Giving Up On A Clean House

Life is CRAZY!!!

2011-07-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

Those of you that have been following for awhile have surely heard about my constant quest to slow down and focus on what matters! You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging since our move this spring. I have a million excuses, but basically it comes down to focusing my energy on what's most important at the moment. I appreciate all of my readers, and hope to someday soon be able to focus on blogging again. In the meantime, here are some of our highlights from the past year.

As my son was learning to read this year we did lots of fun sight word activities! A very popular post was our Sight Word Garden. A year later we still enjoy our beautiful flowers, and use them regularly to practice new sight words.

Thanks to our Writing Center, my son was able to develop a love of writing. We have made several friends very happy by gifting them their own writing writing centers and art centers. We used the supplies in our centers to create this fun color book.

We loved owls even before they were so trendy! These owl pillows were easy for the kids to make and could be adapted to any theme.

I love to come up with new ways to play with toys that we already have. When I was trying to come up with new (non-destructible) tot school games for my daughter, I posted a bunch of fun ways to play with your chunky puzzle pieces! Her favorite was when I tossed a sheep puzzle piece in a bag. I shook
it while saying “baa, baa, what’s trying to get out of the bag?”

We have been trying to teach my daughter the letters in her name. Her favorite activity so far was this do-a-dot art project, and it looks so cute on her bedroom door!

Mom Chores~ Trying to Keep a Clean House

2011-04-14T22:07:00.001-07:00

We are so settled into our new house that I even plugged in the laminator today! I’ve quickly discovered that moving to a house twice the size means twice the chores!!

In our old home I had developed a system that was working really well for me, so today I recreated it for our new home. As you can see I made a spreadsheet of lists. The master list contains chores for each day of the week that remain the same each week.

For example, every Friday I vacuum downstairs, sweep the kitchen and clear my inbox (a girl can dream right ;) On Fridays we spend the day watching my nephew at his house, so I make that my light chore day :)

Wiping down the bathrooms twice a week makes it so that I only have to deep clean them once a month and they usually don’t smell like a public urinal… Of course this schedule was made with a perfect world in mind and there are days when I just don’t get it all done. That’s when I remind myself to focus on what really matters :)

Then each week I have a different focus zone. So one week I focus on deep cleaning the kitchen and our bedroom, the following week I do all 3 bathrooms, etc.

I printed out all of the lists, mounted them on cardstock and laminated them. I hang the master list and that weeks zone by our family calendar. As I do my chores I get great satisfaction crossing them off the list with a dry erase or overhead marker. At the end of the week I can quickly see how much I got crossed off, then erase it and remember there's always next week!!

Big News

2011-03-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

Things have been crazy over here! It’s official- we are moving in less than 3 weeks! We are really excited! Our new home will be just a mile from Super Daddy’s new office, less than a block to Kindergarten, and in a great area for me to run and bike!!

Plus, our new house is more than twice the size of our current home! My mind is spinning with all of the furniture and decorating possibilities. Of course, one of the first things I did was check out the over 200 online stores at CSNstores.com. They have furniture for every room of the house, including these Herman Miller chairs which would be perfect for our office! I won’t be blogging from my dining room anymore!!

You know I’m a huge believer in focusing on the important stuff, so I’ll be taking a break from blogging. See you in a month, I promise I’ll have lots of fun stuff and updates on our new home :) I will occasionally be updating our facebook page during this break, so if you don’t already ‘like’ me, please do. (Super easy with the buttons on the right hand tool bar).

**I received a $35 promo code to csn stores for linking to them in this post. Check back in a month and I’ll show you what I got for the new house!!

Pick & Draw Winner

2011-03-13T08:30:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all who entered our giveaway for the awesome Pick & Draw Game! Our lucky winner is comment #3, Kylie (of Our Worldwide Classroom)!

If you didn’t win you can buy your own set for only $10! Well worth it for the hours of family fun and creativity!

Pick & Draw Review and Giveaway!

2011-02-24T16:05:00.001-08:00

We frequently play games as a family after dinner. The usual games are fun for the kids. We love seeing the kids excited to play games together, but the games themselves are usually pretty lame for us. Not anymore!!
Pick & Draw is an incredibly simple and fun game! All you need to play are the playing cards, pencil and paper. We usually add crayons and clipboards (since we play our games on the living room floor).
The high quality cards come with very clear, easy to follow instruction cards, and 5 different sets of features (face, eyes, nose, mouth, and hair)
To play you select one card for each feature. It’s fun to see how players can use the same shapes to create very different pictures by simply changing the features size, location, angle, etc.

Beyond being a fun way to spend some family time together. This game is a great way to get creative juices flowing, practice fine motor control, and build self-esteem. Ryan has been so impressed with some of his own drawings! Even two year old Ella gets super excited to play. She likes when we draw the face shape for her and then she adds in features, and lots of extras :) It was during a game of Pick & Draw that Ella first drew eyes as two circles with circles inside!
As you can see in the pictures, we like to name our characters, create silly families, and tell stories about our drawings!

To give the game a try, check out:

At $10, this is cheap family entertainment! If you would like to win your own copy of Pick & Draw become a follower of my blog or comment if you already are (1 entry) (use the follow button on the right hand side of the page :)
EXTRA ENTRIES:
* ‘Like’ Giving Up On A Clean House on Face Book (1 entry)
* Blog about this giveaway and leave a comment with a link (3 entries)
Giveaway ends March 6, 2011 at 11:59PST. Be sure to leave a valid email address otherwise I won't be able to contact you if you win. Winner will be chosen via random.org. If the winner does not contact me within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. Good Luck!
**I received a free copy of Pick & Draw, as well as a copy to giveaway, in exchange for this honest review ;)

Learning Your Name with Valentines Games

2011-02-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Life has been crazier than usual around here! We thought we were moving, but now we are staying put for the time being. We are about to leave on a mini-vacation, but I wanted to share some Valentine activities with you before it's too late!

I'm starting to work with Ella on identifying the letters in her name. We have been spelling it a lot, pointing out the letters when we see them elsewhere, and trying to incorporate her name into art projects.

When I hosted preschool co-op a couple of weeks ago I made these felt hearts to play with. I used puff paint to write a letter on each heart (super easy and super cute!) Remember, that our felt board is just our $14 Ikea easel with felt stapled over the chalkboard side (because I hate chalk and needed a felt board). During circle time I had the kids guess which name was which. Another time I gave them the letters of their name and worked with them to re-assemble it. There is so much you could do with these cute hearts, and it was great for the kids to be able to hold and manipulate the pieces of their names.

Using a new heart press, I created this simple file folder game for Ella. Her job is to match the correct letter to the letters on the game board. Of course, it's most beneficial when I play it with her and say each letter. This would be fun to turn into some sort of fishing game, or even just put the heart pieces in a bowl and have her draw out one at a time.

Another simple game that we will be playing in our yurt in the snow this week involves making hearts with the kids names on them. Today I'm going to show Ryan the magical trick of making his own hearts by folding the paper and cutting on the fold. For Musical Hearts spread the hearts on the floor and turn on some good music. When the music stops the kids have to hustle to stand on a heart with their name on it. They can collect them as we go. For Valentines Beanbag Toss spread the hearts with names on the ground. Toss a beanbag and try to have it land on your name. Collect each heart you land on with your name. You could also do letters of their name. Older kids would have to collect them in the correct order, and younger kids would identify the letters they land on and lay them out to spell their name.

Happy Valentines Day!!

Tot School

2011-01-27T20:14:00.001-08:00

Ella (33 months) has been getting more and more interested in doing ‘school’ activities with me.

She loved using an eye dropper to put drops of water in the suction cups of these bath pads. We included mixing colors, sucking the water back up, and using a rag to clean up our own mess.

We finally finished our Christmas thank you cards. Ella loved painting a snow scene with a cotton swab, cutting felt, gluing pieces and decorating snowmen.

Ella and I created counting cards together using stickers and large index cards. We can practice counting by adding various counters (bears this time) to the stickers on each card.

I put large pieces of scrap muslin out on the grass and let the preschoolers paint with a variety of materials. Ella LOVED it and wants to do it every day now…too bad momma’s not up for that kind of mess everyday!

Our sensory bin is way packed this month, but Ella plays with it several times a day. She especially likes the funnel. We sort hearts by size and material (plastic, glass, wood, felt, and foam).

Ella is into pretending to write and pretending to read :) I just got out these early tracing books and she is doing really well with them.

What better way to practice our balance than with a bunch of fallen logs and tree stumps!

Not tot school, but too cute to not include ;) Can you find Ella?

I can always use ideas for tot school!! What have you and your toddler been up to?

I’ll be getting ideas this month from Quirky Momma’s An-Activity-A-Day Calendars. Print out your February version today!

Check out what other tots are doing:

Delicious Everything (and oatmeal) Cookies

2011-01-13T10:16:00.001-08:00

Well, a mama on a January diet should not be baking. But, we were hosting playgroup and I didn’t want to empty our snack cabinet. Everyone loved the cookies even though I omitted the chocolate (to make them less tempting to me :)

I didn’t get a picture before they were gobbled up… next time :)

Ingredients:

2 sticks of softened butter (1/2 pound)
1 packed cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons almond extract
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
1.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2.5 cups uncooked oatmeal '
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup of good chocolate (I prefer high quality chocolate chips or good ol’ m&m’s)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and lightly grease your cookie sheets. Beat the butter, brown sugar, and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and then the almond extract and vanilla.

Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix well with the blender. By hand stir in the goodies (cranberries, walnuts and chocolate).

Try to get them on the cookie sheet without eating all of the dough (I should probably add some kind of disclosure about the potential danger of raw eggs). Bake them for 11-13 minutes, until they start to turn a golden brown. Cool and Enjoy!!!

Good Storytellers Make Good Writers

2011-01-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

When I taught in the classroom and as a homeschool adviser, I saw a lot of bad writing. We’ve all heard that reading quality books helps create good writers, but don’t forget the classic art of storytelling.

Being able to envision stories in your head without an accompanying illustration, is an important skill that can lead to a growing imagination, and increased reading comprehension.

Books on CD are a great way to introduce the idea of storytelling. We love to listen to stories in the car. Our current favorites are almost all from Barefoot Books. Our library also has a great selection of audio books. Usually we listen to the story uninterrupted the first time (as uninterrupted as a story can be with a two and four year old;) The next time we listen to the story I may occasionally pause it and ask questions, such as “Ooh, I love how they described that dragon! Do you think it looks nice or mean?” At the end of stories I usually ask questions, to see how much they were able to follow the story. I have found that they have a harder time with these comprehension questions with the audio books than they usually do with visual books.

After introducing storytelling through audio books I started to fabricate stories for the kids. I model good stories by making sure that I use vivid descriptions, and include a beginning, middle (with some sort of climax), and an end. They especially love when they are characters in the stories.

Including fun variations has had us telling stories almost all day long! The kids love choose your own adventure type stories where I ask them questions and their answers dictate the direction of the tale. For example, “Ryan and Ella soon came to a dark cave. As they stood outside peering in, they saw a faint light flickering deep inside. Should they go inside or keep trying to find the castle?”

We have also enjoyed a lot of round table story telling lately. We take turns each adding a few lines. These stories get pretty silly!

My favorite story telling activity is telling the same story from different points of view. For example, I could tell the kids a story about a group of kids hunting for a dragon and then tell the story a second time speaking as the dragon. This is a great tool for helping kids think from other peoples point of view. [This less egocentric thinking is developmentally appropriate around age four.]

Of course this is all leading up to having the kids create their own stories. If they have a hard time coming up with ideas you could brainstorm together, or even give them some props to use. Don’t be surprised if in the beginning the stories sound a lot like the ones you have been telling, or tend to ramble on forever. You can ask questions to illicit more details or more vivid descriptions. You can talk about their story at the end saying, “I like how at the beginning of your story ___ happened, then in the middle ____ happened, and then it ended with ____.” Though the best way to keep improving their stories is to keep reading to them and telling them great stories.

We are just starting to turn our stories into fun puppet shows :)

Remember, great story tellers grow into great writers!

How Our Sight Word Garden Has Grown!!

2011-01-10T10:14:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!! My winter break is officially over, and I have lots of fun posts lined up for you. I’m working on learning how to make printables, and hope to provide some fun materials from our current unit on mammals soon :)

I’m so proud to say that Ryan’s reading is really taking off (especially in the last couple of weeks)! We had been pretty stagnant lately since he hasn’t wanted to work on his Explode the Code. In fact, I’ve had to be pretty sneaky about getting any ‘school work’ in. I tried to stay patient, not force him (remembering he’s only 4), and remember that his interest and growth comes in waves. Remember when he went from hating writing to ~~loving it~~ being completely obsessed with it in a matter of weeks?

