I finally stopped researching, daydreaming, and talking about doing certain activities with Ruth and am starting to jump right in. I read a blog called 1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1. She homeschools her three children but one of them is still a toddler, so she does ‘Tot School‘. It basically is just playing with your kid like you normally do, but being intentional on learning certain things: colors, shapes, how to not pick your nose. She tries to make it last an hour, but sometimes they aren’t having it. Ruth lasted five minutes the first day on circles and then wanted to run around with her vacuum. I don’t care if she never learns circles as long as she learns to help me clean.

After inundating her with every circle toy I could find and watching circle songs sung by Miss Tracy on youtube (Ryan’s preschool-teaching mom uses Miss Tracy for her own class), we walked around the house looking for others: the clock, the stove burners, a certain part of the female anatomy because she still wants to comfort nurse. Whatever, I’ll take what I can get.

And then I tried out our new DIY Light Box. I wish I could afford a real one, but that’s out of the question right now. This was discovered on the Play At Home Mom blog. These ladies really make me feel like a slacker, but man do they have good ideas.

So I finally made one.

And brought out a bag of clearance christmas items to use on it. God knows I tried in vain to talk circles to death on day two of Tot School, but Ruth was more interested in tearing up the gel pieces.

So I scoured Craigslist and found a teacher selling translucent manipulatives for projectors. They apparently don’t use projectors anymore in the classroom and she just wanted to get rid of them. It was crammed full of stuff: tangrams, money, clocks, as well as grammar manipulatives. She also threw in some literacy sheets for free.

We met at church after our Wed night bible study and literally 5 minutes before had studied the verses on Jesus throwing out all the people buying and selling wares in the temple. Then I walked right out the doors and exchanged cash for my new items.

Day 3 of Tot School and out came the tangrams.

I had decided that by day three we should really be starting on circles AND squares. This is literally how psycho I get. What timeline am I looking at? Is there a quiz at the end of the week? Will Ruth not get into college if she doesn’t know circles and squares by day three?

She went for the circle and as I started my schpeal on squares…

climbed aboard to distract me.

But I continued…

until she finally begged me in words (and not so many words) to stop.

Exhibit A:

We’re back to learning just about circles and in week two, people. You should be proud of me.

We’re sick of circles, but when her dad comes home, luckily she doesn’t have to be constantly pointing them out. Because he actually does interesting things.

Like making up a story about a duck being chased a snake being chased by a charging purple giraffe.

You know, fun stuff.

I’m sure there’s a circle in there somewhere. I’ll find it Ruth, don’t worry.