The Mama Confessionals: What No One Tells You About Motherhood

May 7, 2018 by Leave a Comment

I can remember the summer before our oldest went to preschool. I continued to second guess myself in the weeks leading up to his first day of the twice weekly class he would be going to for a combined 5 hours a week. Were we making the right choice? Would he be ok? Would I be ok? And many more anxiety filled questions that were very similar. And here is a little spoiler alert for all you parents with little babies. These questions, at least in my experience, continue to happen for each new milestone. I don’t think you can really understand this emotional roller coaster if you aren’t a parent.

At the time I was just 6 months out of counseling for postpartum depression and anxiety after the birth to our daughter. During the second week of preschool, I entered a room of 30 women+ women who I had never met to attend a weekly bible study that was held at the church where my child attended school. Clutching my Bible, I felt scared, my anxiety was choking me, but I knew I needed to be surrounded by women who I could learn from, lean on, and laugh and cry with. But most importantly I knew I needed to be fed and nourished with God’s word as often as I could.

As the months went on I found myself actively engaged in reading my Bible and more importantly being convicted by the Holy Spirit. Upon looking back at my sons preschool years I am discovering that he is not the only one who grew up. God has wrecked me. And I mean that in the best way possible.

My mama heart is bursting with love, joy, and goodness when I look at all my kids and see how much they are learning and growing, and changing. And these feelings have me either smiling or crying. The tears are happy but there is also this weird grief element that goes along with it too. It is like I am trying to enjoy these moments because I know they are fleeting by being as present as possible, but by doing this it also causes me this weird heartache.

You always hear other parents tell you that “It goes by so fast.” And that is totally true, it really is, but nobody tells you about this wonderfully horrible wave of emotions that happen each time your child reaches a life milestone.  Based on what I have already experienced I am guessing that each milestone gets more wonderful but equally more gut wrenchingly intense.

Over the past year I have made it a daily priority in our home to be intentional about reading and helping our kids understand the significance and importance of Jesus and the work that was done on the cross. These feelings that I am having as I watch my babies grow up only intensifies my desire to consistently share the gospel message with them. This life is so short. Based on this I have begun to ask myself 3 questions.

  • Have I been consistent in spending time in God’s word on a daily basis? If I can’t commit to daily reading the Bible on my own I don’t know how I can expect to be able to do it for my kids consistently.
  • Am I looking for ways to continue to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the culture and context in which the scripture was written?
  • Can others around me say that they have seen Christ centered change in my life?

With these questions in mind I can then look at what I am feeding into my kids and nourishing their minds with. And let me tell you, I am not sure when it happened but the two oldest have stopped loving veggies and only want hamburgers and pizza the majority of the time. Truly, their souls might be getting better nourishment at this point.

All jokes aside, I am so grateful. The privilege to be a parent isn’t lost on me. Frequently when I lead my kids daily bible lessons and catechism I pray that the Holy Spirit convicts them to turn to Jesus and that they will be called to repentance as they acknowledge that their sin is separating them from the Lord. With very few things for certain in this life I can rest assured knowing who I have placed my hope and faith in and I will continue to pray my children come to know God as their personal Lord and Savior.

Looking back over the last three years, I am not surprised that my son grew and changed. What I had not anticipated was that God had such plans to grow and change me. As our oldest enjoys his final week of preschool I am appreciative for the love, support, teaching, and guidance he has received. I am thankful for the friendships he has made and in turn the friendships our family has made. And lastly as Josh and I continue to raise these little ones into adulthood, I am grateful for my relationship with Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

PS…To our preschool family, our family has been blessed by being in community with you all!

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How We Do Preschool at Home in the Summer

July 10, 2017 by Leave a Comment

I recently shared a picture on Instagram of my kiddos sitting at our kitchen table working on their summer preschool activities. I did this with Caden last year and used the Big Preschool Workbook. I have also used the Kumon books with the kids too and really liked those as well.

We send the kids to an amazing preschool and each summer the teachers send the kids home with a packet to work on over break. We usually finish these activities fairly quickly and I decided to search the internet to see if I could find more of these already created packets. Now that the kids are getting older I wanted to be able to focus more on certain topics that I wasn’t able to find as many worksheets for in a store bought workbook.

Thanks to google I discovered the website Teachers Pay Teachers. It has soon became my favorite go to website for finding no prep or low prep learning activities for Caden and Maisie.

There are so many amazing resources available on this website. I am linking to a few of my favorites below. This resources are worth the money in my opinion.  For reference my children have recently turned 5 and 3.

My Favorites from Teachers Pay Teachers for Summer Preschool at Home

ABC Cut and Paste Fonts Maisie really likes these pages. Your little one will color a capital and lowercase letter, write it, and work on cutting and gluing.

Preschool Summer Packet (Pre K Summer Review Homework) This is a great packet that reviews skill during summer vacation between Pre K and kindergarten! This is a NO PREP packet and includes TEN WEEKS of fun printable and there are TEN WEEKEND printable activities, motivational certificate, reading log, student checklist and cover page!

