Our Learning Adventure

I Heart Workboxes!!!

2011-02-09T10:52:00.020-06:00

It's almost Valentine's Day and I.Am.In.Love. :) Not just with my husband, but with the new system we started this week.....the WORKBOX SYSTEM! I have been reading and researching for a while now and have found that this system is one that many homeschoolers use and love. If you'd like to read more about Sue Patrick's Workbox system, you can visit her website or buy her book (I have not read her book, but I've read MANY different people's blogs and their takes on workboxes). If you'd like to see someone else's preschool workbox system at work, read this Behind the Scenes post. And no, I'm not making any $$$ off of giving these people credit...I have just found SO much *free* information out there and different people do it different ways. We have definitely found what works for us, for right now anyway!

I also started the Raising Rock Stars Preschool program with the girls (focusing on Little bear) this week. We begin each school day (Mon-Thurs) by going over the verse, life applications, and song...then reviewing the number, letter, and word for the week....reading a few books that go along with the week's verse, then we move into the kitchen to do WORKBOXES! You can read more about the RRSP program, created by Carissa at 1+1+1=1 here.

Here is our RRSP board:

I found these drawers on sale at Joann's and they are WONDERFUL!!! I went back and forth on whether to get the double set or the single 10 drawer set...and I'm so glad I went this route so that each girl has her own side. We are using Princess Numbers I downloaded from the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog :) So many people have so many great resources out there for FREE!

We aren't using all the boxes currently. Little Bear usually has 4-6 focused learning boxes (containing activities that have a definite end) and 3 star boxes (open ended toys). She has to finish her focused boxes in order and places her numbers on a number strip I made for her as she completes each box. When she's done with all of them, she can choose from the star boxes and play for however long she wants. Her focused boxes change daily, but the star boxes stay the same for the whole week.
Tiny starts off with 4 boxes at the beginning of the week, each filled with mostly open ended activities and she is allowed to play with each one however long she wants and does not have to go in order. As the week goes on, I usually add something to keep her interested. They both get SO excited each morning to see what is in their boxes. Here is a look at one of Tiny's favorites from this week:

Coloring the Bible verse for the week:

Tongs and puff balls:

Counting with unifex cubes:

Then she switched over to counting with magnets:

Magnets and Ladybug L sheet (found on Confessions of a Homeschooler blog):

One of this week's star boxes, magnetic letters:

Lauri Number Play puzzles (they both LOVE these):

Dot painting the letter Ll:

Dot painting Ladybug:

Cutting the Bible Verse:

Letter L Hunt (found at Confessions of a Homeschooler):

Counting Conversation Hearts (I put Valentine suckers in each of their Valentine themed boxes):

Finding Matching Hearts:

I was really concerned about how Tiny would do with the workboxes since she is so "involved," let's just say. She always wants to do EVERYTHING her big sister is doing so I figured she would just be "bugging" Little Bear and I the whole time we worked on the boxes. I am happy to say I was WRONG! She is thrilled to have her own set of workboxes and she usually sits on the floor and stays involved with her activities :) It makes this Mama's heart VERY happy to see my girls learning and having so much fun doing it!

What I love the most (besides the fact that they are learning!) is that this system keeps me organized and makes me use the fun stuff I have hiding away in my school closet, rather than *save* it all for another day! It does take time to plan and get things out and ready, but so far this has been much easier than any other method of organization I have used. I have found it very helpful to have a running list of all of the focused learning toys/activities and open ended toys we have in this house....then I can just look at my lists when I'm planning. I use a similar planning sheet to Carissa's plans at 1+1+1=1 (why recreate the wheel, right!?). I have been working on getting things ready to start for about 2 months now...and it feels GREAT to have actually started this week, even better to know the girls LOVE it as much as I do :)

Merry Christmas to All

2010-12-20T14:04:00.009-06:00

We've been pretty busy these last couple weeks, doing Christmas activities, visiting with family, and getting through our day to day routines :) Here is a little peek at what we've been doing:

Christmas Books
As soon as I filled the book basket with the Christmas books, the girls dove right in! They had made some sort of fort thing with the couch cushions and laundry basket and it grew very quiet in the living room...which can be quite scary when you have little ones. I walked in to find them reading their books so nicely, melted my heart!

Christmas Printables
1+1+1=1 has so many adorable printables on the site this year! The girls have enjoyed these a lot. Little Bear completed the Christmas Counting page where she had to trace each number and then draw a line to the correct grouping.

While big sister was working on numbers, Tiny colored the J is for Jesus worksheet. When she was doing this, it just looked like a bunch of scribbles to me...but now looking at the picture I took of it, you can actually tell she colored in only the capital and lowercase Js :)

Little Bear is REALLY into figuring out beginning sounds of words lately so this page was just right for her. She did a great job and pretty much did this by herself. She had some trouble writing letter S, but with some practice attempts on the back she finally mastered it. And she insisted on writing lowercase Js for Joseph and Jesus simply because she likes to make the dot at the top ;)

Both girls worked on this shape Christmas tree decorating page. Little Bear did it ALL.BY.HERSELF. and did a wonderful job! Tiny just needed a little help identifying colors and she pretty much found the shapes on her own. Fun for both of them!

Snack Time
One morning we made these adorable Christmas Rolo Candy Turtles. I pulled up the recipe on the computer and had the girls help me look at the different steps we needed to do. They each had a cookie sheet and lined up pretzels in rows (they were thrilled to find out they could eat the broken ones!). Next, they put a Rolo candy on top of each pretzel and we baked them for 4 min. Then we placed a red or green M & M candy on top of each Rolo and pushed them down. Yummy!!!!!
The girls have also helped make some candy cane bark, homemade Cookies in a Jar for gifts, and we have big plans to do more cookies later this week!

Art Time
Kids LOVE paints....so when I got out some red and green paint and allowed the girls to have some "free-paint" time after finishing another little project, they were loving it! Tiny is so serious when she's creating!

One of the projects they did was a N-O-E-L decoration. Little Bear painted letters N and E with red and Tiny painted letters O and L with green. After the paint dried, I cut the letters out and hole punched them to hang on a strand of twine to use as a decoration in our house. HOWEVER....the N mysteriously disappeared and this project could not be completed. I have no idea where it could be, I DO know WHO helped the lovely N escape and I know it's somewhere in one of her many collections in our house ;)They made and decorated their own shape Christmas trees the day after we decorated our real Christmas tree. While we did these, we talked about the different shapes that were used, 3 triangles, 1 rectangle, and 1 star. Then they glued on their shiny ornaments :)

Our Jesse Tree reflection last night was the story of when the angel Gabriel came to Mary to tell her she would be pregnant with God's own son...which was my inspiration for the angel craft we did this morning. The girls loved painting their hands and gluing the parts on to form the angel, but their favorite part by far was decorating them with GLITTER GLUE! This was Tiny's first experience with it and she was in heaven :)

While they worked on their angels, we discussed the symbolism of the angel at Christmastime. I printed out the Bible verse Luke 1: 30-33 that we read last night and we made this beautiful scene on our door for everyone to see.

This is one of my most favorite times of year and I wish I could just s. l. o. w. down time for the next few days! It's so much fun to witness the joys of Christmas in my children. Just today at lunch, Tiny was having trouble getting her chair scooted up to the table. Little Bear noticed her and ran over to help her right away and said, "Christmas is helping, so I helped." I think she's really getting the concept of loving, giving, and helping lately.

We want to wish all of you a wonderful, joyful, MERRY Christmas and a very happy New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving AND Christmas is Coming!

2010-11-30T10:51:00.007-06:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving around here and managed to squeeze in a few activities and crafts...I have been a little more motivated lately since our little man usually takes a pretty regular morning nap and I can focus on the girls. Here are just a few of the things we've been up to: (so thankful I had all sorts of activities made from last year to reuse plus a few new things too!)

Little Bear focused on coloring her Color the Turkey little book

Tiny REALLY focusing on her coloring, her face makes me giggle :)

All the while, we have this little guy waiting patiently for his turn to "do school"

Playing a little Thanksgiving Matching game...I wasn't sure if she would get the concept of matching quite yet, but to my surprise she was a pro!

Playing the Turkey Hunt alphabet game, finding lowercase letters to match the uppercase ones. This was actually too easy for her this year, but she had fun clipping the clothespins on anyway.

We made Thankful Turkeys! Little Bear wrote all the people she was thankful for on each of the feathers and glued them on. I helped her with spelling some of the names, but that was it! She's really loving to write lately, even sounding out some words on her own. Tiny made a turkey also, but I wrote the names for her and she LOVED using the glue stick to glue on the feathers.

Harvest Mice counting game...fun little game I made last year. Little Bear got creative and started clipping the numbers to the cards, rather than just laying them there. Again, this one was almost too easy, but always good practice!

Tiny was attempting to play the Pumpkin Color Match game, but she decided she'd rather play with the clothespins (taking them all apart too!).

Christmastime is almost here so I got out all the Christmas activities from last year. The girls are loving all the fun things to choose from and wanted to do them all the first day I had them out.

Putting the alphabet ornaments in order on the floor first:

Then putting them on the door in a "step pattern" as she calls it :)

Spelling Merry Christmas...they just had to match the letters to complete the phrase and even Tiny was trying to match the colors of the ornaments.

She did great at this game, Stocking Number match. She would first look for the stocking to be the same color, then look to see if the number matched. She loved it and was so proud when she finished!

Christmas Tree design matching! How fun for them to do together. I gave them each a stack of the small tree cards and they ended up working together to find the matches and put them in the cans. Of course this turned into an all morning activity because they were using the trees to decorate our living room after they were done finding all the matches :) Yes, my friends, my children are wearing swim suits when it's 30 degrees outside.

We started our Jesse Tree on Sunday evening and the girls have been very excited about it so far. Little Bear even remembered doing it last year because when she noticed the little bare tree we used last year sitting in the living room, she said very excitedly, "Oh, it's my Jesse Tree!!!" and gave it a kiss ;) We are looking forward to many more Nativity and Christmas activities in the next couple weeks, but most importantly, we're going to be busy preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord!

Early Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

A Little Leave of Absense

2010-11-17T13:46:00.006-06:00

Well, my goodness......it's been WAAAAAAY too long since I've written a post!!!!! I assure you, we've picked back up with doing a little more school stuff, but I haven't taken pictures of everything we've done nor kept track of any type of plans to know what we have done. I do know that we've been mighty busy around here welcoming this little guy into our family:

Isn't he gorgeous?? And such a wonderful baby to have around :) We all love him VERY much!

In my weak attempt to get this blog caught up, here are just a *few* of the things we've done in the last several months that I actually caught pictures of:

Water Color Painting! Got these cute little water coloring books at Target. Pretty much a mess-free project, except if you have a toddler who likes to dip her elbows in the bowl of slightly-colored water ;) It's JUST water though!

We finally broke out the Wikki Stix the girls got LAST Christmas...they are a big hit! No, Little Bear didn't get glasses, those are Wikki Glasses!

REAL painting, with washable paints and Do-A-Dot paints....I haven't ventured to let them do this INside yet so we took advantage of a beautiful day and painted on the deck.

This was Tiny's first time with REAL paints...she loved it and did a great job! (and actually stayed somewhat clean!)

We took a trip to our favorite orchard, TJ's Orchard and actually did some apple picking this year, Granny Smiths! We made lots of goodies with our apples and even got into some of the apple games I made last year :)

Fall Tree art project: this was a LOT of fun for the girls. We took paper towel tubes and painted them brown, I cut strips down the top to make the branches and we attached the leaves with double sided tape (we tried glue, but the leaves did NOT cooperate so tape to the rescue!). They used fall colored dot paints to fill their "ground" with leaves. I got this idea from 1+1+1=1 and this was/is indeed my favorite fall decoration in our home :)

We have done MANY other things since my last post...too many for me to even begin to think of trying to write here. Little Bear has been writing her own name, her sister's name and Mommy and Daddy for quite some time now. She can pretty much write every letter of the alphabet and loves to "spell" things on paper. She is a HUGE lover of drawing and has become VERY detail oriented, I think we might have a budding artist on our hands!

Tiny is proving her skills as well, counting to 10 on her own and doing just about everything big sister does. She is really into lacing things right now and could sit for a long time playing with the lacing spools, clothesline, and alphabet beads we have. She recognizes a few colors and knows a couple shapes...she loves the triangle (I think she just likes the way it sounds).