Anyways, we are still working on our sight words. On We Teach, a few bloggers were discussing our favorite posts from 2010. Our Sight Word Garden was my favorite because it was 100% my own idea and we still use it on a near daily basis.

When our garden started to grow so quickly, (and the sister and pets started picking flowers from our garden) we had to adapt it. I thought about putting floral foam in planter boxes on Ryan’s huge dresser. But, again we would outgrow it quickly. If you want to focus on a handful of words at a time the planter may be a good idea.

So we transferred our flowers to three flower pots that rest on the shelf in our play kitchen (where we see them constantly). The pot on the left is for words that Ryan knows instantly. The middle pot is for words that he knows but needs to get a little quicker with. The pot on the right is for words that we are still working on. It’s been working great for us! Have you planted a sight word garden? If so, be sure to let us know. You could do vocabulary words or math fact gardens too! It’s fun to brighten up bleak winter days with beautiful flowers!

You can check out our other sight words activities from 2010, and you can bet 2011 will be full of more :)

I added this post to the ABC and 123 Show & Tell Blog Hop- check it out!

Getting Outside

2010-12-31T14:58:00.001-08:00

Remember one of my goals for 2010 was to get outside tons. We did pretty well! Here are some pictures of enjoying nature in 2010. I’m excited that Living and Learning is going to be hosting a new meme in 2011 to encourage families to get outside more! We’ll be participating at the end of each month.

January~ trips to the snow, Grandma & Grandpa’s Meadow, and hibernating ladybugs by the handful!

February~ enjoying our beautiful backyard, the zoo and parks

March~ hiking, exploring, and digging a swimming pool!

April~ This month it warmed up, and Ella’s distaste for clothing began, so I have tons of cute naked pics that I can’t share :(

May~ A great vacation, eating carrots right out of our garden, and picking strawberries

June~ Tide pooling, lots of fun at the beach, pool, and parks!

July~Apparently we spent the entire month in the water, and once again Ella was naked in 99% of the pictures…

August~ Tractor driving, camping, and lots of time riding bikes

September~ mud, birds nests, and of course safety goggles & hammers!

October~ Hiking, rainy days at the river, hacking at stumps, pony rides and pumpkin patches

November ~ I only took a handful of pictures in November. But, there were the usual hikes and park days :)

December~ More fun at the beach, hiking, and enjoying our new climbing dome (Thanks Grandma & Grandpa :)

Wow!! This post has made me really appreciate our beautiful CA weather, many fun trips/vacations, and two adorable kids that love to be outside!

Merry Christmas From Two Chubby Little Snowmen

2010-12-24T12:24:00.001-08:00

A chubby little snowman had a carrot nose
along came a bunny, and what do you suppose?
That hungry little bunny, looking for some lunch
ate that snowman's carrot nose,
Nibble, Nibble, Crunch!

Happy Holidays from our family to yours!
I'll be back online next week :)

Gingerbread Week

2010-12-23T13:43:00.001-08:00

My kids enjoyed preschool co-op’s Gingerbread Week so much that it turned into gingerbread month!

The kids loved the gingerbread books we read:

Our focus letter was G. For our capital G the kids used stencils (part of a bulletin board border that I cut up) and painted with cotton balls. We decorated our lowercase g with gold glitter glue. Here’s a G is for Gingerbread Handwriting Worksheet.

During circle time we looked at the illustrations in our gingerbread books to compare and contrast gingerbread characters. We noticed that lots of gingerbread men have buttons, so we made a graph of how many buttons we were wearing at the time. Even the two year olds were into the graphing activity- each kid stood up for us to count their buttons and then I handed them a gingerbread man with that number written on it. We assembled the graph all together and then talked about who had the most/least buttons, etc.

Under the graph you can see our scented gingerbread men. The kids liked trying to match the different spices. We found that several of them do not like the smell of nutmeg!

We laced and stuffed gingerbread characters. This was super affordable since we used paper bags, yarn, a hole punch and markers.

Ryan loved making a gingerbread family garland (again just out of a paperbag). I love how the second one has “Grandma’s fluffy gray hair”.

Both kids loved making life-size gingerbread friends!

All of the preschoolers enjoyed our gingerbread poem and making gingerbread puppets to re-enact the story. Since my kids like to climb in the oven of their play kitchen they’ve loved acting out all of the different versions of the story.

I found an adorable new blog, Musings of Me, that has tons of cute Gingerbread printables! Here’s Ella sorting buttons onto her gingerbread color cards.

My kids loved creating Gingerbread Applesauce Ornaments to give a few special people for Christmas. The dough was 1 cup of applesauce, 1 cup of cinnamon, and 2T of glue. I was surprised that it actually made a great dough (not crumbly, and super yummy smelling). It took several days for our ornaments to dry. The kids put a lot of time and effort into decorating them!

Of course on the first morning of preschool, Homeschool Creations just had to post a Gingerbread Lapbook and send me into a printing, cutting and laminating tizzy before school started! (Thanks ;)

Since somehow they aren’t totally sick of the gingerbread theme yet we worked on this mini-book, My Gingerbread Man. And, we played the Gingerbread Man game on Starfall!

It’s been a fun & yummy smelling month :)

Blogiversary!

2010-12-21T09:45:00.001-08:00

Giving Up On a Clean House is officially 1 year old!! I began blogging to chronicle my adventures with my two preschoolers. I love finding and sharing ideas in the big ol’ blogosphere. But, most importantly , blogging has been a constant reminder to me to slow down and focus on what matters!

I love looking back through the blog and seeing everything we’ve done this year! It’s hard to pick a favorite, but my kids’ favorites were our sight word garden, our rocketship, Ryan’s Writing Center, and coming up with creative ways to play with our puzzles. Looking at old posts reminded us to make reindeer toast this week.

Even though I’ve become really good at not letting myself feel guilty when I don’t post enough, one of my goals for 2011 is to post more consistently. I would love to see this little blog grow!

With Ryan officially starting Kindergarten and Ella really getting into the swing of preschool it’s going to be a wonderfully full year!

THANKS for reading!!! I love all of your comments and links :)

[I dream about this blog growing as big as some of my favorites! Right now 3 of my favorite blogs are partnering with Target to giveaway an iPad and children’s books!! Go to Frugal Family Fun Blog to enter to win an iPad and an assortment of children’s books courtesy of Target! I also saw the giveaway at No Time for Flashcards and The Activity Mom]

Time for Tots Activity Kit Review

2010-12-02T09:31:00.001-08:00

We have had so much fun the last couple of days with our Mix n’ Match Christmas Kit from Time for Tots.

Our kit arrived with 12 wonderful activities (which I selected, that’s the mix n’ match part of the kit :) The activities were appropriate for both my two and four year old. Some of the activities were consumable (the make an ornament activities), so only one child got to do them. But, there were enough so that they could choose what they wanted to make.

Ella’s favorite activities were, sorting big and small objects onto big and small stockings, and matching the candy canes. Ryan enjoyed the grid games and making a reindeer headband. They worked nicely together on the prewriting strips and puzzles.

I love that these activities took no preparation from me, yet have provided hours of entertainment (and will continue to do so all month)! I also appreciated that each activity was individually organized in separate bags, that the entire kit came securely packed in a single large plastic folder, and that the instructions were clear.

The shipping was super fast, so it’s not too late to order your kit and still have time to do these fun holiday activities with your kids!

Don’t forget while you’re on the Time for Tots site to check out other kits that can be used all year long. I’ve been eyeing their Fine Motor Skills Kit, the Everything Preschool Kit, the Color Travel Size Kit, and the Working With Words Kit. They even have Sensory Bins.

Nicole from Time for Tots generously provided this free kit for us to review. The opinions in this review are mine and were not influenced by Time for Tots or its affiliates.

Keeping My Purse Organized

2010-12-01T09:59:00.001-08:00

Yup you read that title right, and yup I’m a self-declared dork! But, at least I’m an organized dork ;)

I have a massive amount of membership cards, reward cards, punch cards, business cards, gift cards, coupons, and other little pieces of important paper that would otherwise make my wallet bust at the seams and clutter my purse. I organize them all in a little coupon wallet that I got in a dollar bin last Christmas.

I even keep my check book and a small pack of crayons in there. It’s gotten pretty massive in size, but it keeps my even more massive purse tidy, and I always know where my cards and coupons are! It’s worked so well for me that I just had to share :)

Split Pea Soup & Challah

2010-11-30T14:50:00.001-08:00

I wish Thanksgiving produced more ham hocks! There are so many great possibilities! This year’s hock was destined to become split pea soup.

Soup Ingredients:

4T Butter
2 Onions, chopped
6-8 celery stalks
6-8 carrots
1 pound split peas
4 cups chicken or turkey broth (Don’t forget it’s super easy to make yourself)
4 cups water
1T marjoram
ham hock and any leftover ham you may have

Soup Preparation:

Melt the butter in a dutch oven (or a large heavy pot). Add the vegetables and sauté until they begin to soften ( about 8 minutes). Stir in the hock and ham (in large chunks that you will be able to remove easily later) and marjoram. Add the peas, broth and water. Bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cover partially. Stir frequently until the peas are falling apart (about an hour).

Transfer the hock and large ham chunks to a bowl. Use an immersion blender to bring the soup to a consistency that you like (it will thicken slightly as it cools). If it’s too thick blend in more broth. Dice the pork and return it to the soup. Yields about 3.5 quarts.

This soup is delicious (yet terribly not kosher) with Challah.

Bread Ingredients:

1 cup of warm water
5 egg yolks (save the whites to brush the dough)
6T softened butter
4C flour
4T gluten
1.5t salt
1/2c packed brown sugar
1.5T yeast

** The freshness of the flour and gluten GREATLY affects the taste and texture of the bread!

Bread Preparation:

I put the ingredients in my breadmaker in the order listed (but I understand different machines have different order preferences??) My machine is a bit on the wimpy side for this wet and heavy dough, so I stand by during mixing with a spatula. After the machine finishes the dough cycle, I give the bread one more gentle kneading on a well floured surface. Then I split the dough into six pieces and braid two loaves of three strands each. Brush the loaves with egg whites and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Allow the loaves to rise for half an hour, and then bake at 350 degrees for 18-25 minutes (depending on how doughy you like it).

Every time I make Challah I intend to take one of the loaves to a friend, it just never makes it that far…

Enjoy!!

Guided Drawing- Thanksgiving Pilgrims

2010-11-23T15:32:00.001-08:00

I’m frequently torn when I think of what ‘art lessons’ should look like for young children. Part of me wants to make it a fully creative process, and part of me wants to include some instruction (in the hopes that my children will be able to draw more than stick people, unlike their mama:) So like may other subjects, I try to balance the kids’ experiences. We do a lot of free art (where they usually end up consuming an entire glue stick each!)

Guided drawing not only allows us to work on some drawing skills, but it is also great for practicing following directions! Most of our guided drawing lessons have been in Ryan’s Drawing Notebook, but I wanted our Thanksgiving lesson to be larger. We followed a lesson from HeidiSongs. Ryan is so proud of his pilgrims and turkeys. I printed out the instructions so that we can repeat them each year and see how his drawing changes.

We’ve also been doing some activities from Draw with Rich. I’ve been eyeing his Pick & Draw Game for awhile, maybe I’ll have to add it to Ryan’s stocking.

Preschool Co-op

2010-11-19T07:44:00.001-08:00

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my friends and I have organized a preschool co-op. We are all so excited at how well it is going. I was a little worried that rotating houses each week would confuse the kids, but it definitely has not. The kids are excited to take turns to have preschool at their house. All the moms have done an awesome job so far! I wanted to show you some of the great activities that Ms. May Tou planned for us this week.

Look how excited the kids were to answer questions during circle time.

Our focus letter for the week was N. On Tuesday we made nest N’s for our alphabet binders, and on Thursday we talked about N words and made necklaces.

These are just a couple of the cute projects we did this week! I love the thankful trees that the kids made. We asked the kids what they were thankful for and put five responses on the leaves of their trees. I love that we asked them individually so they didn’t all just repeat each others answers. Ryan is thankful for peanut butter and jelly, trees, candy, presents, and rain. Ella is thankful for Daddy, Mommy, ‘My Ryan’, flowers, and turkey. The pilgrims in their pots are on plastic spoons!

Thanks to Ms. May Tou for a great week!

CSN Giveaway Winner!

2010-11-19T07:37:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to Kate (comment #26)! I hope you enjoy your $35 to CSN Stores :)

A huge thank you to CSN Stores for the giveaway!

Did you know that next month I’ve been blogging for an entire year? Did you know that I rarely stick to something for an entire year ;) I think we should celebrate!! Stay tuned for more giveaways :)

Countdown to Christmas

2010-11-17T09:25:00.001-08:00

Last year we used a paper chain to countdown to Christmas (and practice our patterning, and end the non-stop question of ‘How many more days?)

