Mom's Home Journal

Some major changes happened in my life about eight years ago.  It all started with marrying my second husband, 4 1/2 years after my first husband had died.  During those years of being single I had developed a good system for running things.  Then, with the new marriage came changes; new husband, move 1400 miles to another state, buying a house, and throw in there a few more babies, all in a few years time. 

Needless to say my system became outdated, FAST.  And with the continual changes, it was difficult to implement a new one.  Once life settled down some, I began to process and started planning a new system.  I am a 'paper and pencil' kind of person so I tried a few of the 'latest, greatest' organizers on the market, but none of them really fit my needs.  With all I had to do in a day, the thought of creating my own was not appealing, but doable if I had to.

Then God provided a ready-made answer, so I didn't have to! =)  Debra, over at Notebooking Pages, had been going through some changes, too, and began creating some planner pages to meet her needs.  I came across some free samples she offered on her website, and was hooked.  Just this summer she has completed a 'for purchase' product that helps one put together a planner that fits your personal needs.    

I am SOLD on this!  I waited for the email that said the product was ready and bought mine right away.  Then when I got my notice that the site was up and running, I was there checking things out.  She has done a good job, and I highly recommend anyone who is looking for a way to be organized, with options to personalize the pages, to check out Mom's Tool Belt.  You will find the link on the right side of this page.

Also, look at the top of the page for the 'Organized Mom' tab.  That page shows how I am using the Mom's Home Journal for myself.

God Bless!

Little Lambs' Primer

When I was expecting my fourth baby I suffered nasty morning sickness.  Since nearly every time I stood up I had to make a trip to the bathroom, I spent a lot of time lying down.  With three preschool aged children who needed to be occupied at the same time, I became creative [as creative as I could considering the circumstances :)].  I kept a paper and pen handy and during that time I drew letters, numbers, shapes and etc. on the paper and then went over them with the children.  The eldest of these three is a mentally challenged child who was kept busy with this, but didn't retain much.  The next child, 3 1/2 at the time, learned her letters, numbers and counting, and shapes, even complicated ones such as trapezoid and parallelogram.

That was aver 15 years ago.  Now I have taken that idea and transformed it into a 'primer' for my current preschoolers.  This notebook does not have consumable activities for the children.  Rather, it has reviewable pages that include the alphabet [upper and lower case], vowels, consonants, numbers, shapes, relative relationships [long-short, big-small], and etc.  There are also pages where some letters or numbers are missing so the child can fill in the blank.  

Repetion solidifies concepts in the brain.  Some children need more repetion than others before they completely grasp something.  By keeping these pages in their own notebook, we can look them over as many times as necessary for each child to understand the concepts well.  Then, the occassional activity page in the working notebook allows each child to  'prove' their understanding.

Check out the freebies for some of these pages.

Praying God's care for you.