Evolution of a Blogger

I started writing Life is Not a Cereal in January of 2007, just about 3 years ago. When I first started writing I used my blog to explore my faith. I participated in many Christian memes and focused my entries on living "Christian" in a mainstream world. When I look back I realize that I have grown so much since then. I was in a very legalistic phase and was really making sure I crossed all of my Christian "i"'s and dotted all of my I am a believer "t"'s. I felt confirmed by all the blog comments regarding my faith and it made me feel like I was doing things "right". Slowly I realized that what I was doing wasn't about my personal relationship with Jesus at all. Instead it was about the public viewing me as a good Christian rather than me actually living the life. I was going through the motions without actually internalizing the results of what I was doing. And rather than my online devotion time refreshing me for the day, it was actually distracting me from what was actually important as one online devotion reading slowly led to a blog hop and a blog entry writing that could last more than an hour and a half. So I began to take my prayer life and my fellowship offline. I now do my daily devotion time at the kitchen table the old fashion way--with a Bible and a devotion book. And I get my fellowship the old fashion way too, I attend a church community group with my husband on a weekly basis and have started attending a few different women's meetings through the church as well.

So with that shift I started blogging more about the personal challenges I was going through in facing anxiety and panic disorder. I was going through therapy at the time and working through a lot of different junk. I shared my feelings and experiences about this stuff here on my blog. I now regret doing that. I have learned to that taming my tongue also means I need to tame my fingers and that just because someone made mistakes in the past and I may be hurt or angry and even be carrying around life long damage because of their choices, I don't need to publicly share my experiences. I can choose a different, more private venue to write cathartically. Therefore I also stopped writing about my personal struggles with stress and anxiety.

So I moved on to blogging about parenting and in particular parenting a special needs child. So many people have expressed their thanks for me sharing the information I have shared about Autism and Asperger's Syndrome but my children are getting to the age now where they are getting intensely private about their lives. The issues we are facing now deal with social issues and physical and emotional development issues and though I think others could benefit from the knowledge and experiences we are having, I am not willing to sacrifice my daughter's privacy to share with others in such a public arena. Perhaps when she is older and she gives me permission to share some of her experience I will do that but for now I need to respect my family's privacy and no longer share this portion of our life.

That leaves me with the topics of homeschooling and holidays and crafts. I have drastically cut back on sharing these for 2 reasons. First I no longer regularly read homeschooling blogs because I found that when I read blogs I got a little homeschool envy. I would become interested in what other people were doing instead of what I was doing. I would end up changing curriculum mid-stream and trying new techniques in the middle of the year because I was so inspired by what I read. It ended up being very chaotic for all of us. So I had to wean myself off of all the fantastic creative ideas. That means I spend less time online coming across new inventive ideas that I need to turn into lesson plans so I have less to share with all of you. Instead I am getting my lesson plans straight from the curriculum I have already purchased which makes much more sense from a time management perspective. Second, although I have had many readers tell me they have appreciated what I have written I have also had readers tell me they are overwhelmed by all that I share. They can't imagine getting done what we do. I most definitely do not want to contribute to that especially since a lot of the time I don't even get done what I plan to do. Rather what you are usually reading are my notes about the activities that I would like to do with my girls that I have come across while browsing blogs, craft sites, magazines or books. I'm an English Literature major so I know all about plagiarism and I don't want to engage in that in any way so I actually end up re-writing all the information that I have gathered so that I can post my own original article. I'm sure you can imagine how time consuming this is! So over the past few weeks I have been saving time although hurting a few more trees as I am just printing off the ideas that I want to do and using my paper print outs for my references. It doesn't share the resources with a larger crowd but it keeps me on task and again helps with the time management.

So in the end...I am in a spot where most of the things I have been blogging about no longer make sense to blog about. AT the beginning of the year I felt a calling on my life that something was going to change. I still don't know what that calling is or what it is I am going to be doing but I have a feeling that freeing myself up to have more time to do whatever it is is part of preparing myself for that calling. So at this time I am going to take a writing sabbatical. I'll still be scrapping over on my other blog just for fun but I am no longer going to be spending my free writing publicly. Perhaps with a little distance the bug will bite me again and I'll be motivated to start blogging again but for now, I think this little break is part of what is required of me. Now I'm off to do my real work...my daughter needs a bedtime story and I'm done using just one more minute Mommy's writing and I need to finish this thought as an excuse.

Math for Preschoolers

Sorry for the delay in getting this out, I caught the flu, which turned into bronchitis so it has taken me a while to get back into our regular routine :)

Math for preschoolers is primarily about sorting and classifying, sequencing (putting objects in order), an understanding of colors and shapes, number recognition, and one to one correspondence (meaning show me 3 apples and they can show you 3 apples).

With those goals in mind, it always made sense to me to focus on math on the same day we grocery shopped. I would get the girls involved in the shopping and have them find the green apples and then once we found them I would tell them we need to count out 5 apples and have them count out the apples. Occasionally we would go weigh our fruit and I would have them tell me what number the arrow was closest to and I would then explain that we had purchased 6 pounds of apples. We would progress this way through out the store with me asking them to pick up the yellow box of cereal or the larger container of yogurt.

We also always purchased the ingredients for one kids cooking project since cooking naturally involved practicing working with measuring. Like I said, I'm rather theme-y so I always chose a fun theme based cooking project. My favorite cooking book for preschoolers is Look n' Cook from Mailbox Books. When cooking I focused on helping the kids measure and count things out but I also worked on sequencing by using phrases like, "First we add..." and "Next we need to...".

Finally, on math day we usually played a board game or worked on a puzzle. Some other traditional toys that I always had out on open shelving around the house that provided additional math practice were duplos, blocks, a toy cash register, tinker toys, pattern blocks, lacing beads.