We have an adorable advent calendar that our cousins gave us, each of the little pockets has an ornament to hang on the tree (with Velcro). I love that I don’t have to buy little junkie things for this calendar each year!

This year I was hoping to get my act together earlier and do something a little more elaborate. I was so excited when I saw one of my favorite bloggers, The Activity Mom, post an Activity Advent Calendar. I LOVE the idea of counting down to Christmas by doing something fun and holiday themed each day!

I love that she included the printable cards, Plan B activities, and a super organized materials list for the entire month!

Print out your Activity Advent Calendar today and enjoy an activity a day as you count down to Christmas!

Tumblr

2010-11-15T20:51:00.001-08:00

I love to use Tumblr as virtual bookmarks for the blogosphere! My Tumblr page is an easy and cute way to keep track of all the great things I find online.

Check out the cookies a friend and I made today, the money game I’m currently making for Ryan, or the erasable activity books that I want to make for Christmas gifts.

Enjoy!

Win $35 to any CSN.com store!

2010-11-12T07:38:00.001-08:00

I was excited when CSN Stores contacted me about doing a review or giveaway.

Since the handles on my work bag are literally falling apart, I thought about getting this adorable briefcase.

Then I looked at all the great things I could get for the kids.

Then I realized, where is my giving spirit;of course I should pass this on as a giveaway to my readers!

So enter below to win a one-time-use $35 gift certificate to use as you wish at any of CSN’s 200+ websites!

MANDATORY ENTRY:

Tell me how you would spend your $35 at CSN Stores

EXTRA ENTRIES:

* Become a follower of my blog or comment if you already are (1 entry) (use the follow button on the right hand side of the page :)

* Blog about this giveaway and leave me a comment with a link (3 entries)

Giveaway ends November 18, 2010 at 11:59PST. Be sure to leave a valid email address otherwise I won't be able to contact you if you win. Winner will be chosen via random.org. If the winner does not contact me within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. Good Luck!

Making Our Own Books

2010-11-11T08:46:00.001-08:00

I've mentioned the fabulous Growing Tree Toys before. They are an excellent online store for educational toys!

Growing Tree Toys graciously sent us a Create Your Own Pop-Up Books Kit to review.

I was impressed when I saw that it had received an Oppenheim Award. Many of our favorite toys and games have the Oppenheim seal on them. As soon as I opened the box I noticed the two high quality hardcover books. Their bindings are very durable, and the thick pages assure that marker won't run through.

I gave Ryan some choices for topics of our books. He chose to make the smaller book a book all about him. We had a great time measuring him and weighing him. His favorite pages are the one where he drew all of his favorite things ( a rainbow, his new bed, an ice cream cone, and a purple blob, because that's his favorite color), and one where he drew a monkey at the zoo(because he loves to watch the monkeys at the zoo).

The pop-ups were a lot of fun, and Ryan loved the bright stickers. I liked that everything we needed came in the kit. A project like this accentuated the differences in Ryan and my own personalities. I wanted to brainstorm together, make a rough draft, and then make the final copy perfect. Ryan just wanted to do it his way :) (I used to be a middle school teacher. I constantly have to remind myself that he’s 4.)
We were so impressed with this kit, I'll definitely be looking for more Creativity-for-Kids toys for Christmas gifts!
My favorite page was the last one...

Leaf Week

2010-11-10T11:22:00.001-08:00

A few friends and I have started a preschool co-op. We take turns teaching & hosting preschool at our house two afternoons a week. It’s tough with 2 two year olds, 3 three year olds, and 2 four year olds. But, the kids love it and it’s nearly free! We made a schedule of themes, and a common circle time and behavior system that stays consistent each week.

I taught for our first week last week. Leaf Week was a huge hit!

During Circle Time I introduced some fun songs from preschool rainbow.

The kids’ favorites were:

Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel
Shake your bushy tail (pretend to shake tail)
Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel
Shake your bushy tail (pretend to shake tail)
Wrinkle up your funny nose (act out line)
Put a nut between your toes (pretend to eat a nut)
Gray Squirrel Shake your bushy tail (Pretend to shake a tail)

Red and yellow, green and brown. (count off colors on fingers)
Leaves are falling to the ground. (simulate falling leaves with hands)
We pile them up OH SO HIGH: ('pile' leaves with hands)
Then we JUMP in! (pretend to jump in)
My friends and I!

Circle Time also included a calendar board similar to the one we usually do. The kids favorite part was when I introduced our sensory bin.

I’ve considered doing sensory bins before, there are some amazing ones in the blogosphere. My final inspiration came from Delightful Learning; her recent sensory bin showed me that it’s more than just squishing little hands around to feel things!

Our fall bin included dried beans & green and yellow split peas as the filler. There were fabric leaves, real peanuts and walnuts in their shells, leaf buttons, real acorns, plastic acorns, and plastic spiders.
I showed the kids how to use small tongs to take items out of the bin and sort them in ice cube trays, or pile them on a large leaf platter. The kids had hours of fun and creative play with the bin, and even added some new words to their vocabulary. I’ll be doing one for each new theme!

During other group activity times we enjoyed our rhythm sticks, and took turns practicing writing our focus letter-L, with a paint bag.

Of course we read lots of leaf & fall themed books:
Fall Leaves Fall!
The Apple Pie Tree
Fletcher and the Falling Leaves
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf
The Little Yellow Leaf
Leaf Man
The Autumn Leaf
Investigating Why Leaves Change Their Color

For our art project the first day we used marbles to paint leaves (inspired by 1+1+1=1). It was a fun mess-free craft (since I put the paint on the marbles, and put them into their boxes).

Our art project the second day was inspired by Deep Space Sparkle. After reading Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf and Leaf Man. We examined the illustrations, and talked about all the different shapes of leaves. The older kids used oil pastels, and the younger ones used crayons to draw leaves. We finished by using liquid watercolors to go over our pictures. You can see Ryan’s picture of leaf man.

Since our focus letter was L, we made leaf L’s, and used bingo markers for a find the L activity. The four year olds practiced writing L’s.

We used leaf stickers to make leaf counting books. I differentiated for the different ages. I did all the writing for the two year olds, the three year olds had a place to trace their numbers, and the four year olds traced a couple numbers and then practiced writing their own.

At snack time we tried to crack peanut and walnut shells with our hands. When they couldn’t open the walnuts we brainstormed as a group how we could do it. The kids spent the rest of our outdoor time cracking walnuts with rocks. (Thanks to a good friend of mine for that idea :)

The oldest kids did some extra activities. they enjoyed all of the fall games from File Folder Fun. I even used their blank acorn template to create an uppercase and lowercase matching activity that we did as a group.
Acorn Addition was a huge hit. The four year olds used the acorns from the sensory bin. They each rolled two dice, and then used the acorns to figure out who had the larger sum. They used the leaf buttons from the bin as a way to keep track of their points. I was excited to see that they frequently knew the sums without the help of the acorns.

We did so many fun things, but still not everything I had planned! I look forward to my turn to teach next month, but even more so I look forward to my free afternoons when it’s someone else’s turn to teach!

Good Behavior For Gems & Jewels

2010-11-04T09:32:00.001-07:00

Every house has its rough patches, right? When one (or both) of the kids is behaving ~~like a little monster~~ poorly, I can usually figure out what’s causing it. It’s usually a change in sleep, a change in diet, or that we are too busy! Monday we started an intentionally calm week, and it has worked wonders.

Besides slowing down, the other trick to pleasant days in our house is rewarding positive behavior. A few moths ago we implemented a great system that I saw on Teach Mama.

The kids earn Gems and Jewels for good behavior. We call the little beads gems, and the larger ones jewels. They can earn them in tons of ways, like helping someone, putting away toys without being asked, remembering to clear their plate from the table, etc. It’s been a really simple way for us to consistently recognize good behavior.

The goal is to reach the line in their bowl. When it starts getting close we talk about what they would like to earn as a reward. After filling his bowl a couple weeks ago, Ryan had a movie night with Dad . We have a rule that they can’t ask for gems or jewels (that could get really annoying in our house). Sometimes Ryan will point out that he did something the first time that I asked, or was helpful. They both can also lose beads for poor behavior, but we don’t do that very often since we rely on 1,2,3 Magic techniques . I picked up the containers and the glass beads at the dollar store.

This system has been working great for a few months in our house! Ella’s bowl is almost full so we will soon be enjoying a family trip for frozen yogurt :)

Treasure Chest

2010-11-01T18:38:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite aspects of the holidays is giving unique & creative gifts. Ryan and I made this treasure chest for a friend’s birthday.

I bought a wooden chest at our craft store. I painted it black, and then used a sponge to add some gold paint. On the inside I used Mod-Podge to apply gold flakes. I tossed in some assorted buttons and jewels, and topped it off with the real loot- pirate books!
I’m trying to come up with some creative gifts for this year. I’m going to make Ryan his own treasure chest. I was thinking of making this dollhouse & dolls for Ella. I’ve been meaning to make some crayon rolls for friends. You can keep track of some of my favorite ideas from around the web on my Tumblr page.
What are some of your favorite homemade gift ideas?

Turning my Attention to Food

2010-10-24T08:42:00.001-07:00

My husband and I have been talking a lot about food lately, mostly in the context of budget and health. On Friday night we watched Food, Inc. I wish we hadn’t waited so long to watch it, but then again maybe it was the perfect time to watch it in conjunction with the discussions we have been having. The movie helped us to solidify some new goals- basically, to spend less money on more healthy food. So on Saturday morning the kids and I went to the farmers’ market.

As you can see, Ryan was proud of our produce purchases. Look at all that yummy local, organic produce that we got for just $32! The meat included a large whole chicken, 2 bone-in chicken breasts, and a cross-rib roast. It was hard to fork over $44 for the meat. Last week, I bought the same size chicken on sale at Raley’s for $4.07 (at the farmers’ market it was $19!). Thankfully, Food, Inc. convinced us that quality is more important than price. We are used to eating meat everyday, we may have to re-examine that in the near future. I love how the documentary reminded us that we can make a difference, we vote on these issues three times a day!

When we got home from the market I had to tweak this weeks’ meal plan (you never can be certain what you’ll find fresh). Laying our purchases all out on the counter not only made for a great photo op, but it helped me to plan to make sure that we were going to use everything we bought. We waste far too much food! As an item was included in a planned meal I put it away. At the same time I made a short list of additional items that we still need from the store.

It’s only Sunday, and I’ve already spent a lot of time and energy on this weeks’ food (and I haven’t even cooked the meals yet). The planning will get easier each week. Soon we will be spending less money on food, supporting farmers and companies that deserve our support, wasting less food, and eating more healthy meals!

My Little Pink Owl

2010-10-15T22:19:00.001-07:00

When I saw an owl costume on Ucreate yesterday I couldn’t resist. I had to act quickly because we had a Halloween party to attend tonight! Thankfully, this costume was incredibly easy. I love to attempt stuff like this, but my intentions are much greater than my actual skills. This was all just cutting and gluing :)

As you can see I modified the original idea to not be on a hooded sweatshirt. It was ninety degrees here this evening for the party and I knew she wouldn’t keep the hood on anyways. I glued everything (which saved me an hour in digging out all my sewing stuff). Plus, I had extra single feathers cut out, so I glued those on the arms. In total the costume cost me $13 and 80 minutes!!

Ella loves her super cute costume! She’s adored owls ever since our owl week in January. She has an owl themed bedroom. She even had an owl birthday party in April.

I can’t forget to mention my handsome policeman also attended the party tonight!

Look how much they’ve grown since last year!

Can you tell I’ve enjoyed looking back at pictures of my kids tonight ;) Thanks for admiring them!

Ryan’s Awesome New Bed

2010-10-14T09:26:00.001-07:00

It’s finally finished!!! I don’t think our Super Daddy is going to be lured into such a grand project for quite a while…

We were enticed when we found the plans, and the momma builder said it took less than $120 and 15 hours. Well ours took about $15o and 100 hours (no that’s not an extra zero)!!! It was a lot of pieces to cut and sand. Then each piece needed a coat of kilz, 2 coats of paint, and two coats of polyurethane. It’s hard to tell from the pictures but it’s about 5.5 feet tall- we can still tuck him in without climbing up. Anyways, it’s done and it looks amazing!

Ryan thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world. We put his book shelf underneath with a bean bag chair and some rope lights along the inner edge of the bed.

Thanks Super Daddy!!

Butternut Squash Soup

2010-10-04T11:45:00.001-07:00

Fall weather is just beginning in Northern California! I LOVE to cook in the cooler weather. Soups, stews, baked grains, so many healthy delicious recipes to choose from!

My friend, Jennifer, graciously shared a recipe for butternut squash last fall. After tweaking it to make it a bit healthier it has become a staple at our house! today with 1/2 the oil and no half-and-half and it was still amazingly good. Thanks Jennifer!

