School time

As many of you know, I am going to school online. I have just completed my second class and am now waiting for my final grade. I am so happy to be going to school right now. It’s a bit of a strain on my life, going to school, working and trying to have a personal life, but if this is what I really want then I have to work for it, right?

I turned in my final paper for my Psychology class on Monday, pretty early in the evening for me, and then got comments back on it the next day. I was so happy. The only problem is that, when I was taking my English Proficiency test I did really bad, both times that I took it. It was just bad timing for me. I took the test, the first time, when Halley was having surgery and then finding out about her cancer, so my mind wasn’t really on schoolwork. Which is understandable considering the situation. It’s been just about a month since I went back to California for a funeral and then I have to read Death, Dying, and Bereavement chapter in the book. It was just a bit a much emotionally for me.

But it looks like I should be getting at least a solid B for that class. Now I am onto English and I am hoping that my writing gets better and easier to understand, LOL. Well I am off to bed. It’s late…….and I have school tomorrow.

I am a bad mommy

Yesterday I was the worst mother I have ever been. I am still beating myself up over it. I was sitting on the floor, restraining my child because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with her. What am I doing? This is not the way I wanted to raise my child and I am sorry that I did it. Please forgive me.

“she can eat it cold”

I have sent home letters with my kids stating the food situation. I am not feeding them. The parents needs to, no MUST, pack a lunch for them. The woman before me was feeding half the kids and was barely surviving. This is not going to happen to me. I want the parents to take responsiblity for their kids, you know? It’s only fair. Well today one of my usual kids came at lunchtime, telling me that she was going to be there for 5 hrs. Fine, great, wonderful but the thing is…..there was no snack. Dont you feed your kid some time after lunch? WOuldn’t you think to pack some food just in case they get hungry? You what this mom did? SHe brought in a can of beans and said………”she can eat it cold right?

Children and manners

Or maybe I should say the lack of manners. Some children just seem to have no manners in this day. They don’t seem to understand that mom is mom and dad is dad, not Richard or Mary. When did calling your parents by their name, at 3 yr old, become ok? I still don’t call my parents by their  given  names and I’m in my 30’s. Am I the only one that finds that odd? When did this become the norm?

Another issue that I have tried to instill in my kids is being quiet at certain events. We have movie time in the afternoon after lunch. It gives them time to settle down and digest their food , and some quiet time for me. We have certain saying for several things like “that;s a bad idea”. Well a big one that I am really pushing on the them is that movie time is quiet time. There is to be no talking or playing with the toys during movie time. It’s a time for the to lay down and watch a movie and that they have to be quiet just like when you go to the movie theater. To many people today talk during the movie and don’t realize just how rude they are. There is a time and a place for talking and once the movie has started and  the lights are turned off, talking is not allowed. There has been a day or two when movie time has been canceled because there was to much talking. True they were upset but why should they be rewarded for bad behavior? There have been few times when I have allowed talking during the movie. We go over the rules before the movies starts so there is no confusion about what is ok and not.

But I don’t want to

What is wrong with kids these days? They think that everything should be brought to them and that they don’t have to do a thing? Why is that? My kids, the ones at my school, are learning t be independent. Not just because at 4 and 5 yrs old they should be able to do a lot of things on their own but also because they are lazy sometimes. I’ve noticed that at snack time they are waiting for me to put the soap on their hands and turn on the water. Now some of them can’t reach the handles so yes they need help, but the others, they don’t need it. They are perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves. Then they sit down at the table and wait for me to bring them their snack bags. As my Dad used to say to us “are your legs broken? You can get up and get it yourself.”  There is no reason that they can’t get their bag, put on their shoes and jackets or wash their hands by themselves. Some of these parents in the world are enabling their children to be lazy. With Earth Day tomorrow it’s gotten me thinking about what they need, not just can, do to make this planet a better one.

We do a lot of things where they are learning about the world around them. We have the garden out front that everyone is responsible for, leftover food is given to the chickens and goats around the corner, and we clean up as a group. These are basic things that I think every kid should know about. It’s not just about being “green” but being aware, being conscious of the world around us. They have to learn that what they do has a consequence to it. That if they leave food out flies will get it. If they don’t water the plants they will die. If they leave a mess someone can get hurt.

What got me thinking about this is that one of my kids today always seems to be waiting for me to do it for her. When it was snack time she was waiting for me to wash her hands for her. When it was time to fill the water bottles for the garden she said she was going to fill up 1 while everyone else did 3, then didn’t want to water anything. It made me aware of the fact that she was waiting for things to be done for her, not taking the incentive to do it herself. She’s a smart girl and should have been able to do this easy but the desire was not there to it. Oh well. To each their own, she will either get on board with what’s going on or the other kids will help her along.

Do a little dance

As the song goes “do a little dance, get down tonight, uh, get down tonight”. (I have to find the link for that song). I got a new student today. My first new student in months, well weeks really but you know what I mean. It’s April and the school year is almost over and I haven’t had a new student since K started in the middle of Feb. I was starting to worry about having students for the day but I think this is the pick me up that I needed. Now I just have to work on the dance classes. I have one student in the afternoon that is taking the class; the others are my younger students that are just here all day. I think what I’m going to have to do is when the new school year starts tell parents up front that if their child is here for the afternoon that they will be charged the rates for the dance classes. Some of them will pull theirs kids out but that’s fine that means that the kids that are still here will paying for that time.

