It's SUMMER!! No more rushing around the house in the morning to get two kids off to school. No more driving back and forth and back and forth across town to drop off and pick up. No more scrambling to get my work done during the few hours of quiet time I have while Ellie is at school. SO MUCH time to hang out with my girls, do fun projects, and so much time to fill with exciting and engaging activities for the girls so that I can still get things done. Wait. Maybe I didn't think this through...
One of the biggest challenges I face as a work at home mom is the struggle to balance my work time and my time spent with the girls. During the school year, Ellie was in school 8 hours each week. Sophia was in school 35 hours. That was a LOT of time to run errands, make phone calls, and generally work on anything that needed to get done. I'm so excited to have this extra time with them but I'm also a little nervous about how I will get everything done with two stinky adorable faces around all the time! It's tough to make sure I'm getting my work done when really I just want to spend my time being a mom. But I just gotta do it ;) After all, if I don't work all of my businesses, they don't work themselves which means I don't get paid and eventually, I have to go back to teaching. Nope. Not happening.
I knew I needed to have a good plan for the summer. One that gives me the time I need with my girls, gives me time to work diligently and consistently, and one that I will stick with. They are enrolled in swim school through the NMSU Rec Center and will have class Monday-Thursday mornings through most of July. Super excited to have them in the class and glad we will have a reason to get up and at 'em in the mornings but the class is only 30 minutes so there is still plenty of time in the day to fill. I remembered that one summer when Sophia was tiny, we did a weekly theme thing where we focused on one theme and incorporated reading, writing, math, art, etc. Time to bring it back! I decided to schedule out the summer with weekly themes, activities that I can do with the girls and ones that they can do by themselves while I work at the table with them, and scheduled times for them to go to Grandma's so that I can just focus on work. We started this week and I have to say, it was one of the most FUN weeks I've had with them!
For this week we focused on nature and being kind to the planet.
Monday was memorial day and Tuesday we had to be out of the house all day so we spent the day swimming at Grandmas. Well...they swam all day. I swam a little then headed inside to work. We officially kicked off the week on Wednesday. After swim school we headed to the library. Ellie is in an interesting point in her development. She is still QUITE a handful but now, as long as I give her complete instructions on how to behave in specific situations (ie church, at the store, etc.), she's rockstar! We spent the car ride talking about appropriate library etiquette. She rocked it and we can't wait to go back! We picked up some books about the planet, nature, and animals - for next week. Next up, it was lunchtime and we were right by the Farmer's Market so we stopped for a bite to eat. It was cool, cloudy, and there were some sprinkles! Usually we go to the market on Saturday when it's super crowded so it was fun to check it out during the week!
We spent the rest of the afternoon reading our books and finding fun nature videos on http://discoverykids.com/ and http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/. We especially fell in love with a series called Nature Boom Time which follows a few people as they tour some National Monuments and explore different and unusual forests. Side note: We TOTALLY want to visit ALL of the parks they highlighted! I read Crinkleroot's Guide to Giving Back to Nature to them, Sophia read The EARTH Book to Ellie and I, and Sophia started to read Just Grace Goes Green to herself. Later that day, Ellie told me she had the greatest day ever. Swoon!
Thursday we focused more on math. The girls went out in the yard and collected a giant pile of items: rocks, sticks, leaves, flowers, etc. We used the items to create patterns, make shapes, do some basic addition and subtraction, and sort the items in to piles using different criteria. One of the things I miss most about teaching is watching kids have that "aha" moment. It was cool to watch that happen with the girls - Ellie while practicing an AB pattern and Sophia when I challenged her to create and duplicate a more complex pattern. We also watched some more Nature Boom Time.
Next up was #FunFriday! Keeping with the theme, we decided to go for a Nature Walk. I found this cute activity on Teachers Pay Teachers and we took it with us. Also, Sophia has been asking to go on a trash pick-up for weeks so we incorporated that into our walk. I invited my friend Mayra to join us because she's a long-time fan of Fun Friday and we totally needed to catch up.
We went to the path down by the river to do our walk. I wanted something that was full of nature, but not full of snakes ;) It was so cool to see the girls making observations and not so cool to see how much trash was around. On the way home we reflected on the week, talked about all of the things we can do to help out our planet, and got excited about next week - Animal Week!
In full disclosure, I definitely didn't get as much done on the work end of things as I wanted to but next week we will add their "mornings at grandma's house" into the mix. I had so much fun with them and I LOVED doing things like this with Ellie. She's at the perfect age to do meaningful activities and Sophia really enjoyed helping me guide her along. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel guilty about not working as much this week though. The scales definitely tipped to the girls but I'm ok with that. I'll catch up next week and for now, I'll give myself a much deserved pat on the back for a successful 1st week of summer!
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