2 Tbs. honey

2 Tbs. canola oil or other light vegetable oil

2 butternut squashes (about 3 lbs.), halved lengthwise and seeded

2 yellow onions quartered

2 Granny Smith apples peeled, quartered, and cored

5 C chicken stock (I make my own)

salt and pepper (fresh)

1/4 tsp. fresh nutmeg

Preheat oven to 450. Combine honey and oil in a small bowl. Line a shallow baking dish with foil and arrange squash, onion, and apple on it. Brush with oil/honey mixture. Bake for about 1 hour turning pieces at least once until all pieces are tender and well browned.

Remove from oven, let cool, then scoop out flesh and chop coarsely. Chop onions and apple.

In a soup pot, combine squash, apple, onion, stock, salt 1/2 tsp, pepper 1/2 tsp., and nutmeg. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for 20 minutes.

In a blender or food processor-puree soup in batches until smooth (I use my immersion blender). Adjust taste with salt and pepper.

Enjoy! There will be a lot more recipes coming your way this fall!

Our Castle- Another Super Daddy Project

2010-09-20T07:27:00.001-07:00

Last year Ryan had a Knights & Castles birthday party. Our gift to him was this awesome play structure that my husband and I (mostly my husband) made. The super cool part about it is that it comes apart really easy for moving it or for storage, in about 5 minutes with two people. The full plans are online here.

We’re still working on our recent Daddy Project of making Ryan a loft bed! Hopefully it will be finished really soon to share some pictures with you. Our most recent finished project was our tumbling composter. Yup- we keep our Super Daddy busy!

The Gem Jiggler

2010-09-17T07:22:00.001-07:00

Do you habitually save things like egg cartons at your house? Sometimes my desk looks more like a recycling center than an office! But look- all that ~~trash~~ treasure comes in handy!

We have glass beads from the dollar store that we use for our behavior system (more on that later). Ryan still needs some work with double digit numbers. This game was super easy to make and provides another fun way to practice our numbers.

I started by cutting a single circle and asking him to trace it and cut it out 17 times. He did 4 in 30 minutes. It was great cutting practice- but I didn’t want to use all his patience on making the game! After the circles were cut I wrote the numbers and glued them to the egg carton. TaDa done!

To play, stick a gem in the jiggler (aka the egg carton). Close it up and shake, shake, shake. The kids had a blast being super silly with their shakes. Open the jiggler and announce what number your gem is on. In yesterday’s version we announced the number, and then showed it on our abacus. If you could do both you got to keep the gem!

In the near future I’m going to use this game to introduce our place value kit. With older kids you could have them write roman numerals or tally marks, or practice addition or subtraction. You could use sight words instead of numbers! You could use English or Spanish vocabulary. For younger kids you could include shapes or colors. Older kids could graph the colors they shake. The possibilities are endless…

What have we been up to???

2010-09-10T16:14:00.001-07:00

Sorry, long time no post ;) Things have been insane at our house and remember my whole motto of focusing on what matters…

Anyways- remember that post about three weeks ago when I went on and on about wanting to spend all of my time with my kids and how I thought it was great that they would stay home for preschool this year. That lasted about 2 weeks then I was ready for a padded room!! I was miserable- feeling grumpy and burnt out. The kids were constantly having rough days and seemed incapable of getting along or occupying themselves. You know how I put far too much time and energy into decisions like this- so to make a long story short, the kids are attending a wonderful preschool two mornings a week. I can’t believe what a difference it has already made in all of us! Apparently we need some time apart. I do feel a bit like a failure- like I should be able to be super mom 24-7. But, it’s just not realistic for us and having a little me time allows me to be a much better mom the rest of the time :)

Ryan & Ella on their first day of preschool!

So what have I been doing during all my me-time (obviously not blogging)? I’ve started classes with the National College of Midwifery and hope to begin my apprenticeship soon to become a Certified Professional Midwife.

Thanks to all the concerned emails I got during my blogging hiatus! We’ll be back on schedule now with tons of great ideas coming your way :) Don’t forget you can sign up for an email subscription (on the right hand toolbar) so that you don’t miss a single post!

The kids love their new bikes! When we head to a park with a bike loop I sometimes even get a bit of homework done!

Rocket Ship- HOURS of entertainment!!

2010-08-26T15:05:00.001-07:00

Last month I picked up a refrigerator box from our local appliance store. I got all dizzy spray painting it while the kids watched from a far. The next day dad helped secure the corners with zip ties and cut out some windows. Over the last several weeks the kids both spent countless hours decorating the inside with markers and playing rocket ship. I love that it’s more comfortable than under a blanket in the living room, and the kids are taking their imaginative play outside while still being shaded.

Imagine all of the things we could create with these huge boxes!!

Composting & A Giveaway

2010-08-24T11:21:00.001-07:00

A good friend of mine just started a blog about her families attempts to live more sustainably. One of her first posts was about composting, which reminded me that I never posted about one of my favorite recent Daddy Projects- a homemade tumbling composter!

I found the plans at Sorta Crunchy. It wasn’t hard to talk my honey into this relatively quick, easy, and cheap project! We’ve been composting for a couple months now. I can’t really tell how much is going on in there, but I’m super hopeful that I won’t be purchasing expensive organic compost for our gardens anymore!

Be sure to check out Sustainable Family! She’s got a great giveaway going for Reusable Snack Bags. We use our bags everyday and would love to add to our collection.

Locks & Keys

2010-08-18T19:59:00.001-07:00

I had a couple of keyed padlocks laying around the house, and picked up a few more at the dollar store last week. Ryan has loved playing with them everyday and had gotten really good at quickly figuring out which key opens which lock. He likes to lock the locks together, and on various things around the house. Even little Ella loves trying to put the keys in the locks. It’s great hand-eye coordination, fine motor skill practice, and a logical thinking activity.

All of the locks came with two keys so I kept an emergency set :) As you can see we’re storing these in my new favorite containers: produce clamshells. Ryan traced the keys to decorate the lid.

Why we are homeschooling…

2010-08-17T22:17:00.001-07:00

Today was the second day of our school year and we spent the day “country schooling” at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

	We feasted on the first ripe blackberries of the season.
	We learned that even though deer poop looks like black beans- the similarities stop there…
	Ryan got a tractor driving lesson with Grandma.
	We played elaborate games with our cousins and their plastic animals.
	We took a break from playing outside and played Rainbow Race with our cousins.
	Ryan found a drowned lizard that he ‘loves’ so much that it just had to come home with us…
	Time with Grandma wouldn’t be complete these days without some painting! We discovered secondary colors and used watercolors to make beautiful rainbows.
	After that long hard day the kids didn’t fall asleep on the hour-long trip home! Probably because we were repeating our Spanish lesson from the trip there. Ryan wanted ‘just one more game’ before bedtime books.

The idea of this being a ‘school day’ is absolutely joyous to me!! We put a lot of thought into what to do for school this year (far too much if you ask my husband and close friends…) Ryan absolutely loved and thrived at his preschool last year, but his teacher isn’t sure if she’s going to be open this year. Ryan thrives learning at home too. He technically is supposed to start Kindergarten next year, but is very comfortable in all of our Kindergarten curriculum.
Ella is only two. She loves to play and isn’t really interested in many of our tot school activities. Both kids get tons of social interactions everyday with friends. SOO, to make a very longwinded decision short- we’re using this as our ‘trial year’. We’re working on establishing a daily rhythm and cherishing our time together. I’m focusing everyday on being the kind of mom I want to be and trying not to think about how way too soon our kids will grow up and we won’t have the luxury of spending all of our time together.

**As you saw- we had a good day, which makes me confident in this current decision. However, I reserve the right to plead temporary insanity and ship them both off to preschool if we drive one another nuts ;)

Our First Day of School!!

2010-08-17T06:40:00.001-07:00

Our first day of school got off to a rough start when my dog was attacked by an off leash dog while running this morning. I ended up being pulled off the edge of the levee road we were on and getting all scraped up and bruised! That could put a damper on a regular day- but not on my little guy’s first day of Kindergarten!!

Thankfully our day improved from there! I had everything all prepped and ready to go the night before (we’ll see how long that lasts…)

Our ‘Daily Do’ folder is still working out really well. It’s a great way for us to see what has to be done, for me to make sure I don’t over-schedule us, and Ryan is still motivated by moving tasks from the ‘to do’ section to the ‘completed’ section.

We’ve modified the workbox system for our family by simply using matching task tags from our daily do folder. The biggest reason for still using the boxes is that it helps me make sure everything is ready to go for an activity.

Our first day started with Circle Time- which the kids still love! I’ve recently been asked if our circle time has changed at all. We still do the same things, I just remember that we don’t have to do everything on our board each day! I have added a written schedule which helps the kids know what to expect that day and keeps me on task.I have tried to switch out our songs and rhymes but the kids won’t let me get rid of the Old McDonald had a Farm puppets.

Our morning continued with morning message which we are now doing in a journal, so that Ryan can respond in writing more easily. Ryan practiced writing his full name, did his Explode the Code pages, and we did our first color unit activity. We discussed primary colors and made Primary Color Quilts. Ella didn’t believe me that it wasn’t a color matching activity (we’ve been doing a lot of those) until she saw Ryan adding his small squares.

We spent a couple of hours at the park with friends, which was definitely the highlight of Ella’s day!

When we came home lunch was all ready to go! I’m trying a new system where I prep all of our lunch and snacks as I clean up breakfast. My thinking is that my kitchen will stay clean all day, our food is always ready to go, I can better see how well balanced our diet is, and how cute are these little boxes!

I’ve added a page to the top nav bar where I plan to keep lunch & snack ideas. I’ll let you know when it’s full of yummy suggestions.

My favorite part of the day was when I was working in the kitchen while Ryan did a word sort and Ella practiced her cutting!

Daddy was shocked to come home to a relatively clean house with a delicious dinner prepared! Ryan was doing his math and Ella told him she was working! She was sorting dyed pasta in a muffin tin.

I know it won’t work out so well every day. But, we had an awesome first day that made me think I may survive keeping them both home this year!

Homemade Granola Bars

2010-08-15T08:28:00.001-07:00

This recipe is from a good friend, Heather. They are delicious and freeze well.

Ingredients:
5 C Oats
1 C chopped walnuts
2 TBSP canola oil
1/2 tsp salt 1 C light brown sugar
1/2 C honey
2 TBSP vanilla extract
1C dried cranberries
1/2 C chocolate chips

Directions:
Heat oven to 350*. Stir together oats, walnuts, oil and salt. Spread evenly into 15×10 baking sheet. Bake 18 min stirring occasionally. Remove mixture to large bowl. Line same sheet with nonstick foil. Lower oven to 300*. Combine sugar and honey in small saucepan, and cook over med heat for about 5 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Stir in vanilla. Add cranberries and chocolate to oat mixture and stir well. Pour sugar mixture over top and stir until blended. Spread into baking sheet and press into even layer. Bake for 30min or until golden. Cool completely on wire rack then cut into 2×3 bars.
186 Cal 6 g fat 4 g protein 32 g carbs 2 g fiber

Great Simple Ideas

2010-08-10T12:35:00.001-07:00

People frequently ask me where I get the ideas & motivation to create activities for my kids. They usually follow it by telling me they don’t have the time or materials to constantly do new things.
One of my favorite bloggers, Rachel from Quirky Mama, has created the perfect solution! She has created a monthly e-book series, called An Activity A Day. Each month she is offering three calendars full of simple yet great ideas: One for Preschool Play activities related to the letters of the alphabet – perfect for younger toddlers! Another calendar focusing on 4-5 year olds who are beginning to read and another full of fun math activities. All of these activities take 15-20 minutes and can be completed with items commonly found in your homes.
You can see September’s activities on Rachel's site. In upcoming months there will be a very small fee for downloading the calendars (because that’s the way the internet is moving…). But be sure to check out September’s activities for FREE to see just how amazing they are.
I’m looking forward to doing September's activities! I plan on posting the calendar right on the fridge and letting the kids take turns picking which activities to complete (which will be easy since they are with common household items and don’t require any prep work). I’m sure they’ll love to mark which ones we’ve done with giant stickers!
Here’s to a month full of fun activities that don’t require much work on momma’s part! Enjoy!!

Sticks of Endless Possibilities

2010-08-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

icLast week Ella played with sticks in gymnastics class for a few minutes. She loved it and my brain started spinning with possibilities. We were in Home Depot the next day (because, we’re building this for Ryan, but that’s a whole other post…) and I just had to pick up some giant dowels to make our own set of sticks. I bought 12 sticks and painted them with 2 coats of paint plus a layer of polyurethane for durability. It took less than an hour and cost about $8 (I already had the paint and polyurethane).

