Day: January 7, 2019

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

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The day is almost gone and I was thisclose to forgetting to mark the anniversary of my opening up shop here on WordPress.  Eleven years ago I wrote my first post and have maintained a steady schedule since then.  I posted 280 times that first year and it was my most prolific. Since then it’s gone done a bit every year with last year clocking in at 113.  Amazingly, the number of views and visitors while taking a dive in 2016 has gone up considerably the last two years.

I didn’t start this blog to crunch numbers and I don’t stick around because a few more people have found their way here.  I’m still here writing and connecting because of you, my fellow book nerds.  May we continue to support each other for many more years to come 🙂

Sundays with Gage – Presidents

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Over the years I’ve tried variations of ‘mom school’, but for the most part let it go by the wayside when he started 1st grade over a year ago.  Too much school work and way too many activities. But, well, mom school was never really about hard learning.  It was more for fun time spent learning together – usually both of us.  I like teaching and connecting and learning with my son and decided to bring back mom school.

In December (when we had time) we did 5-10 minutes learning about kids who did amazing things and it was fun.  But with the new year we started something with a little more stretch.  We are spending 5-15 minutes a day to study each President in order.  The first four are pretty easy since big things were happening.  I don’t know how it will hold up over the next 41 (and the 45th? it will take all of the diplomacy this Libra possesses).

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So, my goal was to read a book and then choose one thing that we could do.  Jason and I visited Mount Vernon last month and I picked up a book of paper dolls.  It took me more time to cut out George and his stepson and all of their clothes than we actually used them, so not sure that was a win for me, but they are cool.  For John Adams we had a 10 minute drawing contest to see who could draw the best picture of the first White House and then we called Jason in to see who did the best.  I was robbed.  For Thomas Jefferson we read through the two picture books shown Thomas Jefferson Grows a Nation and Worst of Friends and then Gage traced from a photo America before Jefferson was President and after the Louisiana Purchase to see what a big deal it was.  James Madison’s book was okay and after we learned that the White House burned to the ground in 1812 Gage went to work burning down the White House he drew  two days earlier, lol.  We also watched a video on the story behind the Star Spangled Banner.

So, as you can see, we aren’t doing anything mentally strenuous here, but it’s nice that we can spend a few minutes together each day reinforcing that knowledge and learning are important.  I want him to remember that learning can be fun and so can his mom (when she wants to be ;)).