Mommy Madness

Ridiculousness in the school system!

2012-05-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

Saw an article about this on Yahoo! news and was disgusted! Patrick Gonzalez, a student at Woodlake Hills Middle School, Texas is facing in-school suspension for getting a haircut in the likeness of San Antonio Spurs, forward, Matt Bonner.

The problem lies in the school dress code, which my daughter's school and probably many others across the country, have very similar write ups.
Hair:
Must be neat, clean and well groomed.
No type of head covering, cap or hat, hair rollers or long-handled combs may be worn inside the building.
Sideburns must be kept neatly trimmed and must not extend below ear level or flare at the bottom.
Symbols and/or styles which are identified with gang membership, affiliation or representation shall not be allowed.
Extreme hairstyles and/or coloring cannot be a distraction to the educational process.Notched eyebrows are prohibited.
Opinions will vary but, I don't understand how this would be a distraction. Yes, he would be, possibly the coolest kid in school for a day or two. The new will wear off and what is left but a really cool haircut! I mean, really, if it had been a picture of say the school principal or the Governor, would it still have been a "distraction"? Hair will grow out, at least he didn't get a tattoo! Not sure the school was looking for this kind of attention, now they are in the media spotlight and under public scrutiny!

I think kids NEED to have some form of individualism. I say, Good for him to actually have a positive role model to follow. The picture could have been of some gang banger or rapper or even our current President(LOL couldn't resist).

My random thoughts for the day!

2012-05-16T23:30:00.000-04:00

Well I have started compiling materials so I can workout a lesson plan over the summer. It is hard work! I am assuming this will get easier as time goes on. My poor printer on the other hand will not recuperate I'm afraid... Must shop for a new one. Maybe I will look at laser printers this time as I understand they don't use as much ink, I really only need black usually anyway!

Scholastic was having a great sale on their ebooks, so I stocked up on those! Gotta love $1 sales!!!

I met a couple of people that homeschool in my area, several days ago, I am looking forward to joining in with the group soon!

My daughter is officially withdrawn from public school as of the 23rd. She is sooo excited, so is my son! He thinks it is great to get to go to school with his big sister! If she only knew how much he adores her!

Free Flight For kids aged 8 - 17

2012-05-06T22:38:00.000-04:00

Found an awesome freebie today! You have got to go to http://www.youngeagles.org/ and check out the Young Eagles Flight. It is a FREE 15 to 20 minute flight offered by volunteer pilots! Just type in your location, choose the Coordinator that is closest to you, and Prepare to Fly!!!

The purpose is to encourage youth to become pilots. What an awesome experience this would be! Almost makes me wish I was a kid again...Almost! ;-)

Just call me Teacher!

2012-05-06T00:24:00.000-04:00

Beginning next fall I will be a home school teacher to my children.

"Why" you might ask. Well, God led us in this direction, He placed a homeschooling family in our life, and I was intrigued! I constantly bombarded her with questions about how it works, and her children with "are you happy? I mean really happy?" By the way the answer was always a resounding YES! So after much prayer I asked my Hubby what he thought and frankly, I was shocked at how quickly he agreed!

There were other circumstances that led to the decision of even considering homeschooling. For two years my 2nd grader has been bullied. This year she couldn't get away from him, not only was he in her class but he also rode her school bus home, and often had to sit in the same seat as him due to the way they load the buses in the afternoon. By grade and class, so being in the same class they were often seated together. Now before you start asking "why not say something?" I did! I spoke with her teacher first, which was pretty successful! They were separated during class time. During what they call "specials" there were still problems though. Then I spoke to the bus driver, HA! I could have been talking to a brick wall for all the good that did! Oh Well!

So here we are, for a few months now I have been perusing the Internet and various books- looking for home school information. It is all a bit overwhelming! There is so much information out there! I have discovered some important things! I will share a few here:
1. Find out the laws for homeschooling in your state! Often a quick search of "Home school laws in ___" will turn up easy results!
2. You don't have to spend tons of money on curriculum! There are hundreds of resources that are FREE to use. Mostly these are homeschooling parents who want to share their knowledge with others!
3. Find a support group in your area! These are scattered around your state, you just need to seek them out! They are eager to meet new people to share their experiences and knowledge with!
4. Your local Librarian and Board of education are a fountain of information- just ask them!
5. Try to figure out the way your children like to learn. Will they do better with books and worksheets? Maybe. If they have gone to public school that is the only way of learning they know! But there is so much more out there!
6. Let your children have a say in what they want to learn! It will get them excited just to know that they can choose some of what they learn!

