oh i can’t tell you how happy i am to be past another babyfest. don’t get me wrong, i LOVE babyfest! otherwise i wouldn’t be doing it. its my baby! i helped create it! but it is a LOT of work and a LOT of stress…and its always nice to get past it and revel in the success of it and take a break til next year’s planning gets underway.
we had about 1000 attendees this year! woohoo! that’s double what we’ve ever had in the past…and that’s WITH a rain date reschedule! the first date was rained out bigtime and we had to combine with the discovery center for the week following (they had an already existing event we piggybacked on.) who knew it would turn out so great? it really was awesome! we didn’t expect many of our vendors to reschedule, but we had over 50! (out of the original 75 or so?) pretty dang awesome!
we’re all very proud of how it turned out!
so now we can get back to our regularly scheduled lives…and i’m enjoying going full speed with maeven’s homeschooling. 2 days ago we instituted “school time” officially (we were more unschooling before, but i don’t think i’m so good right now with unschooling, because its too easy for me, with my personality, to just do nothing…which is NOT what unschooling is about…so i wanted to structure it more) so we have “school time” after breakfast and so far its going really really well and maeven is just soaking it all up and just begging for more school time! i try to do at least one reading lesson from this book:
and yesterday she asked to do another, which we did (so 2 lessons in one day) and later she asked to do another, but we didn’t have time at that moment, other things to do)…she’s getting some writing time too…we’re working on her first book report (which at her age is just a picture about a book she read to me and then i am going to have her tell me a couple sentences about it…so far she’s stuck on the picture not turning out the way she wants…being the artist she is…that is holding her up so i’m trying to figure out how to help her along to move on to the next part…)
and lots of math time with the workbooks i have purchased for her to use until i get a curriculum worked out. she’s LOVING it! i never thought i’d actually BUY workbooks…i’ve always been so against them…but she loves them! and i keep thinking that as long as that’s not ALL i use for her (we have hands on materials and i am sorting out how to best use them…she’s not real fond of the bear counters yet…trying to find fun ways to do things still) and keep an eye on her interest level…so far she’s all about going through page after page and just really figuring things out…she’s so cute to watch…the way she knuckles down and gets to work.
and she’s so smart! she figures things out pretty dang fast! especially math-wise. i bought her a 1st and 2nd grade math workbook because i knew she could do the beginning pages…and i was happy to see more complicated stuff as the book went on and i think her and i are going to really enjoy learning more with this book! and i’ve got a book that has math games, so i’ll be drawing from that as well…to add to her math lessons…for now i’m just trying to do SOMETHING, vs the nothing that happened the last few weeks during babyfest chaos. and i’m determined now that i am going to institute a regular routine of SOME kind to the point that when i get to babyfest time again for next year that we will have something in place and we won’t be doing that again…OR…spring is just going to be a big break for us every year. LOL! actually when i was learning about enki i did read in there that we should pick a break time every year that had the best outdoor weather…so spring would be it for here in the central valley. we’ll see what happens when we get to that next year. because i didn’t plan to take a break at all actually…homeschooling the way i am doing it it is fun and we are learning all the time and don’t need a “break” per se. anyway i’ll take it day to day and see what happens…i’m still learning as i go…heck i will always be!
we also are a part of these great clubs from highlights magazine: top secret adventures, mathmania, and which way usa. so she’s getting problem solving and geography and math and practice reading and writing from those as well. pretty cool!
anyway things are just going so well right now, i’m very excited! i have a lot of work still to do to get to where i want us to be…but i’m just so proud that we are getting a mini-routine worked out and that her and i are both really loving “doing school” officially now! of course we still have her science class, her art class, her yoga and gymnastics…plus her bompa time (bompa teaches her about woodworking and yesterday she learned how to change the tire on a bike), and nana time (nana teachers her crafty things)…and we still read a lot…working our way through the little house on the prairie series, which she and i just LOVE! and she has computer games she plays as well…her latest passion is “sea world tycoon” which i think has some more problem solving skills for her to learn with it. its a fun game too! and i’m going to get her back to some of the academic games as well…she has some great ones for phonics and such.
so we’re going really well right now and its nice to finally feel good about it all! now i gotta get off the computer so that we can get back to our day! 🙂
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