I just love how many different things you can do with the sticks! In the picture you see us trying to march and tap at the same time. You can tap them above your head, by your knees, on your left side, behind your back. You can stand on one foot while tapping, you can take turns creating beats to mimic. You can use them to write letters in the air, or lay them out on the ground to create shapes, or use them as giant tally sticks, or hide them outside. See why my head is spinning- endless possibilities!!
I’m going to try and keep these special by only bringing them out occasionally and doing new things with them each time. I can see using them a lot in our music and exercise activities.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2010-08-08T08:29:00.001-07:00

I have to admit I was drooling over the chocolate cake that my sister in law recently made, until I heard there was zucchini in it. I was absolutely shocked when it turned out to be one of the best cakes I’ve ever eaten!
She tweaked a recipe that she found on epicurious.
Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk (OR 1/2 cup greek yogurt and 1/4 cup soymilk)
2 -1/2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)
1 6-ounce package (about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan [I found that using three loaf pans instead makes the cake even more deliciously moist]. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Stir in grated zucchini chocolate chips and nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes [The loaves take 30-40 minutes]. Cool cake completely in pan.You can see the original recipe and read reviews of it here.
I've made it way too often lately!

Saturday Sacramento(ish) Spotlight- Nevada City Children’s Festival

2010-08-07T20:07:00.001-07:00

Back in July we attended possibly the coolest kids’ event I’ve ever been to, The Nevada City Children’s Festival. Held in a beautifully wooded large park, this nearly 40 year old festival handled the large crowd well.

I couldn’t believe how many different activities they had to choose from. When I could pull my kids away from the handmade fire breathing dragon, they helped paint a huge cardboard castle, and watched live performances (juggling, singing, fencing, and a very eclectic group of instruments).

We did less than a quarter of the crafts there and still came home with shields, necklaces, magic wands, bird statues, and swords. Ryan really loved digging through scrap wood to find the perfect pieces and using real tools to make a sword. Ella loved all of the painting activities and the shows. I loved that we had an entire day of outdoor fun & crafts for less than $10!!

The festival is held every July. It’s only about 75 minutes from Sacramento. You can see more about it’s history here. I’ll be sure to let you know in advance next year, since this is definitely a new family tradition for us.

Camping in our Living Room

2010-08-06T08:14:00.001-07:00

We’ve been trying to step up the imaginative play. I know that it’s even more important for the kids’ development than all of the ‘school’ we do.

One of the best ways to keep my attention is to keep coming up with new games. I can only play rocket ship and tea party so many times… Our recent new favorite is playing camping!

The kids loved toasting marshmallows (cotton balls) over our lego fire pit.

Our tent was simply a sheet over two chairs. It’s perfect for reading books in!

Ella fished for our dinner.

Thanks to Adventures of Bear for the camping idea!

Drawing Notebook

2010-08-05T17:19:00.001-07:00

I have previously mentioned that we’re going to step up the art activities this year. One of my plans is to do a regular directed drawing activity.

Our first step was to turn our sketchbook into a work of art itself! Making the squares was great cutting practice. Then Ryan glued them all over the cover, and I added a layer of Modge Podge. Ella enjoyed gluing squares to her own paper too.

After reading about how Gabby, at The Work of Childhood starts her school year with a self-portrait, we had to do the same! Ryan draws himself all the time, but this time we spent a lot of time looking in the mirror while drawing.

Our next drawing is going to be of our family!

An amazing week...

2010-08-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed I've been MIA... An amazing week or so has kept me busy. Last week my kids and I had the pleasure of meeting Susan and Sophie of www.chasingmarcus.blogspot.com. The kids had a great time playing and Susan and I talked about blogging, kids and life. We're going to get together again soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out her blog and her amazing felt creations!The last couple of months have been very busy with my doula gigs- I attended twelve births in June & July!! Definitely the most special was the birth of my first nephew on Friday!!Right after watching my sister-in-law labor like a warrior we left for a few days of camping at the beach. It was here, sitting around the campfire that I committed a major camping faus paus by taking a peek at the 200+ emails in my inbox. I was so excited to see 2 awesome emails. I won a playaway from imagination soup! I love winning giveaways :) Even cooler- I am a featured member of We Teach this week! We Teach is a Ning Network full of great parents, educators, and bloggers. I just wanted to let you know what we've been up to. I have some posts lined up when we get settled at home in the next couple of days. We still plan to start our school routine back up this month- I have a lot of planning and prep to do!

Giving Tree Toys

2010-07-24T09:40:00.001-07:00

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Growing Tree Toys invited me to be apart of their blog network. I hope that this will lead to some great giveaways for you!! I’ve been ogling their great educational toys, take a look :) I especially love their Deal of the Day, and the their well organized Gift Guide.
Have a great weekend!

Art Center

2010-07-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

Remember the Writing Centers that I created for a couple of Ryan’s friends as birthday presents? Well last week we tweaked the idea for another good friend, and created an Art Center!

I used the same great container from Michael’s (with a coupon of course!) and filled it with all kinds of goodies (a pack of construction paper, foam sheets, pom poms, googly eyes, liquid watercolors, bingo bottles, crayons, colored pencils, markers, model magic, paint brushes, pencils, paper plates, paper lunch bags, and letter stamps).

With all of the back to school sales going on it’s a great time to stock up on supplies to make custom centers for all your gifting needs!

On the home front, we’ve been trying to do more art on a daily basis! I get an awesome weekly reminder by seeing the wonderful Art Box posts at Tired, Need Sleep. I’ve set up our art box, we just need to take it out more…

A Kid that LOVES to write???

2010-07-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of months ago Ryan didn’t want anything to do with writing. I was having a really hard time not pushing it. I modified our school activities to not include as much handwriting (actually hardly any at all). I left him tons of special messages. I incorporated lots of ways for him to see me write in daily life, and I tried to entice him by creating an awesome writing center.

I’m not sure how all of my actions played in, but he took the time he needed and now I can’t get the kid to stop writing!! He is spending hours a day using his writing center and anything else he can get his hands on to ‘make mail’ for people, make signs, and leave letters for family members all over the house. I think I’m going to have to add postage stamps to our monthly budget!

It’s so cool to see his learning explode in a new direction, and to be validated in my knowing that all he needed was time and encouragement!

Area Tiles

2010-07-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ryan has a cool math puzzle from The Puzzle Man. I love it’s big wooden pieces, but every time we have played with it I noticed some kinks. So, of course I decided to create my own ‘slightly modified’ version.

I recreated the pieces using foam sheets. I wrote the numbers on both side of each piece to make it easier for Ryan to use them without mastering spatial reasoning skills of flipping pieces in a very specific way. And, I made three sets so we had more options for activities.

Ryan enjoyed seeing how many ways we could make 10 (obviously, these aren’t all of the ways). In case you’re missing the point- all of the 10 blocks that we created were the same size. When doing it together we laid them on top of one another to check that.

The puzzle can be used for addition and subtraction. I would give Ryan a few pieces and say what do we have to add to six to get ten. It can also be a great self checking tool for simple addition and subtraction problems.

Of course, I’m posting the template (page 1 and page 2) for you!

Let me know how you use the area tiles!

Homeschool Hop- Favorite Family Board Games

2010-07-20T12:35:00.001-07:00

I always have the intention of participating in a blog hop, the time to sit down and do it is a different story! But, since we love games, and could use some ideas for new ones- I’m jumping in on the Homeschool Hop!

Hi Ho Cherry-O has been Ryan's favorite game since we started with games!

Both Ryan and Ella love Zingo! (I really want the Spanish version)

Just last night we played Erudition all together. I think it would work much better with a group of kids.

On bad weather days the kids play Hullabaloo to get out some energy

When it’s just the adults we play.

Preschool Prize Pack Winner

2010-07-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

Congrats to comment #6. Kate said...Facebook fan!
I hope your little preschoolers enjoy all of these goodies!

My First Blog Award!

2010-07-15T15:31:00.001-07:00

A HUGE thank you to Family Style School for awarding me my first Blog Award!

When you receive this blog you are supposed to thank the person that gave it to you, share 7 Things about yourself, and pass the award along.

So 7 things about me…

1. I am a Doula that hopes to grow up to be a midwife one day!

2. I birthed both of my babies at home.

3. My husband and I met on the first day of college, where our dorm rooms where next to one another.

4. I was a classroom teacher and homeschool adviser before the kids came along

5. I was an exchange student to Thailand in high school, and will forever love Thai food!

6. I subscribe to Self magazine and Mothering Magazine and get an immense sense of joy each month when they arrive.

7. I ran my first half marathon this spring and am registered for another one in October.

Now to pass it on! As you know I have an extensive list of favorite blogs- but many of our recent activities have come from:

Chasing Marcus

The Adventures of Bear

Counting Coconuts

Along the Way

I hope you’ll check out these great blogs, and thanks again to Family Style School!

Great Books- CHEAP!!

2010-07-15T14:29:00.001-07:00

Most of our favorite books are Barefoot Books. My kids love the great stories and amazing artwork, and I love that they ask for them over and over! We LOVE the cd’s that come with many of their titles, and listen to them in the car daily. I wanted to let you know about their annual summer sale.

Some of our favorites are, The Prince’s Bedtime (I have given this book to over a dozen kids as a present!), The Real Princess, The Story Tree, The Fabrics of Fairytale, Port Side Pirates, The Animal Boogie, Thesaurus Rex, 1 Moose 20 Mice, Magic Train Ride, and Driving my Tractor.

I do receive credit if you use the above link. I always donate any free books that these credits generate to our local elementary school.

I hope you will checkout Barefoot Books and enjoy them as much as we do!

Tot School Tweaks

2010-07-13T21:19:00.001-07:00

Tot school with Ella is SO different than it was with Ryan. It’s really hard to get her to sit down and do any type of semi-structured activity. When I took out some blocks for sorting yesterday (in fact they are the counters you can win in my giveaway:) she promptly threw the entire bin in the air and proceeded to pretend to swim in them! Since every kid is different, I’m having to come up with some new and exciting activities for her!

Today she loved it when I tossed a sheep puzzle piece in a bag. I shook it while saying “baa, baa, what’s trying to get out of the bag?” (For more puzzle ideas check out this post.)
Tomorrow we are going to practice colors using the bag. I’m going to fill it with a variety of different colored objects, and let her shout the color when I take each object out. Then she can look for items of a certain color to fill the bag.
Last week at a friend’s house she had a blast searching for hidden objects in play dough.
Do you have some fun tot school ideas? Please share!!

Win a Preschool Prize Pack!

2010-07-12T15:50:00.001-07:00

Back to school is my favorite time of year!! Seriously, Target’s dollar bins and huge back to school set up makes me giddy! I thought I would share the love by giving away this preschool prize pack, in exchange for you sharing your love of my blog :)

The first entry is simple- leave me a comment telling me you are a Google friend, or a Facebook fan. (If you’re awesome enough to be both, it’s actually two entries :)

For additional entries, share the blog with a friend. When they become a Google follower or Facebook fan they should leave a comment saying you referred them! (Of course they can then submit their own entries, and suggest it to their friends too!) Get as many friends to submit comments as you can!

The prize pack includes:

4 activity books
Dr. Seuss Pencils
Markers
Colored Pencils
10 dice (you can play all kinds of games with these!)
150 foam counting blocks (spheres, cubes, and cylinders) (great for sorting, pattern activities, and use as math manipulatives)
A super cute Cat in the Hat tote to store it all in!

You need to leave a separate comment for each entry since I use Random.org to pick winners. I will choose the winner at 8:00am on Monday, July 19, 2010 and announce it that day! Please make sure that there is a way for me to contact you or I will have to pick another winner.

Chicken Enchiladas & Mexican Rice

2010-07-11T13:43:00.001-07:00

I've been working on my list of 30 Meals, and I wanted to start sharing some of them with you. I figured why not start with a favorite? EVERYTIME I make these enchiladas and rice for others they ask for the recipe.

Mexican Rice

(This is a super healthy & yummy dish. Tweak the spices to make it work for lots of meals.)

Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice
4.25 cups high quality chicken stock (I make my own)
1 large onion, chopped
1 pint of grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
4 tablespoons EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
1/3 cup chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425. Spread the halved tomatoes on a cookie sheet covered in tin foil. Drizzle them with 1 tbsp EVOO and sea salt. Roast for 12- 15 minutes, until starting to brown.

Heat the remaining EVOO in a large oven safe pan. (As always I prefer my dutch oven:) Add the onions and sauté until translucent. Add the rice and stir for a minute to coat. Add the spices and stir for another minute. Add the roasted tomatoes and stock. Reduce the oven temperature to 375. Cover your pan and bake undisturbed for 45 minutes. When the rice has absorbed all of the broth, remove the lid and enjoy!

Enchiladas

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup chili powder
2 cups high quality chicken stock (I make my own)
10 ounces tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
6 oz. monterey jack cheese
4 oz. farmer’s cheese
1 pound of chicken (your preference breasts, thighs, or a mix of the two)
10 corn tortillas

Directions:

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the flour and stir until smooth. Add the chili powder and stir for 40 seconds. Add the stock, tomato paste, sugar and the rest of the spices. Stir well. Add the chicken and cook thoroughly. Strain the chicken from the cooking sauce, SAVE the sauce.

