Mappin' It Out Monday

Thanks for all the suggestions on names. Thank you, Roberta, who even took the time out to look in the thesaurus for me. You ladies are the best. My beloved's friend came over today because he needed help with a business plan. Since we don't have wireless, I unplugged the DSL from my PC to give it to him for his laptop. My beloved has one of those wireless plug in card things for his laptop, so it all worked out. It left me without internet for a nice chunk of the day, but that's okay. I was busy enough as it was. ;0)



Britney has to go to get evaluated again for a new set of activities for her therapy soon. It got me thinking about a few things. If she gets evaluated every 4 months, maybe I should evaluate all the children every four months and see what or where they need help. It doesn't necessarily have to only be academically, it could be spiritually as well. Anyway, as I was doing some of those evaluations today, I noticed that Kayla doesn't form some of her letters correctly. I think in the long run it is hurting her, as it slows her writing down. I wanted to share some websites I found that, I hope, might be of interest to some of you. I found some animated letters. It shows you how to form the letters, like in which order the parts of the letter should be written. You just have to click on each letter, and it takes you to the animated part. I also included a link to some blank dotted lines. The last link is a website that allows you to type up whatever you want, it comes out in dotted letters, and then you can print it up. How neat is that? I can definitely use that for the younger three when they are ready for it. Even for the lapbooks, you can type up headings, etc. for them to trace. I included both cursive and manuscript.

Animated Cursive Uppercase

Animated Cursive Lowercase

Practice Sheets

Animated Uppercase Manuscript

Animated Lowercase Manuscript

Create Your Own

So this week I will take a good, hard look at each child and write down their strengths and weaknesses both academically and spiritually. I remember listening to a tape on parenting that used a gardening analogy when it came to the childrens' character traits. They said we need to pull the weeds out on the negative character traits, and plant the opposite character quality in its place. So if my child is prideful, yank it out, and plant seeds of humility in its place. Sounds good to me!!

So although this might sound like something that I should have posted on Wed., when I post about the children, it is my goal for this week. I already see some areas, school wise, that I might have dropped some stitches on. It's time to backtrack a bit and pick those stitches up. I'm actually a little scared to look at the final list for each child. I'm scared of the work that lies ahead for us. I know with the Lord's help all will be okay. I'm hoping my beloved will be so bold as to evaluate me. He's normally too nice about it. I wouldn't mind some honest, heart wrenching criticism on my helpmeet, mothering, and homemaking skills....or lack thereof. Does anyone else do this, or something similar?