The girls are growing up so fast and before I can blink, we'll have a cute little fella doing Tot School right along with us! Scary and exciting all at once! Hopefully I can do a better job of keeping up with the blog (haha) from now on :)

Catching Up

2010-05-22T14:08:00.007-05:00

It's been over a month since our last update, so I thought I'd do a quick post to catch everyone up on the happenings around here "learning-wise." We're enjoying being outside more and more, when this crazy Indiana weather cooperates :) Having moved lots of the girls' toys out of our house while we're trying to sell it, I have discovered they have just as much fun using their imaginations with simple household items and even some of my decor :) It is a blast to watch them play together as loving sisters (loving, most of the time anyway!). We have also managed to go on a couple trips in the last month, which were a lot of fun. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking!

Playing with the bean tub outside on a beautiful day!

The girls with Grandma (right) and Aunt Minkee (left) on our annual trip to Paducah, KY for the quilt show. All of us girls stay in a friend's lake house the whole week. This year we went on a little adventure one day to Land Between the Lakes and found this fun little General Store called the Hitchin' Post to stop and have our picnic lunch and stretch our legs for a bit.

The girls hard at work plowing at the Hitchin' Post

We drove to the Elk and Bison Prairie and stopped inside the nature center first for a bathroom break....this was actually the only Elk we got to see "up close," but we did manage to see many Bison right along the road (we could have reached out the window and touched them!).

A random Water Play day outside...it wasn't all that hot out, but I got this old wash tub out and filled it with water, thinking they'd just play with the scoops and toys while standing outside the tub. I should have known they would both end up IN the tub :)

The strawberries were good and ripe at a local farm so we headed out one day with our friends to do some pickin. The girls had a blast picking AND taste testing and we ended up with almost 9 pounds worth of strawberries. We are still enjoying the freezer jam we made, mmmmmm!

Little tester :)

Found the perfect berry!

Just this past weekend, we took a little trip to St. Louis as a family. We went to the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House, which was amazing! Before entering the conservatory to see the butterflies, we saw these *ugly* and disgusting cockroaches! Even Daddy looks scared ;)

I just happened to catch this picture of my sweet girls in awe of all the beautiful butterflies flying around them!

The next day, we went to the St. Louis Zoo and had a great time, despite the chilly temperatures. Petting/grooming the goats was one of the highlights for both of the girls.

They also LOVED petting the guinea pigs and would have stayed there ALL day if we would have let them :)

Little Bear was so brave and pet this snake. I forget the exact name, but I remember her telling us that it's the smallest of the boa constrictors....EW!

Another random day playing outside with rice....they seem to think playing in it is like swimming :) Be patient, this video is kind of long.

After taking this long "break" from more structured learning activities, I find myself enjoying every day life with my girls so much. And God seems to know when I need encouragement when it comes to this stuff, because I recently came across several articles addressing "Preschool Pressure" from a yahoo group I belong to. I FULLY agree with what these four articles are stressing so if you get a moment to take a peek at them, they are great! I guess I like to think of myself as the "old school" type of person who thinks learning comes from life experiences just as much, if not more, than structured teaching. I am so thankful I don't have the stresses of getting my children on waiting lists for certain top-notch preschools or even standing in line over night to sign up (I'm not kidding, I read this on a blog recently that a mom actually stayed the night waiting in line just to get her child into a preschool!!!). I could go on and on about my thoughts on preschool (believe me, having taught Kindergarten, I believe some kids NEED preschool!). I will spare everyone with reading my personal philosophy for now and just let you read the wonderful articles I read. Enjoy!

Preschool Ideas
Preschool Pressure or Preschool Peace
Preschool 101
Toddler Learning Activities

Hippity Hoppity......

2010-04-03T16:00:00.005-05:00

.....Easter's on it's way! I actually made a few activities for the girls to do in the week approaching Easter (I know, I shocked myself too after this long spell of no themed activities!). I haven't been best friends with my camera lately so I only caught a picture of them doing one....Egg basket color matching. This was their favorite one anyway and we played several versions of it on different days (each day playing for almost an hour!!!).

The favorite version of the game was when I hid the eggs all around the living room while the girls waited in the bedroom. They came out and found them all and Little Bear placed them on the appropriate color basket. Tiny's favorite "job" was to snatch the eggs off each basket as her sister placed them there and see how many she could carry around in her hands without dropping them ;) We had a blast with this one!

I promise I DO brush Little Bear's hair almost every day ;)

On a beautiful day last week, we got together with some great friends for a little craft time and egg hunting. I searched for a simple and fun craft online for hours and finally just came up with this one on my own. We made "furry" bunny ears using plain white cardstock, cotton balls, and colored construction paper. Since we were dealing with little ones, I precut all the pieces and the kids just "painted on" the glue with q-tips and pulled the cotton balls apart to make the fur. Then we added the colored construction paper pieces on top of the cotton on the ears to brighten them up a bit. Everyone had a lot of fun and the kids looked adorable in their ears :)

LB working hard and Tiny (both in a zone!)

My great Mama friends helping their little ones

The finished product:

After craft time, we went outside for the Easter egg hunt. None of us are crazy about taking our kids to the big "commercial" egg hunts put on by our community so this private hunt was perfect for our little group. We had a blast!

Trying to get a group picture of this bunch was quite the challenge....but this one turned out pretty good (Tiny is sportin her "bulldog" face as we call it...and the "boyfriend" of the group is just sick and tired of all these WOMEN!)

Daddy took some time this morning to dye eggs with the girls, while I sat back and watched (and supervised the little egg thief). We even tried dying a few of our brown eggs to see the difference in color...what fun!

Little Bear admiring her dyed eggs and making sure they were drying properly :)

Our little egg thief....yes, they were hard boiled!

As we celebrate the Easter season, we have also been reading the story of Jesus dying on the cross and the Resurrection in our Jesus Storybook Bible (wonderful Bible, by the way!) every night. We are so blessed to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the pain he endured JUST FOR US! Have a wonderful Easter and Happy Spring!

Spring is Here!

2010-03-20T15:42:00.005-05:00

The weather was beautiful 'round these parts this past week and the girls and I definitely took advantage and took playtime outside! Among our times outside, we have also ventured to a new place last Monday (when it wasn't the most beautiful day) called Bouncing Off the Walls...it's one of those "inflatable places," if you have little ones, you know exactly what I'm talking about! We met some of our good friends there and had a wonderful time bouncing around...wore Mama out, to say the least!

I have been promising the girls that I would get the tub of rice out once the weather warmed up...so yesterday I threw an old vinyl tablecloth on the deck and let them have a ball with the rice. This was Tiny's first time since she was too young when I first started this with Little Bear last year. They played for over an hour and both had a blast!

Tiny loved transferring the rice from one container to the other :)

LB enjoyed building "sand castles" and hiding the shells that were left in there from last time she played with rice!

I couldn't help it....I had to add this one, it's my favorite! Tiny HAD to wear 3 strands of beads, her hat, AND sunglasses outside one day. She was very proud of her very fashionable look, jeans rolled up and all :)

We didn't do much of anything special for St. Patrick's Day (other than hunt for green things at the grocery store that morning) so I decided to make the girls some Rainbow Cupcakes. I saw the recipe here....and let me just say they turned out adorable, but took WAY too long for my liking! Maybe I'm just upset that I didn't sit down to eat my dinner until I got these in the oven...and everyone else was already finished eating by then! Oh well...worth it for my sweeties I suppose :)

And this is how Tiny felt about her cupcake:

Wonderful week for us....still no planning or structure around here, but we're all totally okay with that. I can tell Little Bear is sort of missing her activities because every other day or so she'll ask to do "a activia" (yes, my girls eat Activia yogurt and that's where she gets that). So I whip something fun out of the closet for her to work on for a bit and everyone's happy. I have big hopes of printing off some fun "springy" things to have available for the next few weeks...Totally Tots and 1+1+1=1 both have some really cute ideas :) We'll see.....flexibility is my middle name these days and always!

Happy Spring!

Keeping Busy

2010-03-07T17:27:00.007-06:00

Whew, I must say the last 3 weeks have flown by and we have no blog entries to prove just how busy we've been ;) When I say busy, I mean busy with non-school sorts of stuff. We have been making preparations to put our house on the market and it has been a whirlwind of "to-do" lists and projects around here!

While I've taken a break from the planning, the girls have taken a break from school-type activities and have been "helping" with the cleaning and organizing, and doing lots of plain old childhood PLAYING. Every morning after breakfast, Little Bear has been into acting out some of her favorite TV/movie characters like Dinosaur Train, Angelina Ballerina, and Strawberry Shortcake. She assigns the characters and we each act out the episode of her choosing. It's pretty entertaining to say the least. We've had our first adventure to the zoo this year (the indoor part only) and got to see baby jaguars, many other animals from the Amazon, and beautiful orchids. And thankfully, the weather is warming up so we've had a few opportunities to play outside and release LOTS of built up energy from our snowed-in days this winter :) Tiny is LOVING every minute of running around chasing her big sister outside! She's growing up WAY too fast!

An afternoon of puff-ball fun! This always keeps them busy for quite a while :)

This "break" has reminded me of one of the major reasons we have chosen to educate our children at home. While I'm sure I could have accomplished a great deal more in the way of house cleaning and getting everything ready without them around, I have so much enjoyed having my girls right beside me as I "tackled" all these projects. It made me slow down a bit to explain lots of "what" and "how to" questions I got along the way as well as let them know they are important in this whole process. Just as any homeschool family knows, sometimes school has to take a break when LIFE happens...and that's what we're doing these days! And I'm CERTAIN that's what will happen every time we bring a new little one into our family :)

I haven't had my camera out much, but the day I cleaned out the girls' closet and we saw the floor in there for the first time in, well, forever.....I had to catch a picture of them enjoying it together :) They would have played in there all day if I would have let them!

Sooner or later we'll get back to doing things a little more routinely or maybe we won't for a while. I figure I really don't want to burn myself (or them) out with "school" before we ever even HAVE to do it. They are learning so much just by being by my side and that is the MOST important place for them to be right now :)

I see signs of Spring heading our way...hope all of you are enjoying the more "seasonable" weather, as our weather man puts it. Get outside and PLAY!

Valentine's ~Fancy Dinner~

2010-02-17T15:28:00.002-06:00

Sunday evening, we had a very *Fancy Nancy* style dinner at home to celebrate Valentine's Day. What a fun time we ALL had! Little Bear and Tiny took wonderful naps while Daddy and I prepared the dinner and desserts....then when they awoke, we all got dressed in our fanciest clothes. Little Bear surprised us all and picked to wear a skirt (rather than any of her fancy dresses or tutus) and she informed me that she didn't want to wear a shirt, but I insisted that a shirt would be required to enter our fancy restaurant :) She settled for wearing one of my shirts that we tied in the back so it would "fit" her. I allowed her to pick my dress and she got to pick out some jewelry from my fancy jewelry box. She even got to wear "dangly" earrings that Daddy taped on with double-sided tape! :D

Here are "the girls" in our fancy outfits, ready for some fancy food! (Tiny was having teething issues so please ignore the washcloth stuffed in her mouth)

We turned the lights way down and enjoyed our dinner by candle light (fancy crystal candelabrum provided by Grandma), which was just so impressive to Little Bear. I even put a tablecloth and cloth place mats on the table, which is a rarity due to issues with having everything pulled off the table by a certain someone ;P We had sparkling grape juice in fancy glasses to drink and we even called each other "darling" and spoke in fancy accents the entire time ;) Lots of fancy words were used by LB, which just tickled us to pieces!

After our scrumptious dinner, we had Hot Fudge Sundae cake (a crock pot recipe!) with vanilla ice cream on top, paired with chocolate covered strawberries :) Very fancy! Then the bus boy (Daddy who quickly changed from suit/tie to sweats/t-shirts), cleared our table and did ALL the dishes! I must say, after spending several Valentine's Days alone with my grown up Valentine, this was by far the best Love Day celebration we've had! Although Tiny was not the happiest dinner guest (stinkin' molars, poor baby!), we know she'll be more into our fanciness next year. Little Bear is still talking about our Very Fancy Dinner! :)

A Little Announcement!

2010-02-13T15:42:00.002-06:00

Just in case there are some of you out there who read this blog, but don't read our family blog too........wouldn't want to let this little piece of info slip by ya:

Due date is August 25 and I'm at the very beginning of my 2nd trimester! Yay! (I just love the 2nd trimester!). Little Bear has named the baby "Polly," pronounced Poly (like Roly Poly, but when you ask her that she says "NO, just Polly"). I'm not real sure why I spell it with two "l"s, it's not like she told me how to spell it or anything.....okay for being tired of thinking and typing I sure am rambling. Anyway, the good news is out and we can't wait to meet our new little blessing in August!

