It's Been A While

I've obviously been absent for a while as I have been adjusting to motherhood and a new school year. I have seriously scaled back my teaching schedule, and am now only teaching one day a week. This is due to two reasons: 1) I wanted to be home more with my baby boy 2) Enrollment was so low at many of my centers that after paying a sitter, I wasn't breaking even. I'm assuming that low enrollment has been due to the tough economy, as I have never had issues with enrollment in my previous years, and have not done anything different this year.

I miss many of my old students, but am really enjoying this new schedule. I love my time with my son. I love being there for all those special moments. And working one day a week allows me to get enough of a break to stay sane, while doing what I love.

Also, I have plans of pursuing publishing some of my Literacy Launchpad curriculum in some way, shape, or form. I'll keep you posted on that. Teaching one day a week allows me to test run new stories and lesson ideas that I might include in my publishing pursuits. Perfect!

I'm also offering Literacy Launchpad classes at my local rec center, but for whatever reason those never seem to take off (I have offered them in there in previous years too).

That's an update on what I'm up to. I will be posting lesson ideas and reflections again soon!

Time To Work?

For the past nine months I have been trying to figure out how I will juggle motherhood and Literacy Launchpad. I always thought the two would mesh so seamlessly, but now that I'm dealing with the reality of managing both, I'm wondering how I will fare. I am a perfectionist, very all or nothing. So how can I be the perfect mom and the perfect teacher? They're both such time consuming jobs.

People juggle teaching and parenthood all the time though. I guess it's something you adjust to? I haven't even begun doing Literacy Launchpad work this summer in preparation for the school year, and already I feel as though there aren't enough hours in the day. I hope my life doesn't spin into total chaos once the school year officially begins...

So it's time for me to start working on lesson planning and such. I sorted through my lesson plans and have decided that I wasn't completely happy with how some of my September lessons went that are slated for repeat this year, so I want to come up with a new month of lessons for September. Hopefully I'll find some great inspiration. I also need to prep for enrollment kick-off; renew insurance and business licenses, line up a great sitter for my little one, etc. etc. Yikes!

So how do all you teaching mothers do it? I know there are many of you out there. Got any tips or encouragement? Can it be done??

He's Here!

My little bundle of joy arrived on the 4th of July. He's our little firecracker! Everything went awesome with the delivery and we've been home for a couple weeks visiting with family and adjusting to life with a newborn. Newborns sleep a lot, but yet it still seems tough to get much done with him around... I'm hoping I get the hang of all this mommy stuff soon and get back to blogging more regularly.

The Countdown

I have about 2 and 1/2 weeks left till my due date. Wow! This pregnancy has flown by, but now suddenly feels like it's dragging. I can't wait for this baby to arrive. I can't believe I'm going to be a mother. It's completely surreal to me! I can't even imagine what that moment is going to feel like when I first hold my baby. I get all verklempt just thinking about it! Talk amongst yourselves...

O.K... better. So, what is my plan for the next couple weeks?
- I'm going to try to get a jump on some planning and organizing for the fall. I know Literacy Launchpad will be starting again before I know it, and time is going to slip away from me once my little one arrives.
- I am going to start working on preparing some Literacy Launchpad curriculum to submit for publication. It's a dream, but one that will surely never come true unless I start doing something about it.
- Maintaining my house cleaning. I don't know when I will have to rush off to the hospital, so I'm hoping to keep my house in a somewhat constant state of relative cleanliness.
- Sleep. I'm a nap person, and I've got to enjoy my uninterrupted sleep while I can
- Blog surf. I'm addicted, and again, probably won't have tons of time to feed this addiction once baby arrives.

That seems like an ambitious list for 2 weeks. I'll leave it at that.

Three Cheers for Preschool!

I truly believe that many of the problems we deal with in this country could be greatly reduced if we (as a society) invested more in our children and youth. That's why I'm so passionate about helping children fall in love with reading at an early age.

I just received a link to an ABC News video from Reading Rockets... Food for thought on early childhood education. Check it out!

Garage Sale Library

Went garage sale-ing today and hit the mother load at one sale. I bought about 18 children's books, and could have ended up with many more if I hadn't stopped myself. I complimented the seller on her great book stash and she revealed that she was a teacher and does home schooling... I knew it! :) I could definitely tell she had some teacher in her by how well kept the books were. I bought some Ezra Jack Keats titles, some Don Freeman, Vera Williams, Charlotte Zolotow, to name a few. Then at another sale I picked up some Captain Underpants and Time Warp Trio books. Woohoo!

Want Some Books?

I recently discovered a great way to acquire new books... for free! Well, it's not completely free, I guess. There's a website called Bookmooch that lets you exchange books with others. You can post books of your own that you don't want anymore. Then when you ship someone your book(s), you earn points that you can then use to get books you want that other users have posted.

I just joined today, and was not able to find a couple books I was specifically looking for, but I'm hoping I'll have some luck with it when I poke around a little more and actually get some of my own books posted! It's free to join! Try it out! The more people that join, the more selection there will be!

And don't forget, you can apply this same concept at your local used book store. Sell them books you don't want anymore, get store credit, then buy new (used) books!!