We are blessed to have wonderful families who support us and our decisions for our children! This may not always be easy, and it may not always be fun, but it will always be an adventure! I will cherish the extra time that I will now get to spend with my kids. I will share in their triumphs and witness them first hand, instead of hearing about them at a school conference!

In the days to come I will be sharing some of the awesome information I have found online with the hope that it will help others that are journeying down this path. Stay tuned! Feel free to subscribe - I love followers! :-)

Cobwebs everywhere!

2012-02-22T15:03:00.000-05:00

Gotta clean the cobwebs out of here!

This will soon become my homeschooling blog, a place for family and friends to catch up with my family happenings!

Finished

2011-01-21T12:58:00.002-05:00

Finished another weeks challenge!

I have finished the room exchange, I have purged and condensed seasonal boxes, and am just waiting for my hubby to carry 2 boxes for me one is full of yardsale items and the other has my collection of dolphins in it! I have gone through all our books and have 2 boxes full to list on http://www.paperbackswap.com/ next week.
Some before and after shots of storage/ craft room. Sorry I don't know how to do a side by side. :-(

BEFORE

AFTER: notice the empty tote and crate stacked together :-)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It isn't perfect but it is a huge improvement! I am taming my mess one room at a time and that makes me a very happy mommy! A huge thanks go to Laura over at http://orgjunkie.com/ for posting the challenge 52 weeks of organizing!

Moving ahead!

2011-01-18T11:25:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend we finished switching the storage room and the playroom – sorry I forgot to take pictures of the before but here are some of the after shots!

The children are much happier to be in the bigger room!

All these large toys take up so much space!

The train table is huge but the kids love it!

The room the toys were in now filled with boxes.

That's my huge pile of seasonal stuff in the corner there.

Mostly books to be gone through.

I will be combining this week and next week’s challenges, since they are of the same area and I need time to prepare for my daughter’s birthday party. She has decided she wants to have a sleepover birthday – so I will be concentrating on planning that. It will be interesting to keep 7 or 8 girls entertained all night but I am sure everyone will have a blast!

I am excited to get into this next challenge – I have boxes of things I haven’t seen since we moved to this house almost 5 years ago. I am sure I will be purging quite a bit of stuff, since I haven’t needed them for all these years, I doubt I will suddenly have a need for them!

I will update as I have time.

Back after a long weekend!

2011-01-18T11:05:00.001-05:00

Well, we completed last week’s goal of purging toys and making room for Christmas gifts! My kids’ rooms look great or as good as they will get for the near future! They purged so much stuff we now have room to grow, which is a great thing because my daughter’s birthday is at the end of this month and my son’s birthday is in March! We managed to fit my daughter’s large Barbie house in her room, which thrilled her and made it much easier for her to get rid of stuff!

Those baskets on the shelves were overflowing with toys, and her new Barbie doll house she got for Christmas.

Her game and craft shelf a bit messy but everything fits nicely.

My daughter's bookcase she loves the big cubes!

Her closet looks SO much better!

My son's bookcase- it was full of baby books, but I bagged all those up to give away!

His toys all organized in these bins- I need to make some basket tags though!

My son's closet- is much improved!

Progress FINALLY!

2011-01-14T11:59:00.000-05:00

Persistence pays off! My kids forked over lots of toys today! I am so proud of them, lots of hugs and kisses all around! They both went through their toys and put in a box any they didn’t play with anymore. I had to help very little as my daughter was helping my son understand the process! They both had over flowing boxes! My daughter then went through her books and handed down lots for my son to enjoy, now I have to go through my son’s books and get rid of the baby board books to make room for the “new” ones. I hadn’t thought about this step- my daughter did it by herself. I will probably have to exchange bookcases too I think my son’s is too small for the quantity he now owns!

I took a picture of the pile of toys they let go. It was quite a large pile! Under all those larger toys are a whole lot of little toys. Did I mention I am proud of them?

