of camping books this week and did the Camping Preschool Pack from 1 + 1 + 1 = 1, http://homeschoolcreations.com/campingpreschoolpack.html. to go along with our theme. 

Ella had her first day of public preschool today and I feel great about it.  She was awesome, of course, and loved every minute of it.  I have moments where I feel like a complete failure in that I wasn't able to home school her full time but I also realize that my sanity is important to our relationship too. :-)