Lee's Summit's Own Family Business HubOne of my main goals for Sunday Spotlights is to highlight the incredible resources available to homeschooling parents, including local and national ones. Today I am focusing on two brand new businesses that will be opening this fall to help parent entrepreneurs and students find that time and space to work called Symbiobiz and FlexPlay.
Symbiobiz is a concept that came out of the co-working movement, but its focus is on parent entrepreneurs rather than the typical tech start-ups that often utilize these spaces. FlexPlay, led by Enam Haddad, is the anchor tenant at the Lee’s Summit branch of Symbiobiz and will offer child care based around a Montessori-inspired curriculum. Once the space is fully open later this autumn, parents will have the space and quiet time to work on their own businesses (or plan lessons for us homeschooling mamas), while our kids will have the chance to meet new people and learn from someone other than us. In addition to the perks of enough time to concentrate and space to work, there will be plenty of networking opportunities with other family-focused entrepreneurs. Stephanie Zamora Schilling of True North Entrepreneurs and Assurance Security, LLC will also offer specialized coaching to help family-focused entrepreneurs plan and build their businesses. As more details emerge, I will share them in this space. I can’t wait until this space opens up; I think that it will be an excellent addition to our community. One of the most difficult aspects of parenting is balancing the desire for your kids to have magical, life-affirming experiences with making sure the hum-drum daily tasks are completed. This is one of the most common concerns I hear from other parents; they want to provide incredible art experiences for their kids, but it’s really hard to maintain a clean home at the same time. Until I found The Artful Parent, this is something I struggled with as well. Jean Van’t Hul, the creator of The Artful Parent, has created one of the most inspiring places for children’s art-oriented resources in her website. She has broken down how to provide these rich, art-filled experiences while also simplifying the process to make it easier. Her blog is my personal happy place, and I love her approach to offering art invitations to children. Her Weekend Inspiration emails are also helpful, and I recommend signing up for them. She has also written two wonderful books called The Artful Parent: Simple Ways to Fill Your Family’s Life with Art and Creativity and The Artful Year: Celebrating the Seasons and Holidays with Crafts and Recipes. I own both books and refer to them weekly to find inspiration. I especially adore the seasonal activities from The Artful Year, and I have used several of these activities as a guide for my homeschool co-op classes. Although I could easily link every blog post, the most essential lesson I learned from The Artful Parent was how to cultivate a mindset that allowed art-based activities to happen without worry. As Jean Van't Hul writes in her About Me: I want to parent in a way that encourages creative expression, imagination, joyfulness, and a love of learning, not just in my daughters but in our entire family. This spoke to my soul when I read it, and I have worked to nurture this in my family, even under the most stressful circumstances (like a visit from the inlaws). I followed her advice, threw down a cheap table cloth, and allowed the magic to show up. And it did. In the form of a grandma and auntie from Hong Kong creating slime and painting pumpkins. Thanks for reading today. I hope that you allow yourselves the time to cultivate this type of magic too. A cheap tablecloth or shower curtain can make all the difference.
If you are local to the Kansas City area, there is an excellent resource available for your preschoolers. This is the second year that the Mid-Continent Public Library system will be offering their ten-week story time series to help preschoolers develop essential skills for kindergarten. Here is their link for more information: link. The program runs from September 10 until November 17, and parents will be able to track their attendance through Beanstalk (which is also the online tracking for the Summer Learning Programs, Adult Reading Programs, and 1000 Books Before Kindergarten programs). This program offers a fun way for kids to begin learning how to read, and my daughter loved last year's programs. She has always loved story time at our local MCPL branch (hello bubbles), but she thrived in the Kindergarten Readiness story time series. She would leave story time singing the chant that was repeated every week: "The cow, the cow, the cow got on the bus." She had to go through as many animals as she could remember, and while she did not always get the correct action with the animal, it was nice to see that she was learning. For kids who go to at least eight of the sessions, there will be a special certificate available, and they will be entered into a raffle for MCPL's own storybook Grow a Reader: An Interplanetary Tale and a Marty the Martian plush. Unfortunately, we didn't win one of the prize packs last year, but I have my fingers crossed for this year. We also filled out a survey that covered her skills in certain areas at the beginning of the story time series and after all sessions. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much she learned in this time.
Each library branch has a slightly different schedule, but here is a link for all of the story times. If your child isn't quite ready for the Kindergarten Readiness series, there are story times available for birth through kindergarten, so all kids and their caregivers have a chance to participate in story time. |
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I'm Heidi, the lead teacher for Stone Bridge Academy. We are a homeschool serving one fabulous student. This blog occasionally uses affiliate links, which means that we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only link to products or services that we use and love in my family. These commissions allow me to continue providing helpful content here. Thank you for your support.
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