Love Weeks 1 & 2

2010-02-13T14:04:00.006-06:00

Rather than doing two separate posts for our first two weeks of LOVE, I thought I might make it easier on myself and combine them in one "quick" post, haha. We'll see. I just love the month of February, not so much because of Valentine's Day itself, but because it's an excuse to surround ourselves with all things "lovey." I'm going to try to keep my descriptions short and sweet so I will go ahead and say I got most of these ideas and resources from the following websites/blogs:

Making Learning Fun Valentine Theme page
ABCteach Valentine's Theme page
Totally Tots (LOVE Bible Bites themes)
No Time for Flash Cards
...and of course thought of a few on my own :) I think.

Conversation Heart Color Sort:
When Little Bear found the many boxes of conversations hearts I had stored away in the closet, she just couldn't wait to get her hands on them! So this was our first activity to kick off Love Week 1. I labeled 4 baby food jars with the 4 colors and she dumped the hearts out and began sorting. After she had them all sorted by color, we looked at the jars and I asked her which one she thought had the most, least, and if she thought any of them had the same number. We counted each color and discovered that PINK had the most, which was truly exciting for her since she adores pink and purple. She then was of course allowed to eat a few and funny, she chose to only eat pink and purple ones ;)

Marshmallow Heart:
Every single time we go to the grocery and the girls are with me, Little Bear mentions the "fun colored marshmallows" when we're in that particular isle. So I just had to grab a bag the last time we went and we used them for this fun little craft/activity. I cannot tell you how excited she was to do this! And Tiny patiently sat in her seat and ate marshmallows while watching big sister :) I drew a heart with glue on the paper and LB had to carefully place the marshmallows along the glue (and eat a few when she needed a break). This was a GREAT fine motor activity and now we have this adorable "marshmallow heart art" hanging on our door :)

Clothespin Counting Hearts:
I found this adorable activity at Makinglearningfun.com and since the "real" conversations hearts were such a hit, I thought she might go for fake ones on paper ;) I only printed numbers 0-13 because I didn't think she'd have the patience to count the higher teen numbers up to 20...maybe next year. After counting how many hearts were on each card, she had to clip a clothespin on the corresponding number. Fun, but the attention span wasn't lasting long that morning and we had a little "clothespin thief" who kept undoing every card she completed! Oh well!

ABC Heart File Folder Game:
Oh yes, this came from filefoldergames.com and I actually made it a very long time ago. But since we rarely pull out the file folder games, I thought this would be a great opportunity to have a little review of letters. She matched the lower case letters to the capital ones on the folder and of course I had to "spice it up" a bit to keep her attention. It's always more fun when Mommy acts silly anyway, right?

Valentine Heart Cookies:
One evening last week we decided to mix up some sugar cookie dough and decorate some heart cookies. I think Little Bear's favorite cookie cutter to use is the heart shape so she had a blast with this! Both girls helped me make the dough earlier in the day (which was quite interesting with no Daddy there to help watch busy little Tiny). We let the dough sit in the fridge until that evening and then began cutting out the hearts and baking. Little Bear absolutely loves to decorate cookies so she was in heaven spreading the pink icing and putting on red sprinkles :)

Homemade Valentines:
I saw this idea on the No Time for Flash Cards blog and knew we just had to do it. My mom found a tiny heart cookie cutter and Daddy picked up some red glitter at the store for us and we were all set. I had pre-cut all the "pieces" to assemble each Valentine card the night before and Little Bear glued them together. She then dipped the cookie cutter in the glue and "stamped" it on the paper several times......

Then.....you guessed it....sprinkled on the red glitter until her little heart was content :) When we lifted up the paper and the extra glitter fell off, we had beautiful red glitter heart shapes. I am sad to say I didn't get a picture of the final product, but they turned out simply adorable and we will most certainly be doing this again. I must warn, it made a HUGE mess EVERYWHERE, but I'm happy to report that glitter cleans up nicely with a vacuum cleaner :)

I love......Writing Activity:
I made this little paper for Little Bear to write about the people and things she loves. After reading the Bible verse at the top and having a short discussion, she dictated what she wanted me to write on the lines. SO.CUTE. I am happy to say that she didn't name any "things," only people. I had to chuckle when she mentioned our neighbor, Dash, because she is absolutely obsessed with him! She's only met him a handful of times, but she always talks about him and his whole family. I said, "are you sure you love him and don't just like him?" and she replied, "no, I love Dash Mommy." Okay then. She drew a picture to go with the writing and used ONLY gray....(I mean really, here's a girl who LOVES pink and purple and the chances I've given her with all these "LOVE" activities to use those colors, she chooses GRAY...go figure).

Same/Different Heart Shapes Worksheet:
This was a short, but fun little paper that I knew Little Bear would get a kick out of. And she did. She got to use a red ink pen to circle the heart that was different in each row. After she found the one that was different, I had her explain why it was different. Fun, fun! (and I'll note that she did NOT want her face to be in the picture on this one...probably fear of the flash again!)

Heart Colors Book:
I can't even begin to remember where this book came from (maybe MLF?), but it was cute, short and focused on colors so I printed it. We went through each page together and found the color word and she colored all the hearts on that page that particular color. She's not very interested in coloring these days, so I had to jump in and "take turns" with her to get this done. She was more interested in drawing circles around the hearts, which was fine with me too :)

Heart Numbers:
I laminated these little hearts and put a little sticky magnet on the back of each one so we could play this game on the door or fridge, rather than on the floor. After gathering all of them up (they had been "stolen" by a certain little person in our house), Little Bear used her counting skills to place them in the correct order. She had a little issue with 11 and 12, but got it with a little help.

Heart Music Shaker:
Goodness...can't recall where I saw this idea either...someone's cool blog, that's all I know. Anywho, LB colored the bottoms of two paper plates (with much help), then I traced and cut out the heart shapes in both plates. I cut apart a ziploc bag and used double sided tape to adhere it to the top side of each plate to create a "window." We added several red, pink, and purple puff balls and about 5 little jingle bells and I stapled it shut. Viola (sorry I don't know how to make that little mark the French use)...a Valentine's Day shaker!

Love Bible Bites:
Okay, I'm getting tired of thinking and typing and I'm sad because this is probably my favorite part of the past two weeks...I'll do my best! We started off Love Week 1 reading 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a together each night and have continued into this week. After Daddy reads the verse (and Little Bear repeats each part after him), she gets to choose a heart out of the envelope. We then talk about what it says and she tapes it to our LOVE poster. We have had a lot of fun with this, although sometimes we do it at a time when her attention span is so totally gone. Here is our poster so far, I think we have one more heart in the envelope to do tonight.

Love Week 2 Bible Bites:
This second week, we have added another verse but did not find an appropriate version of it to actually read with the girls. So we have been focusing on the importance of marriage. We've had discussions about people we know who are married and what it means to be married. We've looked through Mommy and Daddy's wedding album (which is something LB just LOVES to do!!!). We played our first dance song Love of My Life by Michael W. Smith and we all danced together in the living room......my little Tiny lovebug just LOVES to dance and cuddle so this was especially fun for her :) And we have big plans to watch our wedding video later this evening! What fun on Valentine's weekend....

Here are a few non-LOVE pictures I snapped this week:

Baby girl drawing intently:

They had to play with puff balls after we made the Heart Shaker:

Melissa & Doug word puzzle play time (Tiny liked to throw the letters):

A new favorite we just dug out of the closet, she LOVES this pig and is so good at it!

Ahem.....well, I wondered why Tiny was so content just watching all the glitter commotion on the day we made Valentines.....and this is what she was doing all the while: (better than on the wall!)

Mama's Favorite:
The girls were watching a DVD one day and I kept removing Tiny from Little Bear's head (she tends to be a bit pushy about where she wants to sit)...but later found that all she really wanted to do was play with Sissy's hair. And Sis was letting her! SO.STINKIN.SWEET!

I hope everyone has a fabulous Valentine's Day, spending it with those you love (whether grown ups or little ankle biters!). We are going to have a special family Valentine's dinner at home "Fancy Nancy" style and I can hardly wait!

P is for Penguin!

2010-02-01T14:00:00.010-06:00

Oh how I have always just LOVED these cute little fellas and I couldn't wait to do a week of ALL THINGS PENGUIN with the girls. I found SO many adorable activities and games on the Internet, most came from the Making Learning Fun website. If you just click on the Themes tab, you can search for anything your heart desires :) Love that site!

Monday started off a bit rough for us. A very early morning minor disaster (Little Bear fell out of Mommy and Daddy's bed and managed to get a pretty good gash on her little chin) caused all of us except Tiny to get hardly any sleep :( SO, to start the week....we spent Monday morning cuddled up on the couch together reading all of our penguin books :) Here is a list of our favorites in no particular order:

Busy Penguins (board book)
Planet Earth: Baby Penguins (board book)
Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World (LB's favorite)
The Emperor's Egg
Tacky the Penguin (another fav)
Tacky in Trouble (yet another fav)
Penguin Pete

Penguin ABC Fish Feeding:
After a more UNeventful night, we got started right away on Tuesday morning with our first activity. This is an ADORABLE game and we ALL had so much fun with it! I covered a cereal box with white wrapping paper (I just so happened to have left from wrapping a wedding gift IONS ago!) and made the little penguin to go on the front. I cut a whole in the mouth large enough for the fish pieces to fit in. Little Bear had to match the lowercase letters with the capital ones and then feed them to "Petey" at the same time. I was the "voice" of Petey and it got to be rather funny when I would ask for specific letters. We were all getting very goofy and didn't even end up finishing the game, but she did do MOST of the letters. The ones we didn't finish, I just asked her to identify them and she did.

Even Tiny got involved in the feeding...she would pick the lowercase letter and then Little Bear would have to find the capital letter to match.

P-Penguin dot to dot:
Worksheet Queen strikes again...she LOVED this paper! I think she just loves the fact that she gets to use a "grown up girl" pencil to do these ;) She has never done a dot to dot of any kind, numbers or letters so I wasn't sure how this would go. This one was a bit more challenging because she had to identify the lowercase letters and draw a line to each and she did GREAT! You can see just how proud she is...even with her little bandages on her chin :D

Penguin "P":
This neat idea came from....well, someone's wonderful blog and I thought I had it bookmarked and I've looked everywhere for it but can't locate it (I apologize to whoever came up with this wonderful idea for not giving proper credit!). Anyway, terribly CUTE :) and Little Bear thoroughly enjoyed gluing it all together. (Don't worry, she's NOT drugged in this picture, just has a slight fear of the camera flash so we get the occasional squinty eyes...even when I DON'T use the flash!)

"P" Scavenger Hunt:
After all this talk about the letter "P," the girls (LB did most of the "work") went on a hunt to find things that began with the letter. I had to give a few hints at first, but after gathering a few items, she was finding things on her own. Here are the things pictured: picnic basket, letter "p" from our foam puzzle, penguin book, piano, pig, purse, puzzle....and of course I can't forget....two Pretty Princesses wearing Pajamas :)

Penguin Shape Counting:
Ugh, another worksheet you say....well, right now she likes them and they are a quick and easy way for me to get an idea of some of her skills. This one not only got her counting, but it also helped her to learn how to write numerals in spaces, which we had never done. She counted the shapes by herself (I was shocked that she got them mostly right, other than needing a little help with the tricky crescent shapes on the penguin's bowl). Then I wrote the number in the blank very lightly and she was supposed to trace over it. She started out great, but then wanted to do her "own thing," which I still let her do at this point.

Penguin Fish Cracker Count:
Another great one from Making Learning Fun! We did this one at snack time, of course and it was a huge hit! Little Bear laid all the penguins out on the table and fed them the correct number of fish crackers. Every now and then she needed a little assistance keeping up with how many she had placed on already, but it was great practice in counting up. We even had a few teeny tiny lessons in addition and subtraction along the way ;) And of course, we all got to eat the penguin's fish crackers when she was done! These cards would also be great to have the child put in numerical order, but we didn't have time for that this go around!

Footprint/handprint Penguin Craft:
I did this with my first graders back in the day, but I have seen this idea on tons of blogs and sites too. I wanted to do something that incorporated both girls in the craft, but that didn't involve lots of preparation or "MESS" ;) So....I had the girls put on a shoe and I traced around LB's foot on black paper and Tiny's foot on white. These two parts made up the body. I then traced LB's hands, with fingers closed, which made the wings. The most challenging part was tracing Tiny's tiny hands, closed fists on orange for the feet. She was actually more cooperative than I expected, but it was still a challenge to say the least ;) (Challenge is her middle name, by the way!). After I cut out all the parts, Little Bear glued them all on the paper.

