The summer has just flown by and books have been trickling into the house from UPS every few days. I've been getting really excited and making all kinds of plans in my head. Today is a lazy day and the perfect opportunity for me to sit down and plan out the first few weeks of school. My idea is to start the last two weeks of August and use that time as review/practice time to kind of "ease" our way into the school year. Instead of starting with our curriculum, I thought we would do some fun math games, read some library books, do a unit study on farmers and go apple picking.
Gracie and Caleb were playing in their room, and Luke was in the living room playing with blocks. I got out every single book we have, a blank paper to brainstorm on, the calendar, and my planner book. I sat down, and what seemed like 75 children descended on me. Luke decided he wanted to sit with me and was hanging on the back of my shirt with one foot up on the bench screaming. In the process he flipped himself sideways and hit his head on the floor. Caleb decided very sweetly to make me paper flowers and began cutting out petals and gluing them on the flowers. Except he can't really cut OR glue, so there were bits of crumpled up glued paper everywhere. Then Gracie realized she was ravenously hungry, which happens about every 20 minutes, and asked me to make a smoothie. So I left the books and two sentences I had written and got out the blender. I put the fruit and juice in and Caleb appeared in front of me, stepping on my feet and pushing the blender buttons. Gracie was telling me a detailed story about the neighbor's dog and Luke was still screaming. I finished the smoothies and poured a glass for Gracie and myself, as the boys don't like them. Except today Luke decided he DOES like them, and was trying to grab Gracie's glass and saying, "Numma numma numma!" over and over again, then opening his mouth wide and saying, "Aaahhh". He came over to me and I crouched down to give him some sips. Caleb wanted to show me his unceasing affection by climbing onto my bent knee and wrapping his arms around my neck. Luke got jealous and did the same, and their combined weight caused me to topple over. It became pretty clear now that I wasn't getting my smoothie back, so I gave Luke mine and started making more.Withing seconds, he discovered it was much more fun to paint things with the straw than actually drink it and now I have really sticky tiles. I poured my second one into a cup and Caleb asked me to come look at what he had made. I followed him to the dining room where he proudly showed me the map he had put up on the wall. Only instead of putting it up with tape, he Elmer's-glued it to the wall. So now I have sticky tiles AND sticky walls.
Then, just as quickly as they appeared, the 75 children were gone, leaving untouched smoothies everywhere. I got absolutely nothing accomplished, except for making a giant mess of books, papers, and smoothies. And now I'm sitting here, wondering if this is how the year is gonna be? If I can't even sit down to write out some plans, how will I teach them anything?
AAAAHHHH!!!
My grandmom has a saying- " I don't know whether to laugh or cry!"- and it has definitely been that kind of morning. I've decided to laugh, but I've also realized that the game plan I had in my head for this year is not going to work. I definitely need to come up with a strategy for keeping the boys busy. I'm planning on including Caleb more, but not formally, and I need to think of something to occupy Luke, whose biggest problem is he thinks he's 5 and should do everything his siblings are doing. Here's what I've come up with so far:
a sandtable
yeah, that's pretty much it...
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