As it is now I was told by one parent, I was a little harsh when it came to the letter about the food. There are foods that are just not good for kids, like sugary foods, so the letter said that those foods will be sent home or thrown away (depending on my mood I guess) but I feel that if they are going to ignore the letter that I send home saying that these foods are not acceptable then they are the ones wasting their money. Yes it is a bit of a scare tactic but it has to be done. It’s not just as a teacher that I say this but also as a parent. I know how my kid gets when she eats sugary foods and I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to spend the day with that so why would I send her to school with that?

So with my new student today I had 5 kids this morning and, as usual, that’s about what I have on a Thursday. Tomorrow I might have one more but that’s the norm. The end of the week is always a little busier then the beginning. I am going to have to put an ad in the paper or something to get another person in here. It’s not that 5 kids is a lot to handle but when we are outside and I have one little one, that 5 becomes a little much.

Party on baby!

The party was a success!! I was so happy with the way the party came out for school. Every time I have a party I’m nervous about how it will work. Whether the kids will like what I have planned, if the projects I want to do will work, whether or not there will be enough kids, that kind of thing. For Easter the party I had planned was a “Bunny” party. We would do lots of bunny themed projects; eat like a bunny and my rabbit Max would come down for the day. Well the bunny projects I had didn’t quite pan out like I was hoping (there was one from Ramblings that I really wanted to try but couldn’t find a picture that worked) but the other projects that I had worked out great. The flowers took a little longer to make then I thought but then again you can’t rush the painters, lol. The gardening we did that day was fine and the movie was prefect “Max and Ruby: Summertime with Max and Ruby”. How fitting right? I thought so.

I’m hoping that the little bit of a party that I have planned for Earth Day, going to the park we usually play, to pick up garbage goes well. We seem to play at he same area all the time and they keep bringing me garbage anyways so we might as well clean the area, right? I know some of the parents, well actually one parent, made a comment to me about cleaning a place that has broken glass and whatnot in it but at the same time do they want us to just leave it and let the kids play there anyway? I would much rather that Savie bring it to me, with gloves on of course, then play around it and get hurt by it. I’ve taken to taking a garbage bag with us on walks anyways because we are always finding garbage when we go out. Plus it will get them in the train of thought for that Sat.’s Farmer Market. They are suppose to be having a big Earth Day party with recycling of clothes, a May Pole and other projects. I can’t wait.

Thank you Super Nanny

As I have mentioned before I love watching Super nanny. A lot of the things she says and the way she fixes things make a lot of sense to me and seem so simple. One of my moms told me the other day that she was doing three things with her daughter at the same time, leaving her at the studio, getting her to sleep without mom, and also getting rid of the pacifier. The first two I kinda had a feeling about but the pacifier thing kinda surprised me since she’s 3 and all but then again there have been kids on TV who were 5 with a pacifier. She asked for my help since she was going to stop leaving her here for awhile since she has regressed and is not having problems with it. When I asked her which one she was more attached to, her sleeping with her or the pacifier, she said the pacifier. I suggested that she do the pacifier first with the thinking being that if she is that attached to the pacifier it will take the longest to get over and be the hardest thing to do, then when it comes time to get mom out of the bed or leave her at school they won’t be as hard to do and shouldn’t take that long. It’s just amazing how she deals with things since she seems to be so book smart and know about the world but can’t seem to manage her own child. It makes me wonder if I went back to school would I lose the ability to cope and deal with what Savie does on a daily basis? Would I look like a frazzled woman when I go to the store with her?

How many times?

I mean really how many times can it possibly be said? How many different ways can it be said? Yesterday one of my kids had cookies, which isn’t out of the norm for this one, and I took them away. Even though yes it was a 100 calorie pack of cookies it was still a high sugar lunch. Now that was at 10 in the morning so there was plenty of time for the sugar she had already had to wear off before Grandma got here. But the time she got picked up she was on the down side of her sugar day. She was weepy and whiney and started crying when she told Grandma about what I did with the food. I told Grandma that it was just a lot of sugar and that I wasn’t mad/upset with her at all. And then today one of the first things she pulled out a Jell-O type thing from Kozy. The second ingredient on it is sugar!!!!! How does she not get it? How many different ways can you possibly tell someone that sugar is not something that their kids need a lot of?

Remarkable parenting

The things you think of sometimes. Savie is such a loving child even with the change in our lives with me working 5 days a week and working such long hours she has been really good about it. I feel for her I really do. I understand that she is going for long days and not getting the time with mommy that she wants but she also gets to spend the evening with daddy, and then most of Sat with him.

Lately she has taken to running up to us and say “I love you” and then running off. Its so cute when she does it, lol. Well I was looking at this post over at Cool Moms Care and it reminded me of something that happened that happened today.

I was outside the studio doing something, I don’t have a clue right now what, and came back in. One of my moms and her daughter, who I will tell you about later, were there. As soon as I walked in the door, Savie came running over to me and said “mommy, I love you”, hugged my leg and ran away. The mom, standing next me, said “I wish my daughter did that”.

Does that make a remarkable parent?