She drew the eyes with chalk and added some pulled apart cotton balls for the snow and there you have it: Bobby the Penguin (no idea where the name Bobby came from, but that was what came out of her mouth immediately, without thought!). We like him!

Waddle, Waddle, Waddle!
After singing the song from THIS blog post MANY, MANY times, we did a little waddling ourselves :) I helped Little Bear secure a ball between her knees and then try to walk/waddle across the room. Although she had GREAT difficulty doing it, it was so incredibly fun and funny! We had such a good time with this and it was definitely a test in "taking it slow" since we know penguins are not fast waddlers, by any means.

And more.....
Listened to/watched the story, Rumble, Grumble, Gurgle Roar on Nick Jr. games
Listened to/watched the story, Penguin, Penguin on Starfall.com
Watched March of the Penguins movie (I must say that I learned so much by watching this!)
Watched Happy Feet for family movie night on Friday!

Mama's favorite moment:
I did some cleaning/re-arranging in the girls' room on Friday morning and we decided that this little table (which was mine when I was little) and chairs will have to be temporarily relocated to Grandma's house. But in the meantime, I brought it out to the kitchen and let the girls eat lunch there together. Miss Tiny Challengepants has been REALLY REALLY REALLY wanting to sit in a big chair without a highchair or booster lately, so this was the perfect solution (although she did manage to do a flip out of it and land on her head...that's just how she rolls!). They both scarfed down their lunch and had so much fun sitting across from each other :) Little Bear is a huge helper to me and is constantly offering to feed Tiny, meaning getting her bites of food on the fork and handing them to her. And there are days when Tiny refuses ALL food from me, but will eat anything her sister hands her! I just adore their sisterly love :D

Welcome February!!!! We are taking this whole month to focus on LOVE...not just the Valentine's Day aspect of Love, but the deeper meaning. The Totally Tots blog had some terrific ideas for this, week 1 found HERE. Our first week (starting today) will center around 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and we are so excited to get started tonight as a family!

Happy Groundhog Day tomorrow...here's hoping Gretchen Groundhog DOES NOT see her shadow in all this snow we have here in S. Indiana! ;)

Snow/Snowman/Winter Week

2010-01-25T13:47:00.004-06:00

We took it a bit easy this week, although by the number of pictures I have for this post, it doesn't look like we did.....well, I promise we DID take it easy and spent very little time each day on "school" stuff. We DID have a lot of fun though!

Tiny got to play a game of "Capture the Snowflakes" on Monday morning and she LOVED it! Little Bear and I threw the snowflakes into the air and she went around and gathered them up in her little bucket. After a few rounds of this, I hid the snowflakes around the living room and the girls had to come in and find them! Lots of fun to kick off our Snow week :)

After getting dressed in a "normal" looking outfit (wow, that's a shocker for our 3 year old!!!!), Little Bear and I worked on a few pages in her Counting workbook I picked up in the dollar section at Target a while back. She REALLY enjoyed it and even worked on holding her crayon correctly! :)

I think she is going to be my workbook/worksheet queen! I must admit I am not so fond of them myself so it was a stretch for me to do more than one this week with her....she LOVED using a pencil and completing each page though :) Ah, she would be a teacher's dream, wouldn't she....well, lucky for me I get to keep her all to myself! On to business....since we were talking about snow and snowmen this week, we focused on the letter Ss. She found all of the capital and lower case S-es (that looks funny to type) and circled them all by herself...the picture shows just how proud she was :)

The girls played a little game of "Snowman Dress-up" where they could choose different scarves and hats to put on the snowman. If our printer wasn't out of color ink, I would have been smart and printed two sets, one for each girl....let's just say we had lots of opportunities to talk about sharing with this game ;)

Snow/Snowman patterns were next on our list. These were almost too easy, but it was a quick little activity before we headed out for our grocery store "field trip" that morning (and NO, I didn't take my daughter out into the cold in the 6 month size romper she wears as a shirt around the house...and I *think* I ran a brush through her hair before we left also!). I found this pattern activity and MANY other wonderful things you will see posted below HERE.

Time to spell "Snowman!" Little Bear mastered recognizing her capital letters a long time ago and has done a great job recognizing lower case letters also, so I thought I would throw in this activity using lower case letters to see how she would do. She had a little trouble remembering "n," but did great with the rest! She really liked this one!

We did a little tracing out of her Kumon First book of Tracing workbook. Talk about wonderful workbooks if you're into that sort of thing! All of the workbooks I have come across from Kumon are GREAT! We did 3-4 pages of this and she was just thrilled to use her little pencil (which by the way is a recycled golf score pencil, thanks to Papaw Jerry) with a pink gripper on it.

She loved the tracing book so much that we moved right along with some pre-writing practice using a dry erase marker. These little pages, which were found on the same wonderful blog as the patterns, I laminated and put together using a book ring and can be used anytime (although they are a winter theme, but who cares!). If it were up to LB, she would have worked on these ALL DAY LONG! She actually did a very good job tracing the lines and only needed me to do an "example" for her a few times :)

After our pre-writing practice, she did this little paper with me (that I made quickly on MS Word). I read it to her and she dictated to me what she wanted the sentence to say. She then colored the picture of her making a snow angel. If you use your imagination, you can see that she is drawing the "wings" with the black marker. I am looking forward to doing more and more of these little writing activities in the future!

At the end of the week, the girls did a little art project. They each got to use white paint and a q-tip and a tiny piece of sponge to paint with. Little Bear mostly used her sponge and just ended up with a big blob of white paint on her paper, but hey she had fun doing it!

Tiny, however, chose to use the q-tip for her picture and ended up with quite the little masterpiece (it actually looked like dots of snow falling down, but I'm her mother and I'm a bit biased I'm sure ;) This was her "first" time painting if you don't count the Do-a-dot paints we used for the mittens! She sure did have a blast and kept saying "more" and handing me the q-tip when she needed more paint on it. And yes, of course she had to give it a taste right away but immediately realized that was not a good idea. My favorite part about this picture...ahem, let me say that again....my favorite part(s) of this picture are 1. her new pigtails we just found and 2. her little tongue helping her concentrate on getting those dots just right :D

Since we were talking about "cold stuff" this week, I thought it might be fun to do a little experiment with ice cubes. I used food coloring and made some colored ice cubes and Little Bear helped me put them in the jars according to each of the cards. What a lesson in patience this was! She wanted to see results right away, but we discussed that it would take time for the ice to melt. We talked about different ways we could "help" it melt and blowing on them became our favorite way (well, not mine, I just about passed out...1/2 kidding!). While we were waiting for them to melt, I had her guess what the new colors would be and she was right on 2 of them. After dinner that night, we took another look at the melted cubes and she colored in the last ice cube on each card. What fun!!! A book that would go great with this experiment is "A Color Clown Comes to Town," one of the many wonderful books included in the Magic Castle Reader's Set (I have NO idea where I got these, but I had them in my classroom and they are ALL really good!)

Before the cubes melted:

After:

Little Bear and I also had some computer time together on Saturday where we did the Snowman story/game on Starfall. We had done this game a few times before, but it was fun for her to actually use the mouse on the laptop to move the objects without help this time. We did a few other stories/games on Starfall before the "Great Attack of Little Sister" occurred ;) I am just starting to teach Tiny how to push the mouse button, but she's still a little too rough (NO, not MY Tiny!).

And now for my favorite moment of the week....yeah sure, all those activities and games were great, but nothing beats a little floor hugging session between sisters! They did this for at least 10 straight minutes...enough time for me to watch a while then realize I MUST take a picture :)

Our week has not gotten off to a great start today, but I am thrilled about our Penguin theme we'll be doing ALL week long! I have some exciting and fun things planned so I just hope we can all stay rested and injury free for the days to come :) Now, nap time is in full swing for the girls and I am going to take full advantage and attempt to get some shut eye myself!

Mitten Week

2010-01-18T14:03:00.004-06:00

I was SO excited to start last week's lessons, which were all based on Jan Brett's story of "The Mitten." This has been a favorite book of mine since college and I actually did a mini-unit using it during my student teaching with first graders. I love the fact that Little Bear enjoys the story as much as I do so we were thrilled to do so many fun things with it last week!

We kicked off the week by painting mittens! The girls used their new Do-a-dot paints and went to town covering these mittens. After the paint dried, I cut them out for them. LB chose purple AND pink for her mitten, but the pink didn't show up very well under all that purple ;) I love this "action" shot of her dotting the paint:

Tiny used the teal color and she had a great time seeing how much she could get on her fingers and face :D I helped A LOT with hers and she did a great job!

The finished PURPLE mitten:

The finished TEAL mitten (and teal-faced little girl):

Jan Brett's website is AMAZING to find adorable pictures that go along with her books. We found the copies of the mitten and all the animals on this page of her site. I colored and cut them all out, then laminated them to make them nice and sturdy. The first project for Little Bear was to "sew" the two pieces of mitten together. Not sure why, but we don't own any yarn, so we used twine (or jute) instead. She LOVED lacing up the mitten...she commented the entire time how much fun she was having!

I was super excited about her level of enthusiasm for sewing the mitten, so I introduced the animals to her right away (I had originally planned to wait another day). We acted out the story, even pretending to be "Baba" and "Nicki," losing the mitten and putting each of the animals in the mitten in the correct order. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! I kid you not, she wanted to do this AT LEAST ten times in a row...each time switching who was "Baba" and who was "Nicki." She preferred to be "Baba" and have me be "Nicki," probably because she thought it was funny that I was running around like a goofball, pretending to play in the snow with the mitten on my hand :) I was very proud of her for being able to retell the story, putting the animals in the mitten in the correct order...which was the whole point of this activity. Oh yes, I'll mention too that she insisted that we call each other "Baba" and "Nicki" for the rest of the day ;)

Next up was some color matching with mittens. I got these cute little mittens from the Preschool Printables site, here. Rather than making them into a file folder game, I just made it like a matching game where LB had to put the pairs together on the table. This was a little boring for her so she decided to make a "mitten train" with them instead.

We played a little game of "mitten toss," stuffing socks inside each mitten to give them a bit more weight. Little Bear had to stand with her feet on the edge of the rug and toss the mittens into the laundry basket. Tiny didn't have to go by the rules...she just had to get her mittens into the laundry basket however she could ;) She was better at retrieving the mittens for us after we tossed them!

We threw in a few other activities this week that didn't go with the mitten theme. Little Bear worked on tracing some alphabet letters, using her ABC Write-a-mat she got for Christmas. It strikes me as a little odd that she used to hold her writing utensil correctly (like back when she was TWO!), but now has reverted to holding it differently, which makes writing and coloring more difficult for her. Oh well...I am trying not to push the issue, but I do try to show her the "right way" each time she begins something like this.

While Big Sis worked on letters, Tiny did some coloring too. She LOVES to get her hands on crayons! I drew a shape and then would ask her to color it in, and for the most part she did it! I think we have a little artist in our future :)

And now for my favorite moment from the week: I gave the girls some counting bears, a silicone muffin container, and a wrapping paper tube while I was making lunch and here is what they were doing:
OH SO FUN!

Thanks for reading :) I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Back to School ;)

2010-01-10T22:24:00.005-06:00

Although we're not technically "doing school" yet and I don't ever have the mindset that we HAVE to do anything school related...we used this week as a transition from our holiday break of routines and reality back into real life. I didn't plan at all, just gave the girls the opportunity to play with some of their "school" toys/activities old and new that we hadn't played with for a while.

A moment of sharing: the girls LOVE their new M & D Pattern Block Puzzles they received for Christmas. Here big sis is helping/guiding Tiny to put the triangle where it belongs :)

After playing with the beginner pattern blocks, I let them explore with "real" pattern blocks I used in my first grade classroom. Little Bear has played with these before a few times, but Tiny had never experienced them. LB dug all the triangles and squares out of the bucket to put on her tray and after playing for quite some time, they both loaded the blocks back into the bucket.

Fun with playdoh! We don't get this out often, so this was a special treat for the girls and they played and created for over and hour! Little Bear used her new cookie cutters to cut out letters.

This was a first time experience for Little Tiny ;) She wasn't quite sure what to do at first, but got excited when I handed her some "tools." After a few taste tests ;) she realized it wasn't worthy of a snack and she played away! She means business, can you tell??!!

One of my favorite moments from the week was watching the girls play with puff balls on the kitchen floor. I gave them several sizes of containers, tongs, spoons, and scoops and they had a ball (literally!). Tiny was focusing so hard on using these little tongs to pick up that big puff ball...she worked on this for several minutes :)

Winter is here! We got our first snow this past week, causing roads to turn icy and schools to close (we really only got a tad more than an inch!). However, this called for making a snowman! Little Bear used some cotton balls I had in the cabinet to make an adorable snowman. I pre-cut the snow for the bottom of the page, the hat, the nose and arms, and we used black hole punch cut outs for the eyes and white ones for the falling snow.