Preheat the oven to 350. Toast the tortillas on a cookie sheet for 4 minutes.

Toss the cooled strained chicken, cilantro and cheeses together (** leave 1-2 ounces of monterey jack cheese for the top). Spread some of the sauce in a glass baking dish. Assemble the tortillas by wrapping them around a generous scoop of the chicken cheese mixture. Spread the remaining sauce and cheese over the enchiladas. Cover and bake for 20 minutes.

These are amazing served with sour cream, avocado, lime wedges, and shredded lettuce.

A Realization...

2010-07-08T06:48:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I've struggled to find time to blog his week (but that's a whole other story...)

I had a realization this morning and wanted to quickly share it with you. It happened as I was walking to the kitchen to let the dog out, Ryan asked me to turn on his bedroom light. Normally I would tell him to wait a second and finish what I was doing. Then I realized, how often do I do something the fist time my kids ask?

I always want them to do what I ask, the first time. And, I don't tolerate them telling me to wait. My husband and I parent by modeling good behavior.

I'm going to work on this! But now I must go, they've asked for five things in the two minutes it's taken me to write this...

Do-A-Dot Names

2010-07-02T14:12:00.000-07:00

Ella had a friend over this morning while Ryan was at camp. For an art project we used our liquid watercolor filled bingo bottles (both from discount school supply.)

I printed the Do-a-Dot letters for their names from Confessions of a Homeschooler's A-Z Preschool Curriculum. I left the large pages intact for them to paint (easier for little hands, plus then they got to do the lowercase letters also).

When the paint dried I cut the letters out and they helped me mount them onto large paper.
This simple activity packs a lot of learning in! Stamping the dots provides great fine motor practice and hand-eye coordination. The idea that each dot gets one stamp promotes the idea of one-to-one correspondence, especially if you count while dotting! Using the bingo markers is tricky for the little ones because they have to stamp without squeezing the bottle.

Tissue Box Sentence Building

2010-07-01T02:31:00.000-07:00

You know you're a homeschool mom when you can't part with a tissue box without making it a learning tool first!
Ryan enjoyed this simple sentence building game. I wrote each word of several sentences on separate index cards. I used different color markers for each sentence. We took turns drawing cards out of the box and trying to make a sentence. I tried to make it so that you could rearrange the cards to make additional sentences (then they wouldn't all be the same color). This was a great way to practice the sight words we have been learning, more in context.

Web Wednesday

2010-06-30T00:06:00.000-07:00

The internet is a wonderful thing!! I wanted to start sharing some of my online favorites with you on a more regular basis.

You can always see some of my favorite blogs and websites in the favorites section (found in the top nav bar).

Speaking of the top nav bar, what do you think of our new look? I LOVE it! I wish I could say I'm this talented, but no. Our new design is the work of Jolanthe, at Relevant Designs. Not only does she make everything look awesome, but she is great to work with and incredibly affordable. I don't know how she does it all! I highly recommend letting her remodel your blog, or at least create a blog button for you (only $5!!!)

One more TOTALLY AWESOME thing to share with you on our first Web Wednesday- Have you heard of Tumblr? It's been around awhile, but I just found it. Carisa, of http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/ has a great introductory mini-tutorial here. Check out my Tumblr page: http://givinguponacleanhouse.tumblr.com/. To quickly see my 'idea file' check out the quick view (aka archive). I think this is an awesome way to keep track of the great ideas & inspirations in the blogosphere!

Do you have a suggestion of a website, app or blog for me? Please leave it in a comment!

Tot School Tuesdays (Ella is 26 months old)

2010-06-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Ella is starting to get very interested in letters. She calls them all 'A' :)

Ella got very frustrated with our new Melissa & Doug Lacing Cards

So she decided to ride the horse instead :)

We have been doing tons of art!

And tons of swimming in Grandma & Grandpa's new pool :) This picture was taken at the beginning of one of our first visits. Now Ella is a little fish and will probably be swimming on her own by the end of summer!

We turned Ella into an experiment with static electricity.

We've been doing lots, but I haven't been great about remembering to take pictures. I'll have to focus on that this week!

See what others are doing for tot school:

Simple Sure-Hit Snake

2010-06-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

Ryan loved this simple craft. He used construction paper (pre-cut into strips), toilet paper rolls (cut in half), yarn, a hole punch, googly eyes, and felt (for the tongue). If you wanted to make a longer one, it could be a great pattern activity.

A Shrinky Dink Mobile

2010-06-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we celebrated Ryan's last day of preschool for this year. We are so fortunate that a good friend of mine has an amazing in-home preschool. I don't really feel like Ryan needs to attend preschool, but he loves it. I helped the students assemble a mobile for the teacher.

Each student traced their hand on shrinky dink paper. Then they colored them and added their name. I used a hole puncher to add a hole to each hand and baked them. I followed the same steps with a large circle for the top piece. Lastly I threaded each hand on a piece of wire and let the kids add their own beads.

It turned out really cute and will look great hanging in the classroom! I love shrinky dink and think we'll make a mobile to go with our ocean theme in the next few weeks.

Great Giveaways from The Activity Mom

2010-06-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

There are few things that I love more than Giveaways (my husband, my kids, chocolate, winning giveaways...) You get the point, they rank pretty high!

Anyways, one of my favorite blogs- The Activity Mom is hosting a month of giveaways to celebrate 1000 readers! Be sure to check out all of the awesome stuff you can win!

By the way- help me get to 1000 readers and I'll do a month of giveaways too!! ;)

HeidiSongs Winner!

2010-06-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to comment #13: Joyful Learner said... We can really use the Sing and Spell CD to help writing letters in a fun and catchy tune!

Our winner was chosen by random.org.

My blog is getting a remodel (with the help of Jolanthe at Relevant Designs). We'll celebrate the new look with some more giveaways, so STAY TUNED!!

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Father's Day to an AMAZING Daddy!

We are so lucky to have an amazing daddy that loves to play, loves to be with his family, and works so hard for us! Thanks for everything you do Daddy!

We finally had some professional pictures taken! (Aren't they great! If you're in Northern California be sure to check out Photography Bee) We decorated mugs and tile coasters for Daddy's office. Plus, we made a Super Dad card from HeidiSongs (Don't Forget to enter the Heidi Song Giveaway TODAY!!!)

2010-2011 Plans

2010-06-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

As a new school year approaches it's time to gather my thoughts about our goals and curriculum for Ryan's Kindergarten year and Ella's first full year of Tot School.

I would like to try a year of thematic unit studies. We will include: Under the Sea, Dinosaurs, Bugs, Pond Life, Our World, Musical Instrument, and more depending on where the kids' interest takes us!

I hope to use a lot of literature, art and music.
I plan to do 'circle time' each morning.

Ideally Kindergarten would be broken up into 2 chunks a day where the first session would be our standard routine including 'circle time', language arts, math, and Spanish, and the second session would be our thematic activities.

We use tons of supplementary materials (as you can tell from the pictures of our classroom). But, in this post I am just including our main curriculum.

Kindergarten
Language Arts

Math

Right Start Mathematics

Spanish

Power Glide Children's Spanish Adventure

Science

MudPies to Magnets
Your Big Backyard
Nature Study
As related to our themes

Art & Music

As related to our themes
Child-Size Masterpieces

Tot School
Letter of The Week (Curriculum by Confessions of a Homeschooler)
ABC Collage & Trace Book (from Tired, Need Sleep)
Crafty ABC's (from Totally Tots)
Activities from my favorite blogs & websites.
Activities related to our themes.

What are you planning for the upcoming school year? Please link your exact blog post to the Linky below and link back here too!

Tot School Tuesdays (Ella is 25 months old)

2010-06-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

Ella loved playing at Natural Bridges State Beach. We also did some great tide-pooling while we were there. But it was too hard to watch them on the rocks and get pictures.

Ella loved her first gymnastics class!

Ella worked on a Power Glide Spanish lesson with her big brother, Batman.

Ella's favorite game since February has been playing Birthday party!

We experimented with different musical instruments.

Ella played with her Commotion in the Ocean Felt Set

Ella played with her button shape puzzle.

Ella made a necklace with beads. Her fine motor coordination is really developing!

Ella put beads onto toothpicks that were stuck in a styrofoam tray. We talked about colors and practiced counting during this activity.

My little girl is growing up so fast! She prefers the big kid swing. She's completely potty trained (day & night) and the binkie fairy came this week and took her binkies!!

30 Meals- The Best Idea I've Heard in Awhile!

2010-06-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

I have a binder on the counter literally bursting with recipes. There is no organization to it what so ever, and it tends to bit a bit of a black hole! That's why I was soo excited when I came across the idea for 30 Meals at Nanny Goat.

The idea is very simple, and with a little time and effort to get the system rolling your evening could be a lot less chaotic! I love the idea of using the system to lower my grocery budget as well.

Take a peek at Step 1 and let me know if you would like to give it a try!
I'm going to start putting together my 30 meals today.
To answer the question that I know I will get from both of my sisters- Yes, I'll make you one too :)

Heidi Songs Review & GIVEAWAY

2010-06-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to share with you all an AMAZING addition to our curriculum! We have been using Heidi Songs daily for several months now, and they have truly been the catalyst in Ryan's learning of sight words. If you are looking for a great new resource for your household or classroom be sure to enter our giveaway!

Way back in February, Kindergarten Teacher- Entrepreneur Heidi Butkus very generously sent me a huge sampling of her CD's and DVD's. I was so excited when we first got them, but Ryan just wasn't ready for sight words yet. At that time we were just starting to work with CVC words. So I gradually started using, Heidi's CVC Word Families Resources. I can't believe how many resources are on this single CD! As a former teacher I loved that she has taken into account many different types of classrooms and learners. Her CD's include several versions of each worksheet to address capital, lowercase, and d'nalian print. There are also versions with different kinds of lines to be consistent with other curriculum you may be using. Her worksheets remind me of Explode the Code workbooks (which you know we also love). Heidi has created all of her own images and they are extremely well done and clear. Heidi understands teachers! She's done a great job of arranging materials to reduce copies and even includes blank worksheet templates to add your own words!

I kept trying the sight word songs a couple of times a week, and within about a month it caught Ryan's interest. He is great with tunes and could easily remember her short and clever lyrics. Just a couple of months later Heidi Songs CD's have taught Ryan over 30 new sight words! We now listen to the songs for hours a day (while we play). Even 25 month old Ella begs for them, saying "H-E song please!" When we're reading and Ryan gets stumped with a sight word that he knows, I start humming its song and he gets it right away. These wonderful songs have really caught Ryan's interest and made him feel much more confident in his reading!

These materials are so great that they make me wish I taught Kinder (not enough though ;)

I have so many wonderful things to tell you about the Heidi Songs materials, but I know what you're all waiting for...the GIVEAWAY. (Don't worry I'll share a bit more throughout the week as I remind you to enter the giveaway:)

Heidi has generously offered for one lucky winner to choose any item (valued at $20 or less)!!! For your first entry visit HeidiSongs with your kiddos and watch her sample videos. Leave a comment telling me which was your favorite. For a second entry tell us what you would order if you're our lucky winner!
(You need to leave a separate comment for each option since I use Random.org to pick winners.)

I will choose the winner at 8:00am on Monday, June 21, 2010 and announce it that day! Please make sure that there is a way for me to contact you or I will have to pick another winner.

As with all of my product reviews. These are my own opinions and I was not compensated for this review. I did receive an awesome assortment of Heidi's materials that I will be passing on to our local elementary school this summer.

Circle Time

2010-06-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

We started a daily circle time last week and both kiddos beg for it everyday! This is part of my attempt to add a little more rhythm to our day.

I had to resist the urge to completely fill up our board. I want to be able to add to it as we go.

On the left hand side you can see our weekly weather chart and weather graph. Under the graph you can see a flower that says "I've Planted ____ Flowers" This refers to our Sight Word Garden. We practice counting by counting the flowers, and we review our sight words by reading some that we have planted and all of the words still waiting to be planted. Also on the left hand panel you see where we practice our address and phone number. That chart is also from our Preschool Curriculum by Confessions of a Homeschooler.

In the center panel we have our months of the year listed. We sing songs to practice them and I ask questions like "Can you point to the current month?" "What month is your birthday in?" We also have our calendar, and today, tomorrow, yesterday chart. The Rhymes & Riddles section will change regularly. As you can see we started with 1,2 Buckle my Shoe. I chose this because it's in the first section of our new math curriculum. I used an adhesive hook to attach a ring of Spanish Vocabulary.