Reading with Preschoolers

I consider preschool the time where we are teaching our children the skills they will need pre-school. Much like a child needs to be able to roll over, creep, crawl, pull themselves up, walk along the furniture, etc. before learning to walk, there are many pre-skills to reading, writing and arthmetic. I spent the time before my children were of formal educational age working on these pre-school skills. In this series I will share will you what these skills are, how we practices them and then I will share our "school schedule".

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"Research and practice show that one simple activity — reading aloud — is the best way to prepare children for learning to read and to keep them reading as they learn and grow." Reading is Fundamental

So we always had one day a week where our focus was on a literature. Depending on where we were living, we attended weekly storytimes at either the library or Barnes and Noble bookstores. If couldn't make it out of the house, I would create my storytime using thebestkidsbooksite.com. They have a storytime page with over 330 storytime themes. Each theme includes a list of picture books, non-fiction books, fingerplays (with directions for the actions), songs, and craft ideas. If you are unsure of how to read aloud and engage your children, Reading is Fundamentals offers some great tips on their site. For lists of books to read with your preschoolers, check out United Through Reading's Library Thing List .

I did not focus on pushing learning to read early because I never wanted reading to be a chore or something they dreaded. Instead I focused on reading always being something fun and special. I made our home a literature rich environment and always had books at kid-level where they could take out the books and pour over the pictures. I also gave each girl a basket of books in her room that she was allowed to "read" in bed. We still have these same practices in play now 8 years later and both of my girls love to read and both of them read far above grade level. So whenever I get people asking me how to teach their preschoolers how to read here is my advice...

Don't worry about that yet, just read to them. Make it fun. Teach them to enjoy books. Make books accessible to them and let them "read" and explore the books by just browsing through them at their own pace. The best way to turn someone off from something is to make it a chore. The best way to make them love something is to show them the joy and enrichment they can get from that thing.

Reminder: Scrapbooking Freebies Have Moved

As a reminder, my scrapbooking content is now posted over at my scrapbooking blog, Scrapalicious Cereal. Here is the freebie you would have missed today if I had not double posted....

Here is my latest mini-kit. It is a bit different from my usual work as I didn't incorporate any commercial use elements into the kit. The reason for this is a bit exciting...

I am actually taking a leap here and competing in the Stuff to Scrap Darling Designer contest for a paid designer position! So with this kit I was practicing creating a mini using the design challenge rules before the contest starts. (I'm a bit nervous about designing without any CU products.) The only thing that wouldn't have fit into the rules was the puffy felt action I ran on the cat. Everything else was scanned or made only with brushes and custom shapes. The contest starts this week so I will be posting a lot more freebeis for you as I participate in the contest. In the meantime....

you can download the cat's meow mini-kit here.

Also, this mini was created as part of the January Color Challenge over at Stuff to Scrap so if you stop over at the January Color Challenge forum, you will be able to pick up a number of additional coordinating freebie mini's.

The Next Series: Homeschooling Preschoolers

Last night I had the opportunity to meet with a wonderful group of perspective homeschoolers from my church. Many of them were excited to get to work educating their preschool age children. So over the next week or two, I will be pulling together some of my thoughts and experiences on homeschooling preschoolers. I hope that you will find this information helpful and interesting and if you have any specific questions related to the homeschooling the under 5 set, please let me know and I will try to address those in the upcoming posts.

In His Service,

Jennifer

Giving Up My Goals and Resolutions to Christ

So in case y'all didn't know I happen to be a big ol' Jesus freak. So when I think about what I want my goals to be for next year, I really think about living my life in a way where I give up more control to Christ. I be a visual person so I created this layout of my goals for 2010:

The journaling includes my verse for the year:

"Forget about what's happened;
don't keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new.
It's bursting out! Don't you see it?"
Isaiah 43:19 (The Message)

And my 3 goals:

1. Be open to His calling and have patience to see what that calling is and how I am to be used for His purpose.
2. Be willing to purge unfruitful branches to live a more productive and rich life.
3. Move past my fear and anxiety to achieve the dreams and goals that I have for myself.

My challenge is to not just try to achieve all of these on my own but to submit all of them to the supremacy of Christ.

Making Beaded African Necklaces

In the Story of the World activity book, one of the suggested activities is to make paper beads with which to bead necklaces. However I couldn't figure out how that activity related to the text. So I decided to do a little Internet sleuthing and found this little tidbit on Wikipedia, "The first signs of jewellery came from the Homo sapiens in Africa. Perforated beads made from snail shells have been found dating to 75,000 years ago at Blombos Cave. In Kenya, at Enkapune Ya Muto, beads made from perforated ostrich egg shells have been dating to more than 40,000 years ago." This ties in perfectly to our unit about ancient African culture.

I plan on explaining to the girls that without proof, we can only speculate as to why jewelry might have been worn by ancient people, but some of the reasons might include storing or displaying wealth or currency; a symbol of status or position; beautification of themselves; or religious such as protection in the forum of amulets.

I will share with them this picture of a Kenya Man (image from Wikipedia Commons)

This is a modern picture but from ancient times until now, jewelry of many sorts has been worn throughout the African continent with men and women wearing bracelets, earrings, necklaces, anklets, nose rings, and other jewelry. Traditionally jewelry would be made from easy to find materials like horsehair, wood, and metal with rarer materials like coral or cowry shells only being added to pieces for the wealthiest members of a tribe. As trade with other counties grew the demand for beads from those countries increased too. Tiny glass beads from
Italy became as valuable as gold and replaced shells, ivory, and fish vertebrae as the preferred beads with which to work. Beaded jewelry from Africa has been and continues to be a something that people seek when they travel to Africa. (from Fashion Encyclopedia)

After sharing this information with the girls, we will make beaded necklaces.