Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Another Great Website Found!

Posted by Tracy Wainwright at 12:17 PM 1 comments
If you have children in grade school, whether you homeschool or not, this is a great website. I found it looking for cursive templates that I could personalize - I found so much more! www.kidzone.ws has information and worksheets by topic – including animal facts, geography, language arts, lesson plans, magic tricks, math, science, and thematic units – or by grade – preschool through grade five. Preschool includes alphabet recognition games, learning letter sounds, color recognition worksheets, scissor skills, shape recognition worksheets, and much, much more. First grad has consonant recognition and practice, tracer pages, math worksheets, Dolch (sight) words, phonics, science experiments and facts and thematic units. The tools for other grades are just as good and various (those just happen to be the grades I’m teaching right now) as these.

We use websites to supplement learning all the time and I’m always excited to find new ones. Ones we stick to for games are www.pbskids.org, www.nickjr.com, and www.starfall.com. Another great website for customizable worksheets is www.handwritingworksheets.com. www.schoolexpress.com is also a great resource website for parents.

Do you have a great parenting website? Please share it! Happy learning!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Sick Days

Posted by Tracy Wainwright at 6:49 AM 1 comments
Sick days aren’t what they used to be. When I think back to high school and college days, sick days were usually days when I wanted a break. They were days to do nothing and go nowhere. I’d flip through the channels until that got old and then maybe curl up with a book. Anything went for food, but soup or a bowl of pasta was typical fair. Sick days were days of rest and recuperation. Even when I got my first “real” job after college I was able to take a mental health days. I worked in healthy place that believed that mental health days helped employees be more productive when they were at work. I didn’t even have to use my vacation, I could actually schedule a sick day.
Now I’m a mom and sick days have taken on a whole new meaning. There are no days off, with rest, relaxation, reading, and flipping channels on the agenda. When I do get a day “off” – meaning the house with no children for a day – it’s generally spent catching up with chores and used to do special projects that have been put off for who knows how long. True sick days – those days where I’m truly sick – are still not days of rest. Generally, as a mom, you keep on keeping on even when you feel bad. There are still children who need to be taken care of, fed, and loved. Their needs don’t vaporize because mommy doesn’t feel good. On occasion help can be recruited (my husband has been known to stay home to help out, but a day is about max tolerance for being in the house with a sick wife and a bunch of little ones.) Usually, however, you don’t want to share your germs, and no one want to take the risk anyway. So sick days, even true sick days, end up trying to function through a thick fog with every thought focusing on the next time you can crawl into bed, but knowing that just getting to lay down on the floor and being crawled on would suffice.
Sick days as a mom also include when the kids get sick. Life stops. Routine stops. Chores stop. Rules lax. Even more so than when mommy’s sick, everything comes to a screeching halt. Although all kids deal with feeling bad differently, they tend to want mommy. They want mommy to hold them, snuggle with them, and just be there. The focus becomes medicine schedules, and fluid intake, and temperature readings. Oh yeah, and dragging sick (and all other non-sick) children out to the doctor’s office and then to the pharmacy to wait for half an hour for medicine. Housework waits. Showers wait. Sleep waits.
Hopefully it passes in a day or two, although sometimes it’s a week or two. It’s exhausting and trying, but worth every minute. The laundry will eventually get done. The dishes will eventually get done. The dust will sit and wait. But just like everything else, when we put our kids first, it is completely worth it. Sometimes it takes sick days for us to stop and focus solely on these precious gifts. Sick days: no fun, but a wonderful opportunity to stop and say “I love you” one more way.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Another Great Website Found!

If you have children in grade school, whether you homeschool or not, this is a great website. I found it looking for cursive templates that I could personalize - I found so much more! www.kidzone.ws has information and worksheets by topic – including animal facts, geography, language arts, lesson plans, magic tricks, math, science, and thematic units – or by grade – preschool through grade five. Preschool includes alphabet recognition games, learning letter sounds, color recognition worksheets, scissor skills, shape recognition worksheets, and much, much more. First grad has consonant recognition and practice, tracer pages, math worksheets, Dolch (sight) words, phonics, science experiments and facts and thematic units. The tools for other grades are just as good and various (those just happen to be the grades I’m teaching right now) as these.

We use websites to supplement learning all the time and I’m always excited to find new ones. Ones we stick to for games are www.pbskids.org, www.nickjr.com, and www.starfall.com. Another great website for customizable worksheets is www.handwritingworksheets.com. www.schoolexpress.com is also a great resource website for parents.

Do you have a great parenting website? Please share it! Happy learning!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Sick Days

Sick days aren’t what they used to be. When I think back to high school and college days, sick days were usually days when I wanted a break. They were days to do nothing and go nowhere. I’d flip through the channels until that got old and then maybe curl up with a book. Anything went for food, but soup or a bowl of pasta was typical fair. Sick days were days of rest and recuperation. Even when I got my first “real” job after college I was able to take a mental health days. I worked in healthy place that believed that mental health days helped employees be more productive when they were at work. I didn’t even have to use my vacation, I could actually schedule a sick day.
Now I’m a mom and sick days have taken on a whole new meaning. There are no days off, with rest, relaxation, reading, and flipping channels on the agenda. When I do get a day “off” – meaning the house with no children for a day – it’s generally spent catching up with chores and used to do special projects that have been put off for who knows how long. True sick days – those days where I’m truly sick – are still not days of rest. Generally, as a mom, you keep on keeping on even when you feel bad. There are still children who need to be taken care of, fed, and loved. Their needs don’t vaporize because mommy doesn’t feel good. On occasion help can be recruited (my husband has been known to stay home to help out, but a day is about max tolerance for being in the house with a sick wife and a bunch of little ones.) Usually, however, you don’t want to share your germs, and no one want to take the risk anyway. So sick days, even true sick days, end up trying to function through a thick fog with every thought focusing on the next time you can crawl into bed, but knowing that just getting to lay down on the floor and being crawled on would suffice.
Sick days as a mom also include when the kids get sick. Life stops. Routine stops. Chores stop. Rules lax. Even more so than when mommy’s sick, everything comes to a screeching halt. Although all kids deal with feeling bad differently, they tend to want mommy. They want mommy to hold them, snuggle with them, and just be there. The focus becomes medicine schedules, and fluid intake, and temperature readings. Oh yeah, and dragging sick (and all other non-sick) children out to the doctor’s office and then to the pharmacy to wait for half an hour for medicine. Housework waits. Showers wait. Sleep waits.
Hopefully it passes in a day or two, although sometimes it’s a week or two. It’s exhausting and trying, but worth every minute. The laundry will eventually get done. The dishes will eventually get done. The dust will sit and wait. But just like everything else, when we put our kids first, it is completely worth it. Sometimes it takes sick days for us to stop and focus solely on these precious gifts. Sick days: no fun, but a wonderful opportunity to stop and say “I love you” one more way.
 

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