On the right hand panel you can see the Songs and Fingerplays we are working on. The definite current favorite part of circle time is singing Old McDonald had a Farm with our popsicle stick puppets. The puppets are kept in half of an envelope attached to the board with velcro. We are also practicing the ABC's and the Hokey Pokey. The hooks under our song section will change frequently to include what we are working on. They currently include color puzzles and shape flashcards. Some mornings we might just flip through the cards, other days we might do an activity such as- say Ryan, choose a color word to write on our board and Ella will hunt for something that color.

Circle time varies everyday depending on how much time we have, and how much the kids are enjoying it.

Organized for Next Year

2010-06-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited about our upcoming school year, and just as excited about our new organization systems!!

Ryan does very well with systems and routine. For example, our tv chart worked like magic. So, I made him this folder to lay out his daily tasks. He doesn't care about the cute cover or lamination, but it makes me giddy ;) On the back of our calendar I attach all of our activity cards with velcro. As you can see, there are two cards for many of the activities. One is for his folder, and one is for the corresponding workbox. As you can probably deduce from the picture, I put the days tasks in the To Do section and once completed he moves them to the Completed section. So far this week this has worked wonderfully. Ryan likes knowing what's expected that day and he gets a huge sense of satisfaction moving tasks to the completed section.

This is our new work table. This Childcraft table was a sweet $35 Craigslist find!! There are two small cubbies above the bottom baskets that you can't see well in the pictures. The huge work surface allows me to put the day's workboxes out for Ryan and still have plenty of space to work. It's also great for puzzles (even the huge Melissa & Doug Puzzles we love!) and legos.

In our office I have our workboxes up out of little peoples' reach. Like I said, I put that days workboxes out on the table. The green crate is where I store Ryan's work for the year. It's really easy to just toss everything in the crate. I plan on going through it soon and weeding out lots of it. Inside the sewing table is more art supplies and some of my hobby craft materials.

You can see under my desk I keep our tot school materials and craft supplies in large tubs. Also, behind the trash can is a paper bag that the kids and I toss our scraps of paper, fabric, etc into for future projects.

I'm most excited about our new bookshelf from Ikea. It allowed me to organize most of our school materials!

I'm working on posts to tell you all about our curriculum and circle time. I hope to have them up next week.

Tot School Tuesdays (Ella is 25 months old)

2010-06-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

Ella has been very in to drawing lately. She loves to tell you what she's making. Notice the underwear- she is almost completely day time potty trained!!

She loves her bead sequencing activity.

We played with Wikki Stix for the first time this week. Ella loved rolling them up and has asked to play with them everyday since.

Ella enjoyed the first activity that I printed from our new curriculum: Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week.

Also from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week we worked on these two piece color puzzles.

Most of the week Ella was wearing her Baby Malcolm :)

Check out what other tots are doing:

Sight Word Garden

2010-05-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

This is our sight word garden! I bought cardboard flowers from Michael's and we painted them using our liquid watercolors . Each flower has a sight word on it and all of the flowers are put into a flower pot. When Ryan really knows a word (can quickly identify it, find it in stories, and spell it or sing it's song) he gets to plant it in the garden! So far Ryan is loving our garden, and I love that he's excited about learning these words and that we've come up with a cute way to make sure we keep practicing them.
During our morning calendar time (which I'll post about soon) we practice our flowers in the pot, count how many flowers we've planted and play games with the ones already planted.
That's our summer reading chain hanging above the garden :)

Tot School Tuesdays (Ella is 25 months old)

2010-05-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

Ella used magnetic pom-poms to fill in number shapes

She pressed different shapes into play-dough.

She stole the last of the winter carrots right out of the garden!

She used liquid watercolors to make butterfly wings.

She pet a chicken at a local farm tour.

She picked and ate TONS of strawberries!

Check out what other tots are doing:

EcoMom Fingerpaint Winner!

2010-05-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

Congrats to comment #5- MamaLake was chosen by random.org! I hope her kiddos enjoy the awesome finger paints from EcoMom!!

Animal Match

2010-05-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

One of the many activities I brought along on vacation was Animal Match, a game that I printed from Home School Share. Home School Share's tagline sums the site's mission up beautifully- because many minds make light work.

Anyway, back to the game. I printed this game out knowing that it would be too easy for Ryan and a bit of a stretch for Ella. But it was a quick, easy, and most importantly NEW activity. To assemble the game I printed two copies of the game board. I cut one up and attached a magnet to the back of each piece. I use magnets frequently since I bought a huge lot of adhesive backed business card size magnets on ebay. I taped the game board to a cookie sheet (we have a set that are just for school), so that the magnets could keep the pieces in place on the grid.

Ella really enjoyed this game and it provided tons of practice with a variety of skills. Obviously, it's a great lesson in visual discrimination, and provides some fine motor practice. But, I was really impressed at the opportunities it provided for vocabulary building. Not only could we talk about the silly animal pictures, but I also talked a lot about where to look on the grid. "I see the butterfly at the top of the page" or " The squirrel is next to the duck".

I was amazed at how much easier this game became for Ella the very first time we played it. By the time Ryan realized that we were playing a game without him, Ella didn't really want or need his ~~help~~ blatant takeover!

Back from Vacation with a Giveaway!!

2010-05-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

We are back from a wonderful beach vacation! We enjoyed tons of fun outside with of course a little bit of 'school' mixed in!

Ella loved throwing rocks into the creek at our vacation rental.

Ryan love wading in it (even though it was freezing)!

We had a few kayak adventures!

We enjoyed gorgeous coastal hikes. Ryan hiked over 4 miles (with promises of smores curtailing the whining:)

OK, enough with the pictures- I promised a GIVEAWAY!!

One afternoon we enjoyed some down time with EcoKids Finger Paints compliments of EcoMom.

I love that these paints are made with natural ingredients including fruits, plants and vegetables. The paints come in powder form. It was great to mix up just enough for one session and have lots left for many more hours of painting. I was excited about the beautiful, vibrant colors when I added water.

The colors ended up being more muted when applied to paper. The earthy tones were perfect for Ryan to paint a scene from our kayaking trip that day, and for Ella to get as much purple paint as possible on a single sheet of paper. Ryan did a couple of thick puddles and they dried with a neat texture that made me think they will be great for dinosaur scenes in our upcoming dino unit.

Ecomom has TONS of great eco-friendly products for the whole family. Their EcoPass allows you to purchase a $99 annual membership, which provides for a 15% discount on every order, as well as free shipping with no minimum requirement!

I know their customer service is amazing! The first package they sent me was taken form my front porch!!! Jody quickly replaced it for me.

EcoMom has generously agreed to give you all 15% off your first order! Just use the discount code SBBL322 before June 30, 2010.

EcoMom is also providing a FREE EcoKids Finger Paint Set (including shipping) to one lucky reader!!

To Enter: Follow me on Facebook, become a Google Friend, or subscribe to my blog via email (all of these are found in the right hand toolbar). You must do at least one of these things, but you can do all 3 if you're that awesome!

Extra Entries:
Follow EcoMomCEO on Twitter
Become a fan of EcoMom on Facebook
Join EcoMom's newsletter

(You need to leave a separate comment for each option since I use Random.org to pick winners.)

I will choose the winner at 8:00am on Monday, May 24, 2010 and announce it that day!

As with all of my product reviews. These are my own opinions and I was not compensated for this review.

Free Books for Summer Reading!

2010-05-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

I surprised myself and had a second to write this up before we leave town! I wanted to be sure you knew about the free books from Barnes and Noble and Borders :)

We are using a fabulous idea by Amy, from Teach Mama to make sure we keep reading tons through the beautiful summer months. We are making two paper chains for Ryan's room, a long one, and a short one.

He removes a link from the longer chain every time someone reads him a book. When he finishes his long chain he gets to choose any new book from the book store. He also has a smaller chain that he removes a link from every time he reads us a book. When that chain is gone he gets to choose a new book AND we'll go to frozen yogurt!

We'll be sure to take advantage of these great summer reading programs! Don't forget to check if your local library has a program too!

Barnes and Noble is giving away a free book to reward summer reading for students in grades 1-6:

Kids read any eight (8) books of their choosing.
Kids use the Passport to Summer Reading to document the places visited in each book. A parent/guardian signs the Passport when it's complete.
Kids bring their completed Passport to any B&N store between May 25 and September 7, 2010.
Kids receive a coupon for a FREE BOOK (to be chosen from a list)

For more details, to download the passport, or to see the list of free books: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/summerreading/

Borders is offering a smaller giveaway list, BUT their summer reading program is open to any child under 12!
For their program you list 10 books you read on their form, and return it to any Borders, Borders Express, or
Waldenbooks store to receive your free book!

HAPPY READING!!

Vacation!!

2010-05-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

We are taking a family vacation! I'll be back to tell you all about it 5/18 :)

Making Writing Meaningful

2010-05-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

My normally school loving boy has been objecting lately! I've come to realize that he doesn't love writing; and that's fine since it isn't exactly developmentally appropriate for an almost four year old. The actual physical act of writing is difficult and frustrating for him all of a sudden. I'm pretty sure the change has come from learning lowercase letters, and from me placing more of an emphasis on handwriting.

For me the most important part of homeschooling my children is fostering their love of learning. So, we're making modifications around here to keep the love going. For example, when his Explode the Code workbox requires writing I sometimes let him use magnets or stamps instead.

With each task we do I 'm asking myself what I want the focus to be. When we made our butterfly observation book last week. The important part was learning to observe. We did this through talking and drawing. I wrote some of our observations in the book and he just added his name. I won't modify forever, when handwriting becomes more developmentally appropriate we'll have to work on it.

I do want Ryan to enjoy writing, and be exposed to it everyday. So, I'm working on making writing meaningful for him. He loves writing letters to friends, and adding notes to pictures he draws. To help keep him writing I created a writing center. I actually made one for him and two for friends with birthdays next week. I bought the cases at Michaels (they're 40% off right now). In each case there's a smaller box with an assortment of pencils, pens, crayons, and markers. I included note cards, list paper, journals, all kinds of blank paper, postcards, post its, stickers, letter stamps, envelopes, personalized return address labels, a clip board and a dry erase board. I hope all of these supplies will get the kids excited about writing!!! I personalized the outside of each case and included some ideas on the inside to get the kids started. You can print the ideas here.

Tonight we're going to set up a family mail center. Like the one on from Let's Explore!

How do you encourage your kids to write? Please leave a comment with your ideas.
Have you written or seen other great posts about getting kids to write- if so link up!

Tot School Tuesdays

2010-04-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

Ella's been having lots of fun!! She is 24 months old.
She examined ants with a magnifying glass.

She played with her new sorting stacker (Thanks Auntie Kristie :)

She played with stamps.

She played with number magnets.

She helped mommy bake muffins.

She sorted buttons.

She played with another stacking toy (Thanks Again Auntie Kristie :)

She had a hootin good second birthday!!!

Check out more ideas for Tot School:

Winners, Winners, Winners!!

2010-04-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of the blogs that participated in the BIG Curriculum Clean-Out! Plus a SUPER THANKS to Jolanthe of Homeschool Creations for organizing it :)

The winner of the the Big Book of Sticker Math is comment #5, Cindy!
The winner of Finding Out About Everyday Things is #55, Nicole (of Tired, Need Sleep)!
The winner of Why Should I Bother to Keep Fit is #4 The Cochran Zoo

I will be emailing you ladies tomorrow for your addresses unless I hear from you first!

Fun with Color Tiles

2010-04-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the school year I purchased the Saxon Homeschool Manipulative Kit to go with our math curriculum. We use the manipulatives nearly everyday, even though we only do the Saxon K lessons a few times a week.

I was very excited to see an activity using color tiles on Joyful Learner!
I started to make the cards for the activity and realized that tracing the tiles was super annoying! So, I decided to use the computer instead so that I could share my hard work with you! Here is the link for the tile template. I slid our copy into a page protector so that we can do this activity a few different times. When I'm ready to make more I'm going to try using one of tiles as a stamp! Ryan was good at estimating how many tiles each shape would take. This was a great activity to teach him that an estimation is just that, and you can change your prediction as you work.
As you can see Ella is getting more into 'tot school'. For her I placed red and yellow color tiles in a simple AB pattern. She really enjoyed putting the matching bears onto their spots! I tried to encourage her to work from left to right. She wasn't having it, and that's ok :)

Do you have ideas of other activities to do with our color tiles?

Here are more awesome Math Links from Joyful Learner:

Creating Our Own Spring Sunshine

2010-04-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Ella had her favorite pal, Little A, over today while Ryan was at school. Since it was a rainy spring day we decided to make a sunny scene!

First we colored on paper muffin liners. I tried to encourage them to use light & bright colors- but we ended up with a lot of black and green flowers :) Next Little A sprayed them with the water bottle. Ella isn't able to trigger the sprayer yet, but Little A was happy to spray them all for us. This has worked better in the past for us with coffee filters- today with the paper liners the water picked up the color and pooled up. So, it was Ella's job to take an uncolored liner and squish it onto the wet one.

