Appreciated

It's my favorite holiday of the year (besides Christmas Eve):  Teacher Appreciation Day at Staples!

Once a year, just before school starts back up (well, like a month before for us ... but less than two weeks for the public school kids), Staples hosts an appreciation celebration for teachers.  Yes, that includes homeschool teachers, too.

Some Updates & Stuff

First of all, I have to share with you a cute homeschooling story because I've waited two days for an opportunity to blog it and finally, here I am.

For our 7-year-olds, who are just in the beginnings of learning to read, we do a "Word of the Day" most days.  These are service/sight words that come from the Dolch word lists.  The other day, our word was: at.

When we introduce the word of the day, I try to get them to sound it out (some of them are hard to sound out like "the" and are better memorized) and then we play a rhyming game with the word before having them each create a complete sentence (verbally) using the word.

So on the at-day, they listed off some obvious rhyming words: hat, mat, cat, rat... and then I gave them some clues for a few more.

Wacky Wednesday

Z and I got up early to get him down to the orthodontist appointment this morning.  As we turned out of our street onto the main road through our neighborhood, Z suddenly said, "I don't remember the last time I stepped in gum."

I asked, "What made you think about that?"

He said, "My shoes."

First Real Coupon Victory

I just got back from Target where I saved more than I spent.  It was incredible.  Mostly, I stuck to only purchasing things we needed (now or later, i.e., Christmas wrap for next year).  I felt so good for the savings I created for our family with only a few extra minutes of strategizing before heading out the door to the store.

Let the Shopping Begin

Everyone knows that the economy hasn't been the best this year for most people.  We are among some of the fortunate who have not felt quite the crunch hundreds of thousands of others have felt the past couple years.  There's been belt tightening around here, but we have yet to lose a job or a house to the bank, so I consider ourselves abundantly blessed in that regard.