I don’t recall how I found this book, years ago…but I’m sure I stumbled upon it as I perused the picture book aisles of a book store, as I always do whenever I visit. I just adore picture books. Even now that I have big kids (12 and 17). I can’t get away from them, and my roots, preschool…my first […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 10 in a 12 part series….read part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 This is part 10 in my series on “Homeschooling the Early Years”, where I share what our family did […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 9 in a 12 part series….read part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 This is part 9 of my 12 part series on “Homeschooling the Early Years”, discussing the things that my […]
So I need to get my butt in gear and finish publishing my 12 part Homeschooling Early Childhood series…It’s all written and I just have some tweaks to do on the final posts…but, sadly, my ADHD is kicking in and I’ve gotten off track. I promise, I WILL get back to it and finish it…I promise! And in the meantime, […]
Ahhhh, my children have inherited their father’s sense of humor… We were just cleaning Tyren’s room, when we found a live earwig…I told him to go get some toilet paper (to catch him)….and Tyr said: “Why? Does he need to wipe his butt?” Oh my, I live in a house full of comedians!
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 7 in a 12 part series….read part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Here’s what we’ve covered so far in this series… Instead of using a preK or kindergarten curriculum in early childhood, […]
OMG! My daughter (17yrs) is hilarious! She has her dad’s sense of humor… We were just discussing the movie IT…something she’s really wanting to see, the new one…and how I loved the 90s version until the end…when we (all my dorm friends…we all watched it together in college) were all like “WHAAAT? It’s a stupid SPIDER??” My daughter says, well […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 6 in a 12 part series….part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 I’ve been talking in this series of blog posts about what can be done instead of using a preK or kindergarten curriculum in early […]
I’m going to take a break from the “Homeschooling…The Early Years” 12 part series for a few days, so I can do what I need to do for my family for Christmas. Then I’ll be back with more posts! I do have the posts all written, but there are still some tweaks I’m doing as I go, and I’m creating […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 6 in a 12 part series….read part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 This series is about what our family did instead of using a preK or kindergarten curriculum…So far, I’ve shared about: setting up an enriching environment […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 5 in a 12 part series….read part 1, 2, 3, 4 I’ve been sharing what our family did instead of using a preK or kindergarten curriculum…I’ve shared about: setting up an enriching environment spending lots […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 3 in a 12 part series….Read part 1, 2, 3 So far I’ve talked about setting up an enriching environment, and doing lots and lots of reading great books instead of using a […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Please note: All links on book titles and covers are Amazon affiliate links and I do get a tiny percentage from any purchases made through them. If you like this site, this is […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part 2 in a 12 part series….read part 1 here. Here we go…My trip down memory lane… The year was 2005…the beginning of the year…My oldest was 4 and a half. […]
NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. So…lately I’ve been obsessing with going through family pics from the early years of our homeschooling adventure. The years when I had at least one preK or kindergartner. What spurred […]
I started blogging on Blogger back in 2004. I started this blog, centered around homeschooling, in 2005. I kept both blogs for years so that I could keep them separate. The Homeschool Realm as a place to center around my thoughts and resources regarding homeschooling… and “Tina’s Realm” on Blogger as a place to just be me and talk about […]
I just have to share another comedic moment in the Smith household…just overheard: Adam (my husband), talking to my daughter: We’re out of lemon and lime juice and Mommy won’t go get more. Maeven: Why don’t YOU go get more? Adam: Because…I’m on fire. Never a dull moment around here, lemme tell ya!!
I recently recorded a new episode of the Savvy Homeschool Moms podcast with my cohost (episode not ready for publish yet, but I’m aiming to have it out soon!)…and one of the things we talked about was what our curriculum and resources look like for the year…so I thought it might also be a good thing to post here! We […]
Today I’m working hard on various projects in the making…and reflecting on something I have learned over the years from all my experiences and especially the failures. One, never give up. And two, don’t rely on or trust others with my dream again. Learned that the hard way. I know I will need to work with others still, and must […]
So these are the current state of my main book shelves… These are my picture book shelves…which, even though my kids are older (12 and 16), I keep a fair amount of because I am a huge fan of picture books…many of these I had long before I ever had kids, as I was a preschool teacher in my pre-mom […]
Years ago I owned and operated a website called Mommy Chats. Remember live chats? They used to be a big thing. Not anymore. So eventually, after many successful years, the site faded away, and no longer exists (I actually sold it finally, but they never did anything with it)…you can only find it on The WayBack Machine now…but back in […]
Our family takes short neighborhood walks daily. At least we try to. We live in the Central Valley of California, where from May through October every year it is HOT…often triple digits…so this gets challenging during these months. Have to go early. But we need these short walks daily, for sunshine, fresh air (such as it is in some of […]
Long before I had Homeschool Realm, I had another really successful site called Mommy Chats. (Back in the day of chats.) It doesn’t exist anymore…you can only find it on archive.org nowadays… I had the site for many years, and hosted casual chatting as well as lots of topical chats…and from Oct 2004 to July 2007 I partnered with Peggy […]
Tyr was scratching my back on Mother’s Day and Adam wanted a back scratch too, so he told Maeven to go scratch his back…his reaction: “No! She has no fingernails! That’d be like rubbing 5 hot dogs on my back!”
These last couple years have been an…interesting…experience. We went from being enrolled at a homeschool charter that gave us complete freedom in how we homeschool our kids, to a charter that is much more limited. I’m pulling my high school daughter out of our current charter after this year because of our experience with the rigidness of their high […]
This is a cd I just dug out of my crate full o’music that I apparently never got around to listening to before…I probably received this for review years ago because I don’t even remember when! But it turns out that I actually really like it! It’s one of the few out of that huge stash of kids music submitted […]
Doing some reorganizing and decluttering and I found an entire crate FULL of kids’ music! That’s right! This is a square milk crate and it truly is ONLY filled, right to the top, with kids’ CDs! Yes, I did have a bit of a kids’ music habit once upon a time…having been a preschool teacher whose specialty was music […]
I talked about perimenopause in my last post. But I need to talk some more about some specific symptoms today…. I dealt with the blues in my adolescence and early 20s, now and then….And I’ve always been a bit of a worrier…nothing really serious. But this stuff that perimenopause is throwing at me is “fer really real,” y’all. I had […]
Oh, my life. If you are going through this too, I SO want to hear from you in the comments. Maybe we should start a Facebook group for us. This is HARD. I have always been an emotional person, prone to perhaps overreacting a bit. But I also have always been a very positive person. My husband was always […]
This post was inspired by my (at the writing of this) 10yr old son. I wrote this post several months ago and for some reason never hit publish. Since then I got offtrack with all that I wrote here. Today I rediscovered this post …at a time when I really needed to remember what I had written here, and rededicate […]