After they all dried (with the help of the hair dryer) we used construction paper, popsicle sticks and glue sticks to finish our scenes. Slightly older kids would enjoy cutting the fray for the grass.

They turned out very cute- and Little A was so happy to show her mom her art project!

Color Sorting Game

2010-04-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Forever ago I picked up a bunch of paint samples. I had intended to make a cool word game. I don't have a fancy dancy giant paper punch, so I decided that the game would be too much work for the amount of use it would get. Plus, we have tons of similar stuff.

So, I've had these samples sitting in my to-prep pile. I've seen a bunch of different ideas. After, my discussion on the importance of fine tuning the senses I decided to make a color matching game. I most recently saw it on Crunchy and Green.

I was super excited that it took less than 20 minutes of the oh-so-precious Quiet Time to make! Ryan really likes it, but it is very difficult for him. That's another bonus, because too often the stuff I create for him is too easy- and doesn't get used enough. Plus, learning to work at (and not get too frustrated) with something that is difficult is a very important lesson in itself!

Obviously, to make it easier you could just use a single sheet of each color. Some children may need help with the clothespins, but it is great fine motor practice.

Sunday Sacramento Spotlight!!

2010-04-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

** I am writing this to spotlight an awesome store in Sacramento- BUT, if you don't live in the area be sure to check out their website and blog!**

Trailmix.net is a jewel hiding in Old Sacramento! Directly across from the train museum, the large store includes a retail area and a classroom space. They carry tons of great kits by insect lore (like the butterfly one that we've got going on right now), an amazing selection of books for children and adults, dinosaur and fossil excavation kits, tons of great sunscreens and bug sprays, hiking packs, and more! If you are a homeschooling family, they are an approved vendor through several local charter schools. Plus- always a bonus in Old Sac- they validate your parking.

This family owned store has been well thought out! In addition to having an awesome selection of great products they host author discussions and a wide variety of workshops in their classroom area. When they don't have an event going on in the workshop you can choose an activity from their activity menu. The activities range from a $2 Paint-A-Critter to a $20 start a rock collection kit. I'll definitely be taking my own kids in there soon and planning a childrens' outing for our mothers' group. You can become a fan on facebook to stay current on their workshop schedule.

About twice a year my husband and I have the idea of visiting Old Sacramento. But, unless there is an event going on, we are usually disappointed by the redundant candy stores and bars. I was happy to hear that the owners have become active in the different organizations for business owners, and are voicing a need for more educational and family orientated businesses.

On our next trip to Old Sac, we will definitely give Trail Mix's scavenger hunt a whirl. They have created a family friendly adventure that even includes eye spy questions for the little ones! You can return completed scavenger hunts to the store to choose a prize from their giant treasure chest!!

I was amazed at what happens when you cross an educational toy store with an outdoor gear shop for kids! I hope you'll check it out online or in Old Sac!

**I received nothing for writing this post. I just wanted to share a cool resource with fellow Sacramentans :)

Stamping Sight Words & Hidden Sight Words

2010-04-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Here are two more sight word activities that we did this week.

I made a simple template with each of our current focus word in its own box. You can download the template I made here. Ryan enjoyed stamping each word in the corresponding box.
(Yes- his tongue is always out when he's concentrating :)

Today during quiet time I wrote our focus words all over a piece of watercolor paper using a white crayon. Ryan was so surprised to find the hidden words when he started painting!

Tons of Puzzle Fun!

2010-04-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last week I bought several Mellisa and Doug Chunk Puzzles from a friend who is moving. I really bought them for Ella, but I can't believe how much use Ryan has gotten out of them this week!

The big chunky pieces are great for tracing!
You can practice ordinal numbers...The giraffe was first in line, the zebra was second. You can describe to them how to set the line up. Or set up the line and then ask them questions, such as 'Who is fourth in line?'
You can put a piece into a bag or container. Without being able to see the piece have your child put their hand in and try and guess which piece they're feeling. They may need some help, such as 'Do you feel legs?" This game may take some practice, but developmentally it's awesome! We have played it before with letter magnets.
Teach your child how to play 10 questions. Choose a piece, but don't indicate to your child which piece you have chosen. They get to ask you 10 yes or no questions to try and guess which piece you chose.
If your child isn't ready for 10 questions, you can take turns describing a piece while the other person guesses which piece you are describing. Make sure you take turns having your child describe and guess, both are important skills!
Make a giant tic-tac-toe board and each use pieces from a different puzzle as your markers!
Act out silly stories that you create with the pieces.
Of course, just play!

Do you have any other ideas about how we can play with our newest puzzles?

Win- Why Should I Bother to Keep Fit?

2010-04-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

We're participating in The BIG Curriculum Clean-Out! The Curriculum Clean-Out, hosted by Homeschool Creations, is a great way to find good books a loving home

Our third giveaway is for Why Should I Bother to Keep Fit?. This brand new book offers children an approachable source of information on key subjects such as why keeping fit is good for you, how to choose the appropriate exercise regime and how to maintain a healthy day-to-day life.

To enter, leave a comment telling us why you would like to win.

Additional Entries:
1. For one extra entry become a blog fan on Facebook. (Leave a comment saying you're a fan)
2. For one extra entry Follow with Google Friend Connect (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you're a follower)
3. For an extra entry subscribe via email (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you subscribe)
4. For an extra entry blog about this giveaway (leave a comment with the link to the post)
5. If you are participating in the Curriculum Clean-Out and are hosting a giveaway, give yourself an extra entry by leaving me a comment with a link to your giveaway post.

Each entry needs it's own comment, and be sure to include a way to contact you.
U.S. Shipping only please. This contest will be open until Wednesday April 21st Midnight PST. I will use Random.org to select the winner and will contact the winner by email and announce the winner here on my blog. You will have 48 hours to reply. I will ship Media Mail.

Win- Finding Out About Everyday Things!

2010-04-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

We're participating in The BIG Curriculum Clean-Out! The Curriculum Clean-Out, hosted by Homeschool Creations, is a great way to find good books a loving home

Our second giveaway is for the Finding Out About Everyday Things . This brand new book explains in simple clear language how everyday things work. There are lots of bright colorful pictures which explain rain, rainbows, the seasons, telephones, televisions, cars, trains, boats and planes and many other topics that will interest the young reader.

To enter, leave a comment telling us why you would like to win.

Additional Entries:
1. For one extra entry become a blog fan on Facebook. (Leave a comment saying you're a fan)
2. For one extra entry Follow with Google Friend Connect (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you're a follower)
3. For an extra entry subscribe via email (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you subscribe)
4. For an extra entry blog about this giveaway (leave a comment with the link to the post)
5. If you are participating in the Curriculum Clean-Out and are hosting a giveaway, give yourself an extra entry by leaving me a comment with a link to your giveaway post.

Each entry needs it's own comment, and be sure to include a way to contact you.
U.S. Shipping only please. This contest will be open until Wednesday April 21st Midnight PST. I will use Random.org to select the winner and will contact the winner by email and announce the winner here on my blog. You will have 48 hours to reply. I will ship Media Mail.

The BIG Curriculum Clean-Out!

2010-04-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

We're participating in The BIG Curriculum Clean-Out! The Curriculum Clean-Out, hosted by Homeschool Creations, is a great way to find good books a loving home

Our first giveaway is for the Big Book of Sticker Math . This brand new book is a fun way to practice math for kids in first through third grade.

To enter, leave a comment telling us why you would like to win.

Additional Entries:
1. For one extra entry become a blog fan on Facebook. (Leave a comment saying you're a fan)
2. For one extra entry Follow with Google Friend Connect (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you're a follower)
3. For an extra entry subscribe via email (in the right hand column) (Leave a comment saying you subscribe)
4. For an extra entry blog about this giveaway (leave a comment with the link to the post)
5. If you are participating in the Curriculum Clean-Out and are hosting a giveaway, give yourself an extra entry by leaving me a comment with a link to your giveaway post.

Each entry needs it's own comment, and be sure to include a way to contact you.
U.S. Shipping only please. This contest will be open until Wednesday April 21st Midnight PST. I will use Random.org to select the winner and will contact the winner by email and announce the winner here on my blog. You will have 48 hours to reply. I will ship Media Mail.

Our Week with Sight Words...

2010-04-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned, we are doing lots of sight word activities! Here are a few we did this week:

We've been doing TONS with HeidiSongs!
Look for a full review of her products and a GIVEAWAY next week!

At the beginning of the week I put a list of sight words on the kitchen easel. They included: the, is, and, me, you, go, he, my, she, was. I had no idea how long it would take us to master these ten words, but I had to pick a starting point! Throughout the week we focused on these words. When we were in the kitchen I would ask Ryan to try to read the list; I most frequently presented it as 'Hey, do you know any of those words?' He took it more as a fun challenge than a rote task. When he mastered a word (which we measured by him being able to read it several different times in a day, find it in a book, and spell the word out loud) he got to circle it. For some reason, Ryan LOVED this process!

I made a set of cards by writing each word on 5 cards. We played a bunch of different games with our cards.

Sight Word Slap-Deal the entire deck out to the players. Take turns flipping your cards onto a pile. Be sure to read the words as you flip them! If the word added to the pile matches the word already on top, it's a race to slap the pile. The first person to slap the pile takes the cards and adds them to the bottom of their own pile. The last player to still have cards remaining is the winner!
Go Fish- Yup, just the classic game with sight words!
Bean Bag Toss- We spread some of the cards on the floor, stood back and tried to toss a beanbag to land on the words!
Hide & Seek- We took turns hiding cards around the house and finding them.
Race to Find- Sitting in front of a bookshelf, we picked a card from the pile and then each grabbed a book and tried to be the first to find the word! Players kept the card for any race they won and we counted them at the end.

The goal of all of these games was to familiarize Ryan with the words and help him to recognize them. As we master these words, I'll add new words. As we tire of these games we'll move on to making these words on our own (spelling & writing)- in fun ways of course!

The Winner Is...

2010-04-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Jenn (comment #15)! She chose the Blue and Brown Hearts Knot Dress!
Stay tuned for more great giveaways!!

TaDa!! Subscribe via Email!!

2010-04-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Email subscriptions are up and working. About half way down the page on the right hand side you will see a spot for you to enter your email address. Subscribe today, then head over to our GiGiBee Designs Giveaway and leave another comment for another entry!!

After you subscribe you will get an email each time I publish a new blog post. No more having to remember to check the site, or having the link lost in your Facebook feed.

Scrambled Sight Words

2010-03-30T21:03:00.001-07:00

We're starting to focus more on sight words, so get ready for lots of fun sight word activities!

I'm calling this fun Easter inspired activity, Sight Word Scramble. I made an egg for each of the ten sight words that we are currently working on. I simply cut small pieces of paper and wrote one letter on each piece. Each egg contains the letters for a single word. I also made a coloring list of the words.

To play, select an egg from the basket and dump out it's letters. Then use the coloring page to figure out which word you're building. Next, put the letters in the proper order and read your word out loud. Lastly, color your word so that you know which words you've already done.

You can win a sight word game, Erudition, from Quirky Mama before Saturday :)

Egg Shakers (Auditory Discrimination)

2010-03-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

Did you know that you can help your child fine-tune their senses? We work a lot with visual discrimination, and today we tried our first game teaching auditory discrimination.

I filled large plastic eggs with different items. I made 2 eggs of each kind: uncooked rice, uncooked lentils, rocks, beads, and jellybeans.

Ryan's job was to use sound to find the matching pairs. He did better with it than I expected! The rice and lentils were really hard for me to distinguish from one another, he had a much easier time with it. Will have to test Daddy when he comes home form work.

Ella loved the different noises, but was very tempted to open them. I'm thinking about gluing them shut so that we can keep them with our musical instruments.

Sink or Float Experiment

2010-03-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Ryan missed 'boat day' at preschool last week, when he stayed home with pink eye. I was planning to make up the sink or float experiment that he missed, and was so excited to get some inspiration from Allie at No Time For Flashcards.

As you can see, we collected different items from around the house and yard to test their buoyancy. Before Ryan would place each item in the water he would make a prediction about whether he thought it would sink or float. I'm always surprised when we do experiments at how well he asks questions, makes predictions and assumptions and tests hypotheses.

For the first few items I was recording his predictions and outcomes. Then I realized that it was unnecessary since he wasn't getting anything out of the written chart. I quickly abandoned it to focus on the more important conversation we were having.

After we tested our items we used Allie's idea and tested each item again inside a plastic egg. We talked about how the eggs were like boats that helped our objects to float. When Ryan made the hypothesis that anything that fits in an egg would float I had him fill an egg with rocks. As the rock filled egg sank we talked about weight and density.

We are going to get this experiment out again soon to try an idea that his preschool teacher incorporated. She had the kids test a ball of play-dough, and then turn their ball into a boat and try it again.