She was VERY proud of her finished product...I think he's (or she's) quite cute myself :)

I have no idea what sparked this idea, but Little Bear had been asking all week to make some snowman cookies. I wasn't even aware that she knew we had a snowman cookie cutter :) So we mixed up the sugar cookie dough on Friday night and began rolling it out and cutting away on Saturday afternoon. We made a big mess (which Daddy wasn't used to seeing) and had a BLAST! She absolutely loves to bake with me and I'm quite fond of the fun we have together as well :)

Decorating with lots of sprinkles and "glitter glue" icing was her favorite part. I just love how creative she can be when she's allowed to do whatever she wants! So much fun :)

I am super excited to start a mini-unit this week based on the book by Jan Brett, "The Mitten." Almost all of the ideas were found here, on the Totally Tots blog. I have always loved this book and we read it all the time, not just in the winter so I'm very anxious to see how Little Bear responds to all the activities we're doing throughout the week.

Warm regards to everyone!

A New Calendar for a New Year

2010-01-04T20:08:00.003-06:00

First of all, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year...I know we sure did! The girls (and I) are very excited about the many new additions to our "school" toys, books, and games. I spent last Saturday re-organizing the front closet and utilizing the additional shelf that Daddy installed for us last week. Although all of our "supplies" are a bit overwhelming to me, I am glad to have them all in their places and we're ready to start a new year :)

I must share one of my favorite pictures out of the many taken on Christmas morning. This "Find the Duck" Usborne book was a gift from Big Sister to Little Sister and Tiny LOVES it. Tiny has gone from not caring so much about books to becoming a lover of books in a matter of months. We are thrilled! She brings us her favorite books and backs up to our laps and makes herself right at home ;)

The girls received SO many wonderful gifts from family and friends...we are so blessed! Here they are trying out the new Melissa & Doug Pattern blocks and Melissa & Doug Stack and Sort Board (with candy canes in hand, of course!).

And now to the main reason for this post.....to introduce our new CALENDAR I have been working on for the last month or so. I had been brainstorming a way to put lots of calendar-type activities in one location for a while and came up with the idea of using a tri-fold foam presentation board to display it all. Then of course, I came across Carissa's "Calendar the Homeschooling Way" idea on the 1+1+1=1 website. And fortunately, she had done all the hard work for me, so I printed, laminated, and cut until my heart was content! *Note: the whole process of brainstorming, getting all the supplies, printing/laminating/cutting, and getting more supplies took almost the entire month of December for me to get done! Take a look at the final product:

Here's an explanation of the whole thing starting at the Top Left:
*Songs to start each morning on book rings so they can be flipped easily.
*Months of the Year song and space to clip the current month.
*Days of the Week song and space to clip the current day.

Middle Section:
*The Month, attached with Velcro so it can be changed each month.
*The year, Velcroed to the board.
*The season, also Velcroed to the board.
*The actual calendar...with Velcro on each space and number.
*Pouches to hold the Months, Days of the week, Calendar numbers, and Name cards used when we sing the NAME-O song (Little Bear's favorite part because I wrote our names with glitter glue :)
*Hundreds board, we are currently working on counting to 20.

Right Section:
*Weather chart, LB checks the weather every morning and we add the appropriate card and sing the weather song (in list of songs on the top left).
*Color of the Day pouch...she picks a color, adds it to the clip and then searches the room for things that color.
*Memory Verse Book and snack baggy with verse word cards hanging on a little hook.
*Current Memory Verse attached with clips so it can be changed every other week or so.

So far, this a HUGE hit with Little Bear! AND with Little Tiny too...although we have figured out that the only way to keep things from getting ripped off the board is to do Calendar time right after breakfast while Tiny is still in her high chair ;) One of these days very soon, she will be ready to participate in a more "hands-on" way.

Christmas Excitement

2009-12-22T14:41:00.006-06:00

As our calendar tells us, there are only three days til the BIG DAY! Yes, Jesus' birthday celebration will be the highlight of our Friday....and then two days later we will celebrate Little Bear's THIRD birthday! We (me especially) are just trying to soak it all in and enjoy the wonderful celebrations ahead!

We have continued with the Jesse Tree and it's hard to believe we are almost to the very special reading of Jesus' birth story. There are so many little ornaments on our tree now and I can hardly wait to add the last one, the most important one that represents the Christ child. Here is our beautiful little Jesse Tree:

We've done a lot of preparation for gift giving this year by making homemade treats. I have had a wonderful helper in the kitchen who just loves to make sure the gifts we are giving taste good enough to give to others ;) Last Saturday, Little Bear and I made Pretzel Wreaths using round pretzels, Hershey Kisses, and red and green M & Ms. We made two whole trays and she was getting quite tired towards the end and decided it was a better idea for her to eat the M & Ms than to press them into the melted kisses.

Grandma picked up these foam ornaments and snowflakes at Wal-mart one day and Little Bear had a great time sorting them by color. It took everything in her to NOT peel the paper off the back and stick them places....so I let her decorate a paper with them after she was done sorting. Of course most of them ended up on her clothing and other random places around the house, but I suppose she was just adding her *own* decorating touches to our Christmas decor :)

We received the Little People Nativity Set as a gift for Christmas last year and it has been a huge hit with the girls this year. Little Bear especially loves to hide baby Jesus so she can have him all to herself ;) We have been reading the Christmas story in the Bible daily and she is getting pretty good at filling in the blanks and telling the story by herself. She said the funniest thing in the car the other day....we drove by a house that had a large Nativity Scene in their yard and she immediately noticed and excitedly told me she saw baby Jesus. I then mentioned that those people had a Nativity Scene just like the ones we have at home. A few minutes later she said to me, "Yeah, we have lots of *Activity Sets* at our house," of course meaning "Nativity." I guess the word "activity" gets used around here so much that it stuck ;)

I found this cute little candy cane pattern *activity* here. She loves using a glue stick so this was the highlight of her day to glue each little piece onto the candy cane. (Yes, it's winter and she is wearing her baby sister's summer romper as a shirt...silly girl!)

After she glued on all the pieces, she told me the pattern and we talked a bit about the symbolism of the candy cane at Christmastime. We turned it upside down and she told me it made the letter "J" for Jesus!

This is a random drawing by Little Bear that I thought was worth adding here. She says it's "Kelsey" (my cousin who we saw at Thanksgiving) and she's holding a balloon...and later she added a jump rope. I love that she included eyes, a nose, a mouth, and arms and legs. Pretty good for an almost 3 year old, I'd say!

I just love it when I catch the girls sharing and playing so nicely together. I got out these "sticky blocks," as we call them, this week and they have been a big hit. I have learned that if we want to make our toys last longer, we keep them in the closet out of sight and rotate which ones get to be played with on a regular basis...it makes them seem more special and *new* to the girls. Just wishing for more storage space ;)

Here's Little Bear *singing* the Christmas Bible Verse, Luke 2:11 (keep in mind she cannot say the "or" sound very well so "born" sounds like "bern" and "Lord" is "Lerd")

I just happened to catch Tiny saying some of the letter sounds (by total coincidence I'm sure) when she was playing with her foam alphabet puzzle

We hope everyone has a blessed Christmas on Friday! Enjoy some good food, time with family and friends, gift giving, and most importantly celebrating the birth of our Lord! God bless you all!

Welcoming the Christmas Season

2009-12-07T15:10:00.005-06:00

Goodness, it seems like the Thanksgiving weekend was gone in a flash and now we're getting ready for Christmas! Isn't that how it always is? I had so many fun things planned for Thanksgiving and we barely had time to do a few of them...there's always next year ;)

To sum up our Thanksgiving.........there was a LOT of eating, spending time with family, and THIS:

We have been super busy around here getting our house and our hearts ready for Christmas. December always seems to be such a fast-paced month so we decided to make an effort to slow down and remember the TRUE meaning of the season.

(slowing it down, resting on "Noah's Ark" a.k.a. the coffee table)

Last week we started our December calendar and decided to do a paper chain to keep track of the days as well. Each day we add the next color, Little Bear does the gluing and holds the link in place to dry. She's really excited that it's starting to get longer and longer!

Our "Songs for Saplings" Bible verse for the week was "He will take great delight in you." Zeph. 3:17. I let her do the coloring page all on her own while I was washing dishes and when I turned around, to my complete surprise, she had traced the capital and lowercase letter Ds all by herself!!! I was shocked and thrilled, to say the least!

It's really been a struggle lately to keep Tiny entertained while we do activities in the morning. She recently gave up her morning nap so we have altered the "plan" somewhat. (Meaning, I don't really do much "planning," things just happen when they happen!). I know it will be a learning process for me to make sure to have plenty of "activities" to keep Tiny busy while Big Sis and I do things at the table. It's pretty much impossible to do anything on the floor without a little monster stomping all over the things and trying to eat them ;) We love our little monster to pieces though and realize that one of these days (very shortly) she will be joining in and doing some of the same things as Sis.

Tiny adores the Fridge Phonics and loves to hear the ABC song over and over and over...so this is always a "go-to" item when I'm working with Little Bear.

Stirring dough for some homemade Christmas gifts...I am not telling what it is as some of you readers just *might* be receiving them ;)

Tiny joining in and patting out the dough...we ALL sure had fun making them!

Carisa (1+1+1=1 blog) has SOOOO many wonderful Christmas activities listed on her site! I headed on over to her blog and started printing things immediately! Here is the link to the Christmas Tot Pack. It is filled with WONDERFUL things...it was my "one-stop shopping experience" for most of our Christmas activities :) Of course I peeked around at some other sites she had linked up and found a few other things. I cannot express how thankful I am that there are MANY other mothers out there who do all the hard work and I just print and assemble...it's that easy. Why re-invent the wheel, right?

Working on a Happy Birthday Jesus puzzle (she's SO excited that Jesus' birthday is two days before hers!)

We played a counting game with these manger pictures and tiny little star cutouts I found on this site. She picked a card and then had to identify the numeral and count out that many stars. I don't know what it was about the tiny stars, but she was having so much fun just playing with them. The manger pictures have numerals 1-10 on them and my hope is to also use these to practice putting the numbers in order.

Coloring in the "What color is the present" booklet in the Christmas Tot Book we made. This little book is GREAT because it's very repetitive and the color word is actually in color so she can read it all by herself!

Here is a look at the whole Tot book...

And while we were working at the table.............
Tiny worked on her foam alphabet puzzle (she LOVES that thing and could play by herself for hours, well....at least 5 minutes give or take)

One of my favorite moments from the week.....
After working on separate activities all morning, I found both of them under the kitchen table sharing the Aquadoodle :D

I had looked all around for an advent calendar of some kind to do with the girls, but couldn't find anything I loved that was relatively inexpensive. So I came across a website that explained the Jesse Tree and I was hooked instantly (especially because I could download, print out and laminate the ornaments and use a small tree we already had here--all at a VERY minimal price). We add a new ornament each night and read the reflection verse and the meaning of each ornament. Although some of the readings have been over Little Bear's head, it has been a memorable experience to set aside this time together and read God's Word as a family. I hope to have some pictures of our Jesse Tree to add here soon!

Enjoy the blessings of the Christmas Season!!!

Gobble, Gobble

2009-11-23T14:40:00.003-06:00

With Thanksgiving coming up VERY soon, we have been working on a few "turkey day" activities...

Hand-print Turkey Painting
We actually started on a hand-print turkey earlier that morning, using brown for the body and four different colors for each of her fingers (I tried it with Little Tiny too and that was a hilarious experience). After stamping the girls' hands on a paper plate to make their turkeys, I let Little Bear play around with the leftover paint and a piece of paper. As I was washing my hands, I looked over to see her painting her own hand to make another hand-print turkey. Her finished product actually turned out pretty good...she is so creative :)

Brown bag Teepee
We've been reading a couple of books about the Pilgrims and Indians and I wanted to show Little Bear what type of "house" the Indians lived in. First, we did an internet search and found several images (real and drawn) of a teepee. She was very excited to make her very own teepee. We used this pattern, which I traced onto a brown bag and cut out for her. She decorated it with all sorts of different shape stickers (to mimic the tribal designs) and colored with markers. We taped three straws to the inside, cut out a doorway, and taped it closed.

