Just the beginning....

so i'm all set up... here is where i am starting the blog. first, maybe you're wondering about the name "september place". well, it has a few different meanings to me. when i was in fifth grade, we moved to a small town in ohio, and bought a house that was out in the "country"... a place that was not surrounded by other cookie-cutter houses of the same design... a place that was all space to roam, trees with leaves to rake in the fall, a pool in the backyard, a stream running beside it that provided hours of entertainment for me and the neighbor girl. it was a house that was gigantic, and full of opportunity and promise for the family who had moved a lot in the previous few years. on the road, trekking back and forth from michigan to ohio, we saw these great farms and country homes that had signs at the end of the driveway with the name the resident family had given the property. to us at the time, our country house felt as big as a farm, and so we were deciding on a name for our new property. we bought the house and moved in in the fall, just as the trees were changing color and leaves were falling to the ground... it was only fitting that our new piece of paradise be called "september place". (although we never did make the sign for the end of the driveway...)

i've also always loved the promise that a new school year brings... and back when i was in elementary, we actually started school in september. as a child, i loved going to school, loved learning, loved excelling in different subjects and bringing home a grade card of accomplishments to show my parents. luckily for me, the learning seemed to come pretty easily. i've always had a special attachment to school and the learning process, which extended into the vocation i would choose in college. as a teacher education student, i read texts about the process of learning, and learned the skills and processes necessary to teach young children to read, write, compute and think critically. i've had a special place in my heart to teach kindergarteners and first graders, and hope that when my children are all old enough to be in a school or montessori program, that i'll be able to be involved at their school in some capacity. so the reason for "september place" for the purposes of this paragraph are for the new beginnings, opportunities and promise that each september would bring for me with the beginning of the school year.



i have an avid interest in the hows and whys and whats kids learn in their years before their "formal" schooling, and thought that it might be good to capture some of our daily doings inside a blog that others can follow. there is so much that a child needs to know before even getting to their "formal" education years, and i've made it my responsibility to work on some of these things with my children before they even get there. i'll post lists of things that i think or have researched that children need to know, and hopefully put them down on virtual paper in a way that a mom or dad with no-college-knowledge of the education process can understand. along the way, i'll throw in some other tidbits about preschoolers and their development, some things happening in my family and with my kids, and because i like to cook, i'll throw in some family-friendly recipes and some others that moms and dads and their friends might like. i also have been searching the internet lately for other blogs of interest, so i'll include those here too.