How did it all start.

Well, a couple of day ago we started our lapbooking adventures. I did not know about lapbooking until I stumbled across the word in a conversation with a friend. So I did what most people do now-a-days, I googled it. Boy, was I amazed. So I joined some message boards and lurked for quite a while--reading and downloading all the free resources I could find. Then it was time to start school. We did real well for about 8 weeks and then stuff just started falling apart. I was starting to prepare for church activities (Sunday School Veggie Connections and Awanas Puggles) and my oldest daughter American Girl Book Club (I am in charge of doing crafts) for the upcoming year.

I love all that I do but I do tend to obsess and be a perfectionist when I comes to preparing activities/crafts/or whatever it may be. I feel that if it is not perfect, it will reflect badly on God, my church and my support group. WHAT AN EGO I HAVE! Due to that attitude (which I think became very prideful and sinful), I went in total shutdown on everything except what I was focusing on. So, schooling was kicked to the curb for about three weeks. (Please understand that I don't advocate mediocracy--I just went waaaay far in the other direction.)

When I came up out of my self induced workaholic attack, I just could not get started back with schooling. The kids had gotten out of the routine and I was completely unmotivated. When we did try to school, it was horrible. I love the curriculum that we have (Sonlight). As I said, I just could not get motivated. After about a week of that nonsense. I decided let's just do something fun. This is where lapbooking entered into our homeschool journey.

My youngest wanted to do the "All About Me" lapbook from http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/ Boy was that fun. You will see in the next post the pictures and the modifications I made so that it would work for my youngest.

My oldest wanted to do a Kaya: American Girl lapbook. We got a lot of the templates from Homeschool Share (HSS) http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and then I added Kaya graphics from various sites to personalize them. The main source was http://www.americangirl.com/. Pictures will also be in another post.

I BECAME HOOKED. I am already planning our next lapbook. DD1 is working on an election lapbook with her dad and we are going to do a lapbook with Mr. Popper's Penguins (from HSS).
I think I am going to do a Mother Goose lapbook with DD2. (not quite sure though)

I am learning to slow down and enjoy the ride. I am trying not to be obsessed with completing Week 1 completely in Week 1. I want to instill a joy of learning and discovery in my girls. Not just the "learning what the teacher wants and memorizing that" attitude. I did not enjoy school--I have a second chance. I get to enjoy it with my girls. Boy, I am learning to have fun.

I want to primarily devote the blog to our lapbooking adventures but I am sure I will stray away at times to post some of our fun non-lapbooking adventures also.

TTFN

dottie