The finished teepee:

Feeding the Turkeys
I found this adorable turkey math mat on the Making Learning Fun website. Little Bear rolled a die, identified the number of dots, and put the corresponding number of "Indian corn" on the turkeys. She kept rolling until she fed them all. This was great practice for one to one matching and counting, although she did have quite a bit of trouble remembering to start counting with the next turkey in line...she wanted to feed the turkeys in random order (which I guess would have been just fine too). She thoroughly enjoyed this, probably due to the fact that she got to "snack" at the same time ;)

Turkey "Letter" Hunt
I also found this game on the Making Learning Fun site (wonderful place, I tell ya!). Little Bear (which is a great Native American sounding name, eh?) had to look at the capital letter by the Native American and "hunt" for the turkey that had the matching lowercase letter. She could then clip it with a clothespin (or paperclip, as she calls them). We have played this several times, just doing a few cards each time and she really enjoys it.

We are still working on finishing the hand-print turkeys we started last week, so pictures of those will hopefully come later. Here are a few other links to great Thanksgiving/turkey resources we have been checking out:
Turkey Emergent Reader, Color Words
Turkey Craft Ideas
Thanksgiving Coloring Pages
Thanksgiving/Turkey Songs and Poems
Thanksgiving Activities

We wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving...I know our family sure has a lot to be thankful for and here's hoping all of you do as well! "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever." Psalm 136:1

A Week of Recovery

2009-11-10T14:23:00.005-06:00

Little Tiny's first birthday and Halloween were enough to throw us all off balance for a bit, but we also got hit with a little sickness around here that forced us to slow things down for a few days. The girls and I didn't really leave the house for about 5 days and we just needed some time to rest and feel better. Unfortunately, Little Tiny had the worst of the virus but I'm happy to say she's back to her "normal--get into everything" self :) We did manage to do a few things here and there that were worthy of pictures.

We Made Pumpkin Muffins :)
This most delicious recipe came from the Pioneer Woman and you can find it here. We used our own pumpkin puree (not the canned stuff, but it works too) and got down to work. Daddy had his hands full taking care of Tiny while the mixing was going on, so we just have this picture of Little Bear ready to try her muffin for a bedtime snack :) We skipped the cream cheese frosting and had these for breakfast the next morning also...they were, by far, the best muffins I've ever made.

We're Going on a Hunt!
....a Color Hunt, that is! This was one of the first games I made when we first started doing Tot School and it has always been a favorite. I just used an empty Pringles can and covered it with construction paper (you can do SO many things with an empty Pringles can, covered or not!!!). I wrote 10 color words on wooden clothespins with permanent markers and threw them inside. Little Bear reaches in (without peeking, of course) and pulls one out and has to go on a color hunt around the room to find something that color.

If it's something that can be "pinched" she clips it on and if it's something that can't be "pinched," like something too large or oddly shaped, she just lays the clothespin on top. We recently started singing a song to go with it as we play (our song was adapted from Laurie Berkner's "We're Going on a Hunt"). After she finds every color, she gets to go around and collect them, counting up to ten to be sure she got them all.

Lids a Plenty
These days, I am finding myself not wanting to throw anything away that I *think* would make a good school toy or manipulative (if you're a teacher and you're reading this, you will back me up that "manipulative" IS a real word). Lids have become sort of an obsession. They are a bit annoying because I have to make sure and wash them well so they don't get stinky and then they must have lots of drying time on the counter (which drives Father bear quite insane). Oh well. They are FUN! While Big Sis and I were playing Color Hunt, Tiny wanted her own Pringles can to play with so here was the solution: throw a bunch of lids (only the non-choking hazard ones) in the can and let her at it! She was in heaven for a little while ;)

And sometimes when I try to *distract* Little Sis with one thing to keep her from bothering Big Sis, Big Sis wants to drop what she's doing and join in...and although this pic is a bit fuzzy, it's one of my favorites from the week. I LOVE to watch them share and grow together :D

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tot Book
One of the MANY wonderful tools I have found on the 1+1+1=1 site is a Tot Book. Anyone familiar with lapbooking might really be interested in these for younger kiddos. Carissa has SO many already made, all you have to do is print and assemble. Unfortunately, I've only had a chance to make one but it's wonderful! Little Bear is actually able to read the little repetitious book "The tree is...." after coloring the trees the appropriate colors. She did it twice before I got my video camera out and then she would not cooperate, of course! Oh, don't mind the cute little "snacker" in the picture ;)

Paperclip Color Sorting
I have kind of been throwing things together in a hurry lately, so this morning I pulled a few things out of the closet and let Little Bear explore. The idea behind this tray activity was to sort the paperclips in the corresponding color bowls. She apparently did that first...while I was tending to Tiny and starting lunch. When I got the camera of course, she was still playing a game, only her own version ;) She stacked the bowls up and then lined up all the paperclips on the tray. For some reason, she has a real fascination with paperclips...probably because she sees me using them to keep certain papers and games together and she just can't seem to figure out how I get them to "clip" on things! She did a little experimenting with bending them also, but that just gave me the opportunity to talk to her about the dangers of the pointy ends if we "uncurl" them.

Leaf Patterns
This little project has been a long time in the making (in my head, anyway). I finally got things together this morning and Little Bear was SO excited! I laminated a few strips of construction paper and used foam leaf stickers I picked up at a craft store a while back. I started the patterns and left room for her to finish the last two or three leaves. She loves both stickers and patterns, so this one was a hit!

On the last card, she got to make up her own "design."

More Fun with Lids
While Little Bear did her activities at the table this morning, Tiny also wanted to join in the fun. I gathered a few lids *that were drying on the counter,* a container and a little bowl and let her explore. And this is what I saw when I looked over at her a few times: (she's SO funny!)

Memory Verse Activities
We started working on memorizing Bible Verses a few months ago. At first, I would write a simple verse that I thought we could ALL work on in our hearts on our big chalkboard above the kitchen table. I was super surprised that Little Bear picked up on this right away and LOVED it. Here she is back in September reciting Proverbs 3:6, "In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight."

Not long after we started doing this on our own, I discovered the CD "Songs for Saplings," by Dana Dirksen on the 1+1+1=1 blog. And of course Carissa began making all sorts of printables to go with each of the verses! She's wonderful, I tell ya! So back when we were doing the Apple Unit, Little Bear started with the first verse: "Keep me as the apple of your eye," Psalm 17:8. We let that settle in for about 2 weeks before moving on to the next one. I laminate all of the printables and place the verse in several different locations around the house so it is visible in *almost* every room Little Bear frequents. We listen to the whole "Songs for Saplings" CD daily and she can't help but sing along with me throughout the day. She also has a little flip book that includes the verses she has memorized and we'll add to it as time goes on. The printable packs come with the verse typed on individual word cards so the children can actually build the verse and then read it, which is what our sweetie is doing in the video below. This just FILLS my heart with JOY that she is filling her heart with God's word! :D

More Pumpkins, a Birthday, AND Halloween!

2009-10-31T15:28:00.005-05:00

This was a very busy week for us, but we still managed to get in a few fun activities here and there. I get the question all the time: "how do you have time to do all of this?" and I'm never sure how to answer it. If the question is about how I have time to prepare everything, it honestly doesn't take this "teacher-brained" lady much time to throw things together. I can usually do my internet searches, printing, and making the games/projects while the girls are in bed. If the question is about how I have time to actually do the activities with Little Bear and/or Little Tiny.....well, I'll be honest and say that we don't always get them done. We try our hardest to maintain a pretty simple life around here (by this I just mean that we are at home a lot, without a crazy, busy, on-the-go schedule), but weeks like this one can throw us off when LIFE takes the front seat to "school time." I have also found that some activities take only a few minutes and others can provide a good half-hour of "entertainment" for the girls while I am getting something else accomplished around the house. Okay, enough of that, I just had to get that off my chest :)

I didn't have my camera handy for every single thing we did this week, but I tried to capture most of it.

Pumpkin/Halloween Playdough :)
I found these cute Halloween cookie cutters at, you guessed it, the Dollar Tree. Little Bear could have played with the playdough and cutters for hours if I would have let her! She hasn't quite gotten the hang of rolling out the dough yet, but she had fun stuffing as much playdough into the cutters ;)

While Big Sister played with the cookie cutters and playdough, Little Tiny was busy trying her hand at the pumpkin puff ball game. She is really into taking things out of containers and putting them back in so this was the perfect game for her! I only had to tell her 2-3 times to keep the puff balls out of her mouth ;) She's getting SO big!

Christian Jack-o-lantern
I found the printables for this wonderful activity here. I'm sorry to say I don't have a picture of Little Bear with her finished product, but here you can see her using a tiny piece of sponge to paint her pumpkin orange. We have never tried this before and she LOVED using the sponge! She could either blot it or smear it. This was a 2 step project for her...we painted in the morning when we had just a few minutes, then she added the symbols for the face later that evening. What a fun little project with a very special message!

Pumpkin Patch Parable Coloring Book
A friend of ours gave us this book a couple years ago and we dig it out every year as we carve our pumpkin. We absolutely love the message it sends about sharing the light of Christ with others. So of course when I found this coloring book printable on the 1+1+1=1 site, I was really excited. Little Bear enjoyed hearing the story several times this week and coloring the pumpkins in the coloring book. She especially loved the page where it showed all the "yuckies" that came out of the pumpkin :)
Halloween Cheerio Treats
Having little ones in the house means we should buy stock in Cheerios (insert little trademark symbol here). So when I came across this recipe, we had to make it! Little Bear did all the pouring and counting and taste testing (her favorite part). We can't wait to dig into these later today! Ahem, others might not notice, but I have to point out that she is wearing her Butterfly Fairy Princess dress, wings, and her little sister's shirt ;) Love her!

Grilled Cheese Pumpkins
Those fun cookie cutters I found at the Dollar Tree were really put to use this week. The girls both adore a good grilled cheese sandwich so I just *knew* they'd gobble these adorable pumpkins right up! By the way, I absolutely LOVE Jessica Seinfeld's version of grilled cheese, using butternut squash puree and shredded cheddar cheese in place of cheese slices, found in her Deceptively Delicious Cookbook :) Little Tiny DID gobble hers right up, but it was a different ending to the story for Little Bear. I'm not sure if she just didn't want to mess up her beautiful pumpkin or what, but I ended up tossing it down the garbage disposal :( She was entertained by it though and told stories about it throughout the whole lunch time!

A Birthday!
Friday we celebrated Little Tiny's 1st birthday (I know, already!). We started the day meeting some special friends at the Donut Bank for breakfast. Unfortunately, Tiny was not feeling so well all day so it was a pretty relaxed day around the house for her. Little Bear and I made and iced the King-sized cupcakes (see pics here) and got everything ready for our celebration. We are truly blessed to have 2 wonderful girls in our family! Here they are being sweet together:

Sweet baby girl playing with her new toy from Sissy

Trying out some birthday cupcake, Mmmmmmmm

I also found these pumpkin songs and rhymes that we continue to work on. I am hoping to get at least one "performance" on video, but we'll see ;) And as for Halloween....we have one Butterfly Fairy Princess and one sick little baby girl at our house today. The Princess will be doing her first *real* trick or treating (last year she trick or treated at the hospital!), while the little ladybug stays home to get well. And in case you haven't noticed, being a Butterfly Fairy Princess is nothing new to Little Bear on Halloween...she has worn her *costume* daily since Grandma got it for her several weeks ago :D She truly is our "princess."

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, and MORE Pumpkins!

2009-10-26T15:27:00.009-05:00

Last Monday, we started our pumpkin unit. After jotting down the week's "plans" on Sunday night, I woke up on Monday thinking that we'd just wing it throughout the next two weeks and not be so structured. The funny part is, Little Bear consistently says to me every morning after breakfast, "Mommy, what are we gonna do today?" And when there is any down time (ie. the time during the day when she USED TO take a nap) she says, "I want to do a activity." :) So I suppose she's going to keep me on my toes!

Here is what we've been up to:

Lacing Pumpkin
Little Bear LOVES to pretend sew, so I was really excited when I found this lacing pumpkin. She enjoyed threading the yarn through the pumpkin (even though I didn't have anything other than RED). This was a quick activity that she wants to do again and again! Sorry for the poor picture quality on this one!

Pumpkin Butter

Mmmmmmm, this recipe was so easy and yummy! Little Bear practically did it all by herself (of course with a little help measuring, etc.) We put it on warm toast for a snack :) The recipe made so much that we filled a few baby food jars and handed some out to the grandparents.

Fall Patterns
I found this pattern worksheet on the internet and it was a great way to introduce the skill of completing a pattern. This one was almost too easy for LB, so we moved right along to a harder set (see next pic).

