Monday 12 September 2011

How Does She Do It?



I recently saw a preview for the movie, “I don’t know how  she does it?” which I believe is now out in theatres.  I have not seen it because, let’s face it people, I am a mother of three beauties under 5 and I do not currently have a babysitter, so movies that are not rented or borrowed are out.  But the preview basically showed a beautiful woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) who did everything from having a full time job, kids, marriage and cupcakes for PTA  while looking  good  and polished doing it as other characters looked on in various parts of her day and wondered “I don’t know how she does it?”.    The premise of the movie preview was that she (Sarah Jessica) made tons of lists, on paper, in her head, wherever.


Now I know exactly what that is like (without the cool shoes that Sarah always gets to wear in all her movies) and I know all about list making as I do that all the time.  I have a million of them all over the house.  I have also actually heard the phrase “How do you do it?” said to me all of the time and it kind of makes we want to laugh or just faint at their feet in exhaustion (serious on the fainting thing) and I am now going to repeat to  myself and to you and state that I am not a super mom!  I just play one on my blog :)  

The idea of doing it all is ridiculous to say the least.  But I do try!  All the time in fact.  I lead a children’s ministry, direct a kids choir, direct a kids movement ministry, homeschool my sidekicks and teach them right from wrong, try to take care of my home and just be that woman Super Dad fell in love with as well as everything else I am asked to do.   I also have plans to take on more ministry. This is the problem that was put upon me on Saturday as Spiderman just held me for an hour after I had been gone all day at the doctors. Becuase I had been doing to much of these things and not at home just being his mom for a while and recovering from my surgery last week.  I know my family needs me to be with them and I need to take care of just myself but I can’t tell everyone no, can I?

Spiderman-so cute and cuddly!
One of my biggest weaknesses, my kryptonite if you will, is my inability to say no.  Its just two letters in the alphabet but it is the hardest word in the English language for me to say when it comes to commitments and favors.  I want to be supermom and do it all in real life just like my blog nickname, so in my head I think I can do it all even if my body says no to me!  So I was doing what all homeschool supermoms out there do, making lists and plans and following them to the letter while my Spiderman was at home wondering where I was.  My lists are many and my plans are great but in that moment on Saturday night while I sat down on the stairs and hugged my little man, God put it back in my heart for the 100th time to slow down and be a wife and a mom first and leave the super out of it.


So how is a homeschool supermom going to cope with that?  Well today, outside of my lesson planner because I need that for Power Princess and Rainbow Brite, I did the unthinkable.  Yes it was awful and too wonderful at the same time.  I threw my lists away in the trash!  I am free!  I have to call a few ladies that I previously made small commitments to and be  honest with them and tell them about how my days are packed, how I can’t commit anymore and really what God is putting on my heart and hope for the best.  I feel awful about that part of it but I know that God wants me to focus on my family right now and on myself (which is especially hard for me) so I will do it.  But today I just tossed that planner and all my lists in the trash and took that bag to the garage!  I still have those calls to make and then well I truly am free to just wait on God and not say yes. 


So to all of my friends and family, I love you and the answer is politely NO.  There I said it or actually wrote it but consider it said :) 


Having wrote all of this, I am now wondering how do you do it all?  Post a comment below and let me know…

Wednesday 7 September 2011

2011-2012 Curriculum


2011-2012 Curriculum


Burke Christian Academy

As with most new homeschoolers, I spent months researching and trying to figure out the perfect curriculum for our homeschool.  I soon discovered that there is a million different types of materials and styles to teach and no one way is the end all be all!   Every mom homeschools differently as every child learns differently and by posting our choices in curriculum I am not saying that this is the best for everyone.  I am an organizer and I work best with a traditional school setting so we have decided to go that route.  Fortunately for me, my kids love it too :)  So here is what we will be using this school year:

Power Princess (Senior Kindergarten) -
the core of our material will be from a fantastic bible based curriculum published by Hearts of Dakota called Little Hearts For His Glory

I am very excited to be using this for her as it incorporates a number of different learning styles and Power Princess works better with variety in her day.  This program is also more or less an open the page and go material so there isn't a whole lot of lesson planning involved.  Power Princess has always struggled with alot of worksheet heavy curriculum and this material is more of a hands on approach.  I like that every subject is biblically based on a theme and Power Princess can really get into the Word. We will be using the 1st grade supplements for this currciculum because my girl is smart!

For music and arts, I will be teaching her keyboard skills on our mini keyboard and basic music theory fundamentals.  I didn't purchase any teaching books for this as we will just do whatever comes to us and see how it goes.

For home economics, we will be working thru all of the "Back To School" lunch recipes in our Betty Crocker cook book.

We are also going to master reading.  Power Princess has expressed a great interest in learning to read books like Super Mom does so we will be using Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I am not sure how well this will work for us as we have already been working thru lessons 1 thru 5 and it hasn't been going that great.  We will try the next 5 and see how it goes.  Little Hearts For His Glory has its own reading program that we might switch to so I will keep you posted.

Rainbow Brite (Junior Kindergarten) -

the core of our material will be from Little Hands to Heaven which is also published by Hearts of Dakota.

We will be using the supplements outlined for 4 yr olds for this material to give us a well rounded program and get Rainbow Brite ready to learn to read at a later date.

As for everyday, we will just have fun with things around the house.  We will be working on colors, and speech as well as anything else we may think of.  Rainbow Brite loves to sort things!

SpiderMan (Preschool) - We will spend our time learning to talk thru play.  It's going to be fun!

 General (For Everyone)

Power Princess and Rainbow Brite will be doing alot of the crafts,  home economics and music material together as well as Bible time.



For discipline and general organization in our home, we will be using a great program for both Rainbow Brite and Power Princess called We Choose Virtues.   This will help with Super Dad's and my sanity.
We hope to post alot of field trips and activities as the school year progresses.  Oh the life of a Super Mom!

If you are looking for a great overall outline on what is the standard for each grade level, we use world book typical course of study as an outline for each grade level on what we would like to accomplish before the end of the year. 

Well Planned Day
For planning my year, I am using a well planned day.  It has all of the spaces to plan for up to 4 kids for an entire school year as well as household planning which makes this planner extremely useful.  Plus as a Super Mom, the "pretty factor" was a great reason for me to choose this planner :)