Free hand washing timers! = EXPIRED

2011-01-13T13:15:00.001-05:00

The American Public Health Association is offering 3 completely FREE hand washing timers. Answer a few questions and they are yours. Of course this is a * while supplies last offer so hurry!

~~http://action.apha.org/site/PageNavigator/timer_form~~

Toy purge!

2011-01-13T08:58:00.000-05:00

Having my children home all day due to the heavy snows that pounded Georgia has made this week difficult to say the least. Wrangling toys away from children is the equivalent of taking a fresh kill away from a lion! It is not an easy task, but I am persevering! I will complete this task this week and get all the Christmas toys put away.

On a side note: we are loving the snow that has fallen over the south this week! The hill that seems so ridiculous any other time of the year - has been a great beginners sledding hill. At one point we had at least five other neighborhood kids sledding on our little hill. Our dog, which we adopted just this past summer, was hilarious to watch in the snow! She is a border collie mix and was springing around the snow like a jack russell terrier.

My family is happy that I stockpile food now, as all the grocery stores in our area have lots of empty shelves. We didn’t lose power to which everyone is extremely grateful! Thanks go to God for keeping us safe and sane!

I am slightly sore this morning after helping my husband shovel snow and ice off our driveway yesterday. I am happy we got it done, but I understand now why people charge so much for this service in the northern states, it is hard work! We had at least 6 inches fall in our yard and it was beautiful! Too bad it all has turned to ice now, no more snowball fights allowed.

This picture taken while it was still snowing a little, no one had been out to play in it yet so it was all still very beautiful and undisturbed!

The Challenge!

2011-01-12T09:36:00.001-05:00

Here is an interesting organizing task I ran across. Laura over at http://orgjunkie.com/came up with a great organizing challenge called 52 weeks of organizing. You can find a checklist here http://orgjunkie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/52-wks-of-organizing-checklist.pdf. I have developed my list and have begun tackling my projects already. Here is my list for the next three months and even though I had started a week late I have already caught up and slightly surpassed my goals for these past two weeks!

Jan 2: Take down Christmas decorations and purge any unwanted items. Set up a dropping center in garage for sale and donation items from around the house. I must remember to remove these items also when the boxes get full.

Jan 9: Go through children’s toys and purge, purge, purge! Get new Christmas toys put away.

Jan 16: Flip playroom and storage areas.

Jan 23: Go through all boxes in storage area and purge. Reorganize and purge seasonal boxes.

Jan 30: Sort through books, and list on http://www.paperbackswap.com/ those I don’t want.

Feb 6: Begin sorting for children’s consignment sale.

Feb 13: Continue sorting and tagging for sale.

Feb 20: Straighten lower kitchen cabinets.

Feb 27: Straighten upper kitchen cabinets.

Mar 6: Move pantry overstock into basement and cleaning supplies into laundry room.

Mar 13: Tackle some photos. Complete at least one full album this week! I am a total slacker when it comes to pictures- I take forever to print them out, and then they sit for another lifetime waiting to be put into albums.

Mar 20: Begin garage clean up. Get rid of all cardboard boxes and place items into plastic totes, straighten shelves, and clear out kids’ toys.

Mar 27: Continue garage clean up. Straighten lawn and garden supplies, move totes to designated area in storage, move table to craft room, then gather all craft supplies and put in craft room.

I will try to include pictures of my progress, some before and after shots, although I don’t have any photos of my projects I have completed so far. This should be a productive year if I can stick with the challenge!

I challenge you to try this also; everyone has those little projects that just never seem to get done, well this is your chance. Make small goals for yourself and stick to it! I can do it and so can you!

Welcome!

2011-01-11T22:04:00.000-05:00

My name is Crystal and I am happily married with children. My daughter is 6 and my son is 2. I am a stay at home mom and feel my “job” is to save my family money! I hold consignment sales twice a year, shop at thrift stores (yes Goodwill too), and love to find a good yard sale! I love coupons -this is my main way of saving money. In the grocery store my kids love to race ahead of me to collect coupons from the blinkie machines. Are mine the only ones that do this? I never see other children waiting patiently for the little red box to spit out just one more coupon.

Check back in tomorrow for an interesting organizing task.