Harvest Patterns
These patterns were a bit more difficult and didn't keep Little Bear's attention for very long. She was more interested in matching the cut pieces to the long pieces, which was still a good skill to be working on I suppose ;) We did have a pretty good discussion about what a cornucopia is though! (I'm sorry I can't find the link to these, I thought they came from www.filefolderfun.com, but I can't seem to locate them)

Pumpkin Carving
Little Bear had so much fun "helping" carve our pumpkin last year that we were really excited to get going on the carving this year. She decided on the Blues Clues template and she and Daddy got to work! We always enjoy when Daddy can participate in our learning! Little Bear helped scoop out the "goop" and separated the seeds for a later project ;)

It was a long process and they worked past bedtime, but Blue was totally worth the trouble! Thanks Daddy for doing a wonderful job!

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds
After cleaning and drying the seeds from our pumpkin, we decided to roast some for a snack. I found some great recipes here....we used the "Savory" one. Little Bear helped measure the ingredients and "painted" the seeds with the buttery mixture. They turned out pretty yummy, even Little Tiny tried one!

Pumpkin Puff Ball Sort
I found this adorable little pumpkin shaped ice cube tray at the dollar store a few weeks ago and just couldn't resist. Little Bear used a long handled spoon (also from the $ store) to scoop out the puff balls and place them in the slots. She sorted them by putting light green in one row and dark green in the other.

Harvest Mice Counting
These adorable little cards were so much fun! I am a member of a yahoo group for preschool teachers and/or homeschool moms and I got these from the leader's website. I'm not sure if they are free to everyone, but I'll put the link here for you to give it a try. This game is meant for kids to write the number of mice they count with a dry erase marker, but I made little number cards for LB to use for now.

After actually counting a few of the cards and doing this activity "the right way," she decided to use the cards to make letters instead. She made an "I," "H," and an "A." This little butterfly fairy princess is a lover of letters, that's for sure!

Pumpkin Color Matching
This cute little game also came from the Learning Treasures website (see above link). This one actually kept her attention a little longer because we played it several different ways. Sometimes we laid out the color words and she had to find the matching pumpkin and vice versa, but we also played it like a memory game and that was fun too!

Pumpkin Patch Counting Game
Alright, well I thought I'd get creative and make a game by cutting out leaves and putting numbers on them and using lots of little pumpkins (I printed from MS Word images) for Little Bear to count out on the leaves. I tried so hard to make this fun and even gave her a neat little "bucket" to carry the pumpkins in...and it backfired. She must have been full of energy this morning because all she did at first was run around and around all the leaves singing some made up song ;) I made a few attempts to get her to "play" by actually counting out the pumpkins and I gave up quickly. At least it turned out cute and the idea behind it was good :D We'll try again another day!

She added some colorful dice to the game and covered the pumpkins with them. We did do a lot of counting so I guess that was the whole point in the first place ;)

"P is for Pumpkin" Art Project
I saw this idea on the No Time for Flashcards blog and thought it was great! I traced 5 pumpkins using a cookie cutter onto a sheet of paper and let her paint them. After they were completely dry, I cut them out for her. She drew some vines on a lower case "P" and then used a glue stick to glue the pumpkins to the P to look like a pumpkin patch.

As she was gluing the pumpkins on, we talked about other words that begin with the letter P. My favorite one she mentioned was "pomegranate" because she really has only seen one at the grocery once, but when she's referring to her pinafore shirt I made her she calls it a pomegranate and we find it rather funny ;)
The finished product:

We're doing more this week (including some yummy baking too!) so look for another post next week! We have a birthday girl who will be turning 1 on Friday so I'm sure we'll be pretty busy this week and weekend :) I'm not sure what our deal is with having "Holiday babies"....maybe we'll break that spell one of these days! Enjoy the week everyone!

Apple Week #2

2009-10-18T22:39:00.004-05:00

I would say our Apple Theme was a success, especially after our trip to the orchard. Little Bear really seemed to enjoy learning about apples and apple cider and made a lot of connections over the last two weeks. This week, we enjoyed snacking on our apples from the orchard and even did some baking together! I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Trying her first Apple Crisp that she helped make

Rolling the apples up in the dough to make Apple Dumplings (these were super fun, easy and VERY yummy, here's the recipe)

Mmmmmmmm! Apple Dumplings and Vanilla Ice Cream!

Apple Prints

Apple Tree Season Sequence Cards

Apple Sizes Game found here

And a few other activities we threw in the mix this week....

Someone LOVES to paint!

Lacing Spools

Gluing glitter...I have found that "runny glue" is less messy when applied with a q-tip ;)

It feels like the weekend has just flown by and we are exhausted...but ready to begin another fun fall theme tomorrow!!! Can you guess what it is???

Apple Unit Week #1

2009-10-10T14:56:00.008-05:00

At our house, we LOVE fall and all that comes with it. Apples are a huge part of why we enjoy fall so this year, I decided we would do a little unit to learn more about the shiny round fruits! Just a warning, I took lots of picture and there will be more to come for next week so these posts might be L.O.N.G :) Here is a little "taste" of what we've done this week with apples:

Apple Books
The girls and I went to the library last Saturday and I think we checked out all of the apple books that were left! Even though we didn't have many to choose from, some of these turned out to be GREAT reads (our favorites being Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington...this one has a few recipes in the back we'll be trying soon)

Fall Festival "Apple Sucker"
Our city (and luckily our side of town) is the home to the nation's 2nd largest street festival! It takes place the first full week of October every year and one of the highlights is the FOOD. I will not mention all the different foods available to try, but Little Bear had to have an "apple sucker" (aka caramel apple) and some apple cider when we took her down for dinner one evening. She was so excited and I loved seeing the connection she had made between our lessons on apples and trying out the real thing!

Apple Size/Color Matching Game
I found this little game here. It was supposed to be a flip book, but I decided to just make it into a matching game and it was just as fun.

Apple Tree Number Match Game
This is a great counting game I found here. The tree tops have 0-12 apples on them and she had to find the tree trunk with the corresponding numeral. I really like this game, however, it took a great deal of focus from Little Bear to complete it. I think on the days we played it she had already been sitting too long and needed to get some energy out! So I had to really make it FUN and exciting to get her to finish :)

Apple Color Page
I found this printable and many others here. As Little Bear was choosing which colors to use, we talked about the three different colors of apples: red, yellow, and green. She wanted to color them blue at first, but decided to stick with "real" colors after our discussion. We also counted the apples in the basket and I wrote the number 12 at the bottom in pencil and she traced it with marker. She's really into trying to "trace" lately!

Apple Number Match
When I found this worksheet on abcteach.com, I really didn't think it was something LB could do just yet....I was wrong! I pulled it out for her the other day and she knew right what to do! She counted the apples and then found the corresponding numeral and drew the lines just great with her pencil (she LOVES using a pencil these days).

Fingerprint Apple Tree Painting
I think this was both of our favorite project for the week...a cute little apple tree made by her tiny little hands :) I can't remember where I read about this idea, but it turned out better than I expected! We painted the palm of her hand and four fingers with brown paint then she stamped it on the paper for the trunk. She used her thumb for the green leaves and her pinky finger for the red apples. She was very proud of her work and couldn't wait for it to dry so she could display it on the fridge!
Apple Songs and Rhymes
There are SO many adorable songs and rhymes about apples. I found these and these and narrowed it down to just a few for this week. Here is Little Bear reciting A Little Red Apple rhyme.

Orchard Field Trip
Okay, so the fingerprint tree was cute, but THIS field trip we went on today was by far the favorite apple "activity" from this week. A good friend of ours happens to work at a small local orchard and invited us to come take a little tour. We had the BEST time, even though the weather was a little chilly this morning!

Little Bear checking out the apple picking ladder, which had 3 legs instead of the usual 4 so they can put it really close to the tree.

Trying on the apple picking bag and listening to Mallorie intently.

The VERY large cider making machine! It was very interesting to learn how they make cider.

The old-fashioned cider maker...much different than the one they use today! This one is more like the ones we had read about in our books :)

Cider taste-testing ;) We even got to try a cider slushy, yummy!!!

Gallons of bottled cider in the cold room.

Taste-testing 2 different varieties of apples, Winesap and Jonagold.

Happy girl riding along with Daddy through the orchard.

Checking out a fallen apple to make sure it was okay ;)

TJ's Orchard also has a pumpkin patch so we took advantage of it and grabbed a wagon to go in search of the "perfect" pumpkin!

There were SO many great ones and we got to cut our own right off the vine!

Posing on some gourds (I love how she says gourd, sounds like "gerd")

Little Tiny was not so sure about Daddy leaving her alone with all of the big, round, orange things!

Now we are looking forward to next week's apple adventures and using all the apples we got to make some yummy goodies :) Happy Fall everyone!

Tray Activities

2009-10-09T15:11:00.004-05:00

The term "Tot School" was thought of by Carisa over on the 1+1+1=1 blog. This is also where I first saw the idea for "Tot Trays." After we started doing Tot School on a regular basis, I simply couldn't resist these trays from Oriental Trading Co. We used a regular cookie sheet before, but I have found that Little Bear is much more into the tray activities if she has one of the 6 brightly colored trays behind her work ;)

For about a month, I've just been "throwing" activities on the trays randomly and without much thought of any order. This has been working for us, but it would probably drive some people CRAZY ;) I have always been more of a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of person, but I'm trying really hard to be more organized for my children's sake! So last Sunday night, I wrote down six tray ideas and got everything ready for the week--then shoved it all back into the closet until school time the following morning (the joys of having a small house with very little storage, plus a baby who would love to get her hands and teeth on anything that would get left out!).

Here are 5 tray activities Little Bear chose to do this week:

Sea Shell Rice Hunt:
Granny just got back from Florida and brought some sea shells for LB and since Little Tiny could not share them, I thought we could use them only during school time. I threw about 20 of them into the rice tub and let Little Bear "hunt" for them with different scoops. She always enjoys playing with rice, but it made it even more special that she got to find Granny's surprises :) After finding them all, she helped me count them. Yes, she's still in her jammies...one of (in my opinion) the many joys of schooling my little one at home ;)

Magnetic Letters Play:
This was one of the very first tray activities I ever did with Little Bear. We just use a metal cookie sheet and the magnetic letters stick right to it! Sometimes we'll play a game by lining up 3-4 capital letters on one side of the cookie sheet and the corresponding lower case letters on the other and she'll match up the "Mommies and babies." She's kind of over that now so I just let her come up with things to do with the letters...she mostly lines them up in neat rows, naming each letter and then tells me what they spell! It's endless fun! Yes, still in jammies ;)

Button Color Sorting:
I found these adorable little pinch bowls at Target and couldn't resist (I'm not even sure what pinch bowl are, by the way)! I am a sucker for anything that comes in primary colors ;) I didn't get out the blue ones in this sort because I thought we'd talk about Fall colors and these 4 looked perfect together! I grabbed 10 or so of each color button from an assorted bag I purchased at Hobby Lobby, put them in cup and let her go to work. She does a great job sorting...and then adds her own little twist on things, pulling out all the heart and flower shaped buttons to keep for herself ;) She always does this with anything pink and purple too, so funny! And of course we counted the buttons by color when she was finished.

Clothespin Counting Cards:
Who even knows how I ended up finding this wonderful freebie! But I'd love to share so head on over here to find it, still FREE! The cards are numbered 1-12 and include the numeral, number word and the same number of dots. LB works so hard to squeeze the clothespin on her own to cover the dots and she has certainly improved in the last month! Great for number recognition AND working those tiny little fine motor muscles! Look closely to see the red ladybug tutu in the picture...I was praising the Lord that I didn't have to fight her out of it to TAKE her to school this morning!!!

Unifex Cube Towers:
I usually just let her play with these Unifex cubes in whatever way she wishes, but I thought we'd try out something a bit different this week. I gave her the numbered paper and asked her to make towers for each number. She did pretty well on her own for the first few numbers, but needed me to model how to count and place the towers on the larger numbers. I think she got the hang of it by the end (and don't you love how she used brown with one yellow cube to make 10...she refused to use the "other blue" color of cubes so this is what she came up with!)

Of course she got to play with the "extras" however she wanted so she connected them all together to make one long cube TRAIN!

We did not get to the sixth tray activity this week, so it will be saved for next week. We tried to do 2 trays a day (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), but we were really focusing on another project (which I will post soon) this morning and we ran out of time.

This Week's Highlights

2009-10-03T14:10:00.007-05:00

It seems like we've had a really busy week and I can't really remember ALL of the activities we did, but I'm going to try to sum it up:

*Monday: Pump It Up with friends, both girls had a blast. Little Bear ventured out and went through the inflatable obstacle course this time (with me following close behind) and went down the big slide *almost* by herself. Little Tiny went down the big slide with me and loved it :) Lots of physical activity on this day!

