Sunday is not a rest day for us. I know many families who do very little on the Sabbath, but we are not one of them.
We started the day early waking around 6:30 to get dressed for church. We attend a church in the city, and unfortunately for us, today was race day! Phili seems to have more races than any other city that I know of. So, once we got into the city, there were blockades everywhere, and traffic was at a stop. I made the decision to turn around and drive back into NJ, because I could see that we were not going to be close to arriving on time. We ended up going to watch my husband’s soccer game for a few minutes. He and I then tag-teamed for the afternoon with him going in one direction for a soccer game with the oldest and I in another direction with the other three for a soccer game. The night ended with the children’s first practice of choir. Even still, I was receiving a negative attitude from my oldest son about not wanting to sing in the choir. I finally put a halt to his complaints by saying that I acknowledged his feelings, but that this was something he was going to do so no more complaining allowed. Don’t you know he loved the evening in choir. Sometimes, it feels really good to be right! Score one for mom.
I did spend some time prepping academics for the week while they were in class. One topic I’ve been studying is “makers”. Makers seems to be a huge buzz word in the education community, so I have to stay in tune with this movement. A girlfriend of mine and I are considering attending some conferences on the subject. It’s actually refreshing to read some of these articles, because they are pro-learning and are negative towards the testing attitude seen with common core standards. We should be teaching to learn, not teaching to test. More to research. Here’s an article she shared with me. I actually emailed Calvert’s educational services today asking them if they were staying abreast on changes such as these. I’m wondering if their curricula design would be affected.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/dive-into-the-maker-movement-adam-provost