Don't Neglect Your Great Gift

For MOPS yesterday the kids got a visit from John Fredericks the Channel 3 News weatherman. I guess he taught them basic weather principles and they got their picture on the news this morning!

The mothers had a speaker, Jennifer Laughrun.  She gave a very motivating speech on working on our marraige, especially, taking care of our husband.  I really took great notes, on my "Sabrina School" pad of paper by the way, but to keep it short, here are just a few things that I thought were really great...

-The biggest thing that will help your relationship is to pray for your husband and to pray with him.

-The male ego is what keeps men driven, providers, etc. so make your husband look big in other peoples eyes, especially in your children's eyes.  Let him know you are his biggest fan.

-If you have high expectations and low gratitude for your husband you have deflated him.

-Have fun.  Get out of the house and do something together that he likes.

-Take care of him.  Is he the type of person that would really appreciate it if you organized his closet?  Or made him his favorite meal?  Or surprised him with a gift?

In the end Jennifer said, "Don't neglect your great gift."  Telling us that our husbands are a gift from God.

WORKSHEET DAY!!!

This morning Joey is still home with the flu and I was so not in the mood to do school. So today was WORKSHEET DAY!!! And that's exactly how I said it, WORKSHEET DAY TODAY !!! With kids, I always feel that enthusiasm is key. I printed off various worksheets I found online and copied their Math and told them that as soon as they finished their packet of worksheets and practiced the third article of faith, I would read them a book and we would be done. Here are the various websites that I got some good worksheets from:

handwritingworksheets.com lets you type in whatever word or words you choose and puts them in dotted tracing format for writing practice.

busyteacherscafe.com has a printable venn diagram, bingo game, compare chart, and lots more that I haven't discovered yet. I used the printable word web and had Luke and Isabel write their names in the center and then things they thought describe them on the outside.

abcteach.com has a lot as well. Word scrambles, word searches, crossword puzzles. I used the alphabetical order worksheets.

The book I read to them today was A my name is Alice by Jane Bayer illustrated by Steven Kellogg. A very young child alphabet book, but we made it older by having our laptop right there, any animal we'd never heard of before we looked up on Google Images. We had to look up, echidna, emu, ibis, ibex, jackal, kiwi, lemming, loon, nutria, newt, quahog, serval, unaus, vole, and zebu.

Oh, speaking of enthusiasm is key, Luke was bored and wanted to play a game so I asked him, "Have you ever played Chess against yourself before?!  YOU HAVEN'T?!  Oh it is so fun."  When really it's that mom has a thousand things to do and does not want to sit and play a game (I know, I'm a bad mom today.)  Thankfully, Joey is playing Chess with him now.

Sabrina School Pad of Paper!

In my mail yesterday I received a gift from my dear sister-in-law, Melissa. It was a pad of paper she had had made with the logo "Sabrina School" at the top. I was very excited about it and showed Luke and Isabel. Isabel said, "Mom, it's like you're about to cry tears of joy." Which, silly as it sounds, I was! Thank you Melissa, I am very touched that you thought of me and that you read my blog. I love you!

This morning as we were making our new February calendar, I taught Luke and Isabel about leap year. I then explained (or really tried to explain) why we have a leap year. We played Go Fish, I have a Science movie called Planet Earth I might show them later and maybe Luke can work more on his board game he is inventing, but other than that, I am done for the day. Joey is home sick in bed and I need to get some cleaning done, so as far as I'm concerned, school's out!