*Tuesday: Watched The Laurie Berkner Band DVD and played musical instruments and danced with Mommy. We ALL LOVE this DVD...even Daddy ;) The girls were really into playing with blocks too.

*Wednesday: Worked in "A's Story" coloring book and played a few file folder games. I forgot to take pictures, but I promise to post file folder game pics at some point! We played Alphabet Safari (the lowercase version) and of course Little Bear came up with her own rules and ways to play so I went along. She watched the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD, another family favorite.

*Thursday: Field Trip to the grocery store (honestly one of my favorite places to take the girls, even if it is HARD work sometimes). We are very fortunate to have a grocery with a very friendly and helpful staff and I feel like I'm not only teaching the girls about the food we eat but also about good character. When they see me talking to *strangers* and using a lot of good manners (even when sometimes I don't feel like being nice ;) they are learning the CARING and CITIZENSHIP character traits. Yes, I even have a set of different colored t-shirts with each of the character traits on them from when I taught public school...go ahead, laugh, I do. Oh, I mustn't forget the girls fun evening with Daddy while I had a night out with good friends. They watched The Laurie Berkner Band DVD and played our REAL guitar. Wish I would have had a video camera set up!

*Friday: Seemed like our most productive "school" day, probably because I remembered to have my camera in reach so I actually captured most of what we did. Everyone is probably tired of reading my lengthy babble so I'll let the pictures do *most* of the talking. She also played with pattern blocks for a while, but I didn't get a good picture of that to share.

Q-tip Counting: I saw this on another wonderful blog (sorry I can't remember which one!). I took an ice cub tray meant for bottled water (a grocery store find) and used my label maker to make numbers 1-10. If you don't have a label maker you could just use the white sticky address labels or write them on. She has to place the correct number of q-tips in each slot. It took some assistance the first few times, but she has it down now! Afterwards, she made letters out of the q-tips, which was quite fun for her (this girl LOVES letters!)

Putting "runny glue" on the letter L to make this:

"L is for Leaves"
After gluing the L on the paper, she placed several foam leaf stickers around while we talked about the sound letter L makes and came up with many other L words. I think I remember finding the stickers at our local craft store...Hobbit Lobbit as we like to call it.

*Saturday: As I mentioned in this post, school time doesn't always have to be on certain days, time of day, or even at home. This morning, Daddy had to go in to work for a bit so the girls and I ventured to town to pick up some laminating from "Depot Office," as LB calls it. We grabbed a few other things for school and then headed over to the library. I think we checked out about 10 or 11 books about APPLES and Fall. I am so excited to begin our apple unit next week. We're a little behind schedule, but there are still apples for the pickin' at our local orchard and we can't wait to take a field trip there soon. After our errands, we headed over to visit the Great Grandparents for a bit. We had a nice little visit and hope to see them again soon!

PS--I did get the subscribe button to work so please feel free to subscribe and receive updates on your email. You may have to re-enter the blog address after you type in your email on the Feedblitz page so you may want to copy and paste it in.

What We've Been Up To :)

2009-10-01T14:01:00.005-05:00

Here are a few of the activities we've been doing the last few weeks. I don't have pictures for ALL of our activities yet, so I'll be adding more every couple weeks.

I SPY JARS

For the big one, I used a cleaner refill bottle. Fill the bottle 2/3 of the way with long grain rice (not the instant kind!) then put 15 or so objects in, seal the lid with glue, and swish around. I put a couple foam alphabet letters, a random assortment of beads and buttons, tiny shells, glitter shapes, and even a Barbie shoe ;) I wrote everything down so I could have her name all the items, including their colors.

The small one is made from a small peanut butter container. I put lots of eye-catching "pretties" in it to keep her attention.

A's STORY
This custom little book came from the DLTK's Growing Together website. We've been working on coloring a few pages a day and reading it together. She LOVES that it's all about her!

I love how she colored each flower with her favorite colors :) The purple object on the left side of the house is her slide!

EGG CARTON GAMES
This was something I had from teaching and used with Kindergartners and some of my first graders. This particular game focuses on the beginning letter sounds, p, t, b, and d. Little Bear identifies the picture and what letter it begins with, then finds the letter and places the picture in the spot. She gets a little lazy with this sometimes and wants me to find the letter and place it...but I figure if she can name the picture and identify the beginning letter, that's better than nothin'! Since I made this one MANY years ago, I can't really say where it came from...but if I plan to make any more, I suppose I'll just find some cute pics on MS Word and cut them out :)

PLAYING WITH BEANS :)
This is such an inexpensive way to entertain a small child! I just mixed a bag of dry white beans and some black beans together, threw them in this tub (I store them in a container with a lid), gave her lots of different scoops, spoons, bottles, and a funnel and away she goes! She loves to use the tiniest measuring spoon the best.

CUTTING PRACTICE
It's amazing how excited she gets at the thought of using her OWN scissors! I give her several pre-cut strips with *PINK* (of course) lines drawn on them for her to practice cutting. This not only helps her learn how to cut, but it really works those fine motor muscles! She usually gets tired after the first strip :)

PUFF BALL FUN
I've had these puff balls for quite a while and didn't know exactly what I should have her do with them....so I just gave them to her, along with two sorting containers and a pair of *PINK* tongs and let the fun begin! She placed the big puff balls in one container and the small ones in the other. She used her hands mostly, but did try out the tongs (I think the fact that they have pink tips enticed her to do so!).

Even Little Tiny joined in on the fun when she got up from her nap :) I gave her only the big ones and a container and she "practiced" placing them in and out of the container. They were a big hit with both girls...I just had to make sure and wash their fuzzy little paws afterwards ;)

BUILDING BLOCKS
This is one of my favorite pictures of the girls playing together. Little Tiny mostly watched Little Bear build her towers and then proceeded to be the *Head De-constructor* knocking them down as soon as LB would have her castle perfect. It was a great character building lesson, teaching Big Sister to share and be patient with Little Tiny. When we were done playing, Little Bear and I taught Tiny how to put the blocks in the bucket and I was shocked that she actually did it! Such a fun experience for all of us!

STORYTIME OF COURSE!
I find that no matter how often I straighten the bookshelves, this is a job that's never done....which makes me smile with delight! I love it that my girls LOVE to read. Little Bear has ALWAYS enjoyed reading, even as a very young baby. Tiny has not had as much patience to sit and listen to books like her sister did, but she loves to read to herself (in other words, look at and eat the books). I just love this picture of her picking out a book...she stood at the bookshelf and pulled several off for quite a while without knowing I was watching. It was precious!

Getting Started

2009-09-30T20:48:00.005-05:00

First of all, let me just say that I wish I had known about the trillions of *FREE* online resources available through homeschooling mom blogs and other websites when Little Bear turned 1 so I could have started earlier than we did. BUT with that said, I realize that it really doesn't matter how old your little one is or how *smart* she is...doing any amount of intentional play activity is GOOD for everyone!

I first started researching homeschool preschool materials online and connected to the most FABULOUS(!!!!) website, 1+1+1=1. This mama (Carisa) has inspired me to the max!!! I think I should email her to let her know ;) I do plan to link up with her site as soon as this one gets going a little more.

I followed a lot of Carisa's advice and started out simple by using many of the toys and games we already had, just focusing on how we could get more *use* out of them. I also had recently gone through lots of my boxes from teaching and Little Bear basically had Christmas in July playing with all the new (to her) things. I felt extremely thankful I already had these things to get us started. Magnetic alphabet letters (a huge container of them!), counting bears, stacking cubes, animals in a tube, Alphabet Apple, My First LeapPad, pattern blocks, lacing spools, a couple egg carton and file folder games, and a billion puzzles were a huge hit around our house.

After stumbling upon FileFolderFun.com, I ran our printer right out of ink printing so many great games for preschoolers. Thankfully, I made TONS of these in college and knew what I was doing so the actual assembly was pretty self-explanatory.

I made a few trips to the dollar store, craft store, and good ole Wally-land to gather some more simple supplies I thought would be fun to add to our collection (ie. glitter, beads, colorful buttons, pipe cleaners, tongs, fun scoops/spoons, puff balls of all sizes, rice, dry beans and much more). I immediately began collecting empty plastic bottles, containers, and lids of all shapes and sizes to use for storage and/or part of some of the activities. It's amazing what you can do with a Pringles can or oatmeal *drum.*

My plan is to post our favorite activities, including how to make and how to use them, as we go. Please don't hesitate to ask ANY questions you might have. I am a teacher at heart and my brain may not always know what a non-teacher brain needs to know ;) And part of my teacher-ness means that I LOVE to share ideas and would enjoy any feedback on what is working with your little ones!

My girls sharing the I Spy Jar (I'll post a how-to soon)

Welcome to Our Learning Adventure!

2009-09-23T14:46:00.003-05:00

I LOVE blogs. I thoroughly enjoy searching (not stalking) for interesting blogs and I am always amazed at how many wonderful people there are "out there" sharing little glimpses of their lives in the blog world. I am truly inspired by so many of them :)

So this is my second blog.....see our family blog here. My hope is for this blog to serve as a place for me to document the activities we do and the progress of my little ones, but also to share ideas with other parents with young children. Please feel free to use any of our activities or ideas for personal use and pass the information along to friends :)

P.S. Please remember this little tidbit about this blog: This is a BLOG. It will not show our horrible days/moments and all of those things we DO NOT get done each and every day. We are a busy family just like any other and there are plenty of days when "getting by" is all we get done.

Introduction and Beliefs

2009-09-22T22:29:00.015-05:00

I am Jessalyn. A wife, daughter, sister, friend, teacher, and MOTHER! I am a human being who makes mistakes every day and my life is no where near "perfect" (whatever that is). I am thankful to live for a forgiving God, whom I lean on daily.

I have a Master's Degree in Education and taught 1st grade for 4 years and kindergarten for 1 before the arrival of our first daughter. Teaching is my passion, but of course it comes second to spending time with my family. Fortunately, our decision to homeschool our children fulfills both of my passions and I couldn't feel more blessed.

Our sweet girls are currently 33 months and 11 months old so we are just beginning the journey of preschool. Here are a few of my beliefs about "teaching" very young children:

*Learning at this age should be child led. In other words, lots of PLAY! Pay attention to your child's interests and find activities that include them. If your child is not having fun, stop the activity. I don't believe in drilling facts into children...they will learn things as they are ready and interested. Relax and have fun playing!

*Children need a variety of learning activities to expose them to different skills. Music is something we include on a daily basis because my girls LOVE it. I try to maintain a balance between music, art, ABCs, numbers, and physical activities. There are days when Little Bear would rather turn the music off and look at books for 30 minutes so that's what we do. A little TV/DVD or computer time is not a bad thing. Don't overdo it with these, but there are so many wonderful programs that get kids interacting and up and moving, plus teach them something at the same time. Put on your dancin' shoes and have fun WITH them!

*ALL CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT! Boy am I learning this just from having 2! Children can have different personalities, learning styles, and interests and not every child (even if they are in the same family) will learn at the same pace. Our first born has an extreme interest in learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and is able to identify beginning sounds in many words before the age of 3. I would love to find out that our second daughter has the same interest, but I'm not going to push her if she doesn't. Wouldn't life be boring if all of our children were the SAME!? Let's enjoy their differences!

*"School Time" doesn't always have to take place at home or at a certain time of day. Trips to the grocery or convenience store provide GREAT teachable moments. You might be surprised at how much your child is learning by simply interacting with you during your day to day activities and errands. Visits to the library can expose children to a variety of books, toys, and even people. Include your child in helping with chores around the house. Matching socks, folding their own underwear, or putting away the silverware from the dishwasher all teach children responsibility as well as many other life skills. Cooking with your children is another wonderful way to teach different concepts. Allow your toddler to hold the measuring cup as you pour in the sugar, then watch as they delight in dumping it into the bowl! Life's daily doings might take you a little longer or be a little messier, but your child will thank you for these lessons later!

*READ, READ, READ! You can't ever have too many books (although sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in all of ours!). Make sure you have a set time you read to your child, be it before nap or bedtime or some other time of the day. Lucky for me, Little Bear LOVES to read and she initiates most of the reading time done in our household ;) Reading not only gives you quality time together, but it also exposes them to letters, words, sentences and many other skills and lessons. Talk to your child about the author and illustrator and even read the dedication page if there is one! Children need to know that books are wonderful tools written by REAL people.

AND REMEMBER.........
YOU are your child's first teacher and whether or not your child goes off to school one day, she is counting on you to be involved in the learning adventure!