Preschool (PreK, Pre-K) Summer Review – Summer Homework This pre-kindergartenl summer review packet is packed full of engaging homework review activities that will bring a smile to their sweet faces as they work on math, fine motor, language arts!

Summer Review Preschool No Prep Worksheets & Activities This book contains a collection of summer themed worksheets, suitable for use with children in Preschool, Pre-Kindergarten, Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten (Prep).

Summer Review NO PREP Packet (Preschool) This Summer Review NO PREP Packet is filled with hands-on, engaging and FUN resources that get kids excited about learning!

Summer Review This book contains a collection of Summer-themed worksheets intended for use with children in Kindergarten (Prep) at the end of the school year for revision purposes.

FREE Resources on the Internet

There are so many great resources also available for FREE! Here are a few that we use for our home preschool during the summer.

Spot and Dot Alphabet Pages These are excellent for helping your preschooler work on their hand-eye coordination, their fine motor skills, and so much more! We use the Do-A-Dot Markers for this activity.

Number Playdough Mats Maisie really enjoys this activity.

Create Your Own Handwriting Sheets I use this to generate sheets for the kids names. I finally got smart and instead of printing one out for each kid everyday I put the paper in a clear sheet protector. The kids now use a dry erase marker and once a week get to practice with a pencil.

Additional Supplies

Books

The Preschool Binders

Caden and Maisie each have their own binder with separate activities in them. A few of the worksheets overlap but for the most part they are working on different skills. The binder is filled with worksheets in sheet protectors that can be reused and also holds their other worksheets that they will write on, cut up, color, or glue.

I found it easier to make the binders up before the summer because everything is now in one easy to find place for each kid. This makes it perfect and less time consuming for me in the morning because I am not rushing to print worksheets off or figure out what we are going to do.

Our Summer Preschool Routine

Now that you know a few of the resources we use here is what a typical morning of summer preschool looks like in our home. I like to do the bulk of activities in the morning because the kids are more rested and more likely to be excited to participate.

Preschool happens 4 days a week in our house on Monday – Thursday morning. After breakfast we pack up and head out to the pool for swim lessons at 8am. By 9am we are back home and ready to start. I put Jesse down for his nap and we have a little over an hour before he wakes up.

Here is what a typical morning looks like for us.

Names

The very first thing we do is practice writing names. I use the worksheet generator I mentioned above that is FREE. We sit at the kitchen table for this.

Calendar, Bible Verse, Pledge

After they finish their names they sit on the floor and wait for the other to finish. Caden usually finishes first so he sits and looks at a book.

 

We talk about the days of the week, what day it is, recite the bible verse they are working on for Sunday school, and say the pledge of allegiance. I made a calendar buying a poster board from the dollar store. It took about an hour to type, cut, and either tape or glue everything to the board.

Centers

We don’t actually move around for these in our home but we do rotate out activities at the kitchen table.

For our centers I try to change up what the kids do each day. One day we may focus on Math. For Maisie this will be using her numbers play dough charts and for Caden he works on basic addition and subtraction.

Caden really enjoys “Write the Room” and I try to do this at least once a week for him and change out the words. If you are unfamiliar with this activity you can google how to it works. It is more time consuming on your end but if you need to work with another child individually it is a great way to have one occupied so you can focus on the other.

Gluing and cutting are popular with Maisie and I like to incorporate them into Literacy activities. The ABC Cut and Paste Fonts worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers is great for this!

We use baking trays as magnet boards and find the letters in our names and work on spelling words or we sort the magnets into colors. The kids also like dice games. We will use the trays to contain the dice so they don’t run away off the table.

I could probably write an entire post on centers. The most important thing is to find ways to engage your children while they are learning. Each child is different so what works for one might not work for the other. Celebrate their strengths and praise them often but be sure to correct. Praise for the sake of praise does not translate well later when bad habits have been formed that could have been corrected with just a little extra time.

Recess

It is really hot here in Arizona in the summer so we don’t go outside but we do a family style type workout indoors.

I have set up everything from an obstacle course for them to do or we literally do a workout together. It is not anything crazy but they like running around the house with me and using the home workout equipment we own.

If you have trouble coming up with your own “workouts” check out these options below.

Snack & Story

Lastly, we finish up with a snack and our bible story for the week. I read one story a week out of The Gospel Story Bible. I read the stories in order and we stick with one story a week to talk more in-depth about what we are reading.

Each day I read one of the lessons of TheOlogy and we review the main topics we have already covered from this book. These are short lessons that teach children truths about God and shapes a biblical worldview.

If we don’t teach our children to follow Christ, the world will teach them not to. This is why it is vitally important in our home that Jesus and the Gospel remain at the center of everything. Even in our home summer preschool.

And that was a super long post. Hopefully that answered a few of your questions! I really love all the extra time I have with my kids in the summer and love teaching them. I hope your summer is going well and that you are cherishing your kids if they are at home and creating fun memories with your family :).

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