Family Pictures 2012

I almost forgot to put these on here, though I'm sure every single one of you have seen them all on facebook. If you haven't, you can go to either Kris's or my page to see the whole set. These are just a few of the favorites I have that Kris took. Enjoy!

Shame On Me

I don't know what led to me thinking about this today, but I came to a startling realization this morning. I have been really hard on Chloe while homeschooling her. Like ridiculously hard.

In my desire for her to excel and not "fall behind," I tend to forget that she's only 3 and get very frustrated, sometimes yelling, if she doesn't follow my directions on how to write an A, or whatever, just right. Horrible, I know. I feel horrible about it all. I was being the complete opposite of encouraging and was setting her up for failure by expecting so much. 

From now on, I've made the commitment to myself, and to her, to change all that. I want her to learn and succeed, but that doesn't mean she has to be perfect and ready for grade school at 3 years old. From now on, my expectations will be more realistic, and my approach will be much different. 

This whole ordeal has helped solidify my decision a little bit about homeschooling in the future, though. I'm not sold that it's for us, but it's still something Kris and I have to pray about and discuss when the time comes. We shall see. 

In other news, we have a new obsession here in the Savage Household. Here's a hint.

Thanks for reading.

All about the eye

Since we finished studying about the human ear and the sense of hearing, it was time to move onto the next sense: sight.

To kick off our study of the human eye, we made an eye out of a balloon. It's pretty simple, but I'm pleased with how it turned out since I was totally making it up as I went along. It turned out pretty well, though. It was a good learning tool, also. 

All you need is:

-Balloon

-Black Sharpie

-Sandwich sized plastic baggie

-Double-sided tape

-Paper plate (optional)

The process, as I said, is really simple. I blew up the balloon (I probably should've blown it up a little smaller than the average size balloon) and drew on the pupil with the black Sharpie. I used a cheap Great Value paper plate (folding in half and cutting out the center) for the sclera (the white part of the eye) because they're really flexible, and I completely forgot to pick up white balloons at the store. All we had were green balloons around the house, so instead of coloring in the iris, the green of the balloon took care of it for me. I think it actually worked out better this way because with the toughness of the paper plate, I was able to illustrate how the sclera is the tough outer part of the eye that protects everything inside. 

After we put on the sclera, I cut up a sandwich size plastic bag for the cornea (I was out of plastic wrap).

I used the center that we cut out of the paper plate as a template for the plastic. This was also a really good illustration for how the cornea is a clear coating over the pupil and iris. Chloe didn't understand what clear was before, and now she does.

That's basically it. Everything was stuck onto the balloon with double-sided tape. Glue doesn't work with latex, at least not the Elmer's School glue I had. 

Until next time!

So many posts, so little time...

Ok... So it has been longer than I thought it was since my last post. Oops. Oh well. What's done is done, and here goes me trying remember everything that's happened in the last few weeks.

I think part of the reason I haven't posted in so long is because I didn't want yet another post about how I've slacked off on cleaning my house. Guess what. I have. BUT I have been working towards getting back into a groove with my cleaning routine (I will post about that soon... for real this time), and if you read my facebook status last night then you know I got a lot accomplished in a short time. So, moving on past Goal #3.

I was also not really looking forward to posting about this little tidbit... Goal #4. If you don't have the list memorized, it's ok. I don't either. Goal #4 is completely potty train my child. We've had some struggles with this one in the past few weeks. Chloe has been having more frequent accidents, and she doesn't always tell me she has to go anymore. A lot of times, I have to make her go. So that's a bummer, BUT (I'm looking on the bright side today. Goal # 16 is choose joy, you know.) it's not a complete regression. She just gets on this streak of a couple days where she has an accident or two (usually just one thank goodness), and then she's fine for a few days and so on. A bit of progress we've made in this area is that she's still doing great keeping dry at nap, and we've even stopped wearing pull ups for bed. Overnights are sort of hit or miss, but she definitely has more dry nights than otherwise. I'm so proud of her for that. Another thing is, she also had no accidents yesterday while I was watching the Grimm kiddos. That's huge! I don't remember a time when she's ever gone a whole day over there accident free. Way to go Chloe!

This past week, we've completed our lessons on the ear and the sense of hearing, in preschool at home. I'm incredibly impressed with how much Chloe has picked up. We did struggle for awhile with pre-writing skills, and Chloe not wanting to try her best on things. She would actually do things wrong on purpose several times because she just didn't want to do it. But I hope we've moved past that stage, and I'm so proud of her for making such great strides in that area. Goal #5 is going well!

Goal #6 is also going well. As you know (if you saw this post), I have my GED study guide. I took the pretest awhile back and have begun making my way through the book. I scored an 87% on the pretest, which I'm happy with considering I had to try to reteach myself how to do a lot of it on the fly. The math section is what brought down my score, and that really doesn't surprise me. I'm happy with how quickly the chapters I've read through are coming back to me, and I'm also making more sense of old stuff with this new desire to learn it all. So things are good, just slow going. I have so little time to myself to even attempt to accomplish everything I want to. It's sort of getting to be a bit overwhelming...

Obviously I'm working on Goal #7 right now... becoming a better blogger... and though I'm already planning Chloe's birthday party/parties in my head, it's way too early to share any of the details. If you follow me on Pinterest, you might have some understanding of Goal #8 this coming year. So moving onto Goal #9! I'm really excited and pretty proud of myself for this one. A couple of weeks ago, I wore a plain black, long-sleeved tee and jeans, but what I'm excited about is the fact that I did something extra that I would have never, ever, ever done before. I put on my winter scarf. That's it. That's all I did, but it made such a cute outfit. The old me would have never put on a scarf if it wasn't below freezing and definitely not strictly for fashion purposes, but I did! I wish I had taken a picture to post on here, but who wants to take a picture of themselves, seriously? I sadly don't have this ingenious, or the wardrobe, to accomplish something like this every day, but I have been trying! That's the goal.

Skipping all the way down to Goal #15... I'm happy to inform you that Project: Get Out of Debt is going well. Not great, but well. Since June or July (I forget), we've managed to pay off about $1,000.00 of the $4,000.00 we borrowed. I wish it was more, but I'm ok with it. I hope to take the amount still left well under $3,000.00 by the end of the month. *fingers crossed*

Last, but definitely not least, Goal #17 to become a better picture taker has been in the works for a couple of weeks. But our "lovely," finicky, Missouri weather has ruined all effort so far to get Chloe's picture taken... I will update on this when it finally happens.

It's been a long one, folks. If you stuck it out through the whole thing, I appreciate you. Until next time...