Busy Days

This week starts our busyness. It seems that all of our extracurricular things are happening now. Our co-op, JAM, and dance all begin this week.

We love our co-op. I love it because of the topics that the other moms teach. The kids love it because they get to be with their friends. I am doing a lapbook this year about inventors. It was one of the freebies that I got and it looked really interesting. I was going to wait until we got a little further in our history, but decided that co-op would be a good time. We may not ever get to it if I put it off too long. I downloaded a unit study on forensic science that is for high school. Good luck remembering it when the kids get old enough. In the co-op we get to learn about countries, states, and king and queens of England, and this year animals as well. We have added a family to our co-op and are very happy to have them with us. This year we are doing every week, as opposed to every other. That may get dicey, but we're still going to try.

Dance is going to be a little complicated. I dance on the same day as our after school program. We go from dance, after school program, dance. The baby has dance after the program. Whew! Busy, busy days. We are all looking forward to our classes. The big girl is taking hip hop again and I'm taking tap. The changes this year are the boy and the baby. The boy is taking ballet this year. The basis of all good dancers is abllet. The boy has taken that to heart and has decided he wants to be the best dancer he can be. The baby is taking a class that is half an hour of tap and half an hour of ballet. It exposes the kids to different types of dance and opens their eyes to more. The two oldest loved it and I have no doubt the baby will, too.

JAM is also starting. We may not get far this year. We have had no volunteers this year. We worked all last year with a core group of four volunteers. The same group is at it again this year. We do what we can, but when you have 32 kids, it's kind of hard to control them all with four adults and one teen. I need to type a form for the parents that outlines our policy on behavior and punishment and how we expect the kids to act. If we start the program with many, many kids this year, we will definitely need a policy. We don't usually have behavior problems, but it helps to be prepared.

This month we are also doing the veggie co-op on both days. It's Thursday morning. I like to have some time with adults, and it's a lot of fun. It also gets us a 10% discount on our order. I need to save anywhere I can. I use coupons at the grocery store, but since we don't do alot of processed foods, it's hard to save on what we do buy. If I can get a discount and have a good time, I'm alright with that.

Along with all that is the library and field trips. We'll see how the activities go and if we need to cut anything out. I don't know what that would be, but we'll have to reevalute anyway. I don't want to be running all over the world this year and neither do the kids. It's hard on them to be in the van all day. It's hard on all of us. We can only do one thing at a time. And there has been talk around my house of investing in a crock pot. We'll see about that, too.

Have a great day!