Tot School 39 & 18mo.

I tell you I am so glad January is over! I don't know if it's after Christmas blahs or what, but I didn't feel very creative and if we did Tot school, we just did puzzles and read books (which isn't bad, btw) :) I think I just needed some down-time and needed to keep things simple.

 

For scissor practice this week, I had DD#3 cut pieces and glue them onto a heart. I got the idea from DLTK.

  

DD#3 still has difficulty holding the scissors correctly, and she's stubborn enough to not want to hold it the right way when I showed her, so I just let her cut. I figure eventually she'll get it right.

  

Here was her final result. She was so proud of her work. She carried it around all day.

  

While grocery shopping this week, I came across 2 sets of chipboard letters on clearance. I thought they would make a good ABC activity to do w/ DD#3. My initial thought was to hid letters in our sensory tub, or take the letters of her name and have her try to find matches.  Well she was so excited to have her own set of letters that she dumped them out on the table and started finding matches on her own. I thought having so many dumped out would be overwhelming, so I was only going to do a handful. I was pretty surprised that she knew several of her letters since we haven't formally started doing anything with them.

  

This week we joined some of our homeschool friends for co-op. In DD#3's group we learned about shadows.

She colored a ground-hog, glued it onto a popsicle stick and saw the ground hog see it's shadow.

 

Afterward the group read several books on shadows:  Shadows and Reflections; Whose Shadow Is This?: A Look at Animal Shapes - Round, Long, and Pointy (Whose Is It?); Moonbear's Shadow

Both girls enjoy playing with their Discovery Toys stacking blocks. Here DD#4 is working on building a tower.

 

And as you can see, they worked together :) One built the other tore down.

  

Our area received a nice blanket of snow, so we went outside to play, er eat the snow. It wasn't yellow! ;)

 

Seriously, yuck! But I think all kids try it. DD#3 was facinated with the snow. She enjoyed exploring the backyard snowdrifts, walking under the pine tree and following her older siblings. Youngest DD was content to stay on the plowed drive-way.

So this is a glimpse of our week. For more Tot school ideas be sure to check out the main thread at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School 39 & 18mo.

Printable Valentines

This year my oldest daughter wanted to make some Valentine candy sets to give to her friends. The easiest way I could think of was to print out already-designed Valentines and use those in different ways.  We decided to use Katie Pertiet's Valentines.

I printed them out on cardstock, but photo-paper, or regular paper would work too. It all depends on what you will do with the image. For Valentines to pass out, print on cardstock. For images to adhere to candy boxes or jars, photo-paper works well. For making matchbook covers, regular paper or cardstock works best.

My oldest daughter was able to put together this set in no time. I did customize the Valentine to wrap around the candy box. The rest I printed out from the PDF file. An easy way to create a matching set!

For more Valentine craft ideas see: Valentine Candy Holders

Printable Valentines

Maps and Coloring

 

We are on year 2 of Sonlight Core 3-- American History. Yes, it's normally a 1yr. program but we had many off-topic weeks, special projects, and just plain off weeks. It has taken us a little longer to get through than I intially had planned, but that's ok. We were just ending the American Revolution when I remembered that I had won a Time Travelers: The Early 19th Century History Study from Homeschool in the Woods.  I pulled it out and was thrilled to see that it covered everything we were getting ready to study. This history study has projects, lapbooking elements, map-work, crafts and more. There is a lot there! Be sure to check out the site where it describes in detail what all is in this unit.

This was exactly what we needed to get out of our history rut. Don't get me wrong--I love the Sonlight books, but we needed to switch it up a little. We'll be supplementing many of the projects into the rest of our American History unit and adding all the notebooking and lapbooking elements into our History binder.

 

Today we did some map-work. We haven't done much of that in the past, other than looking places up on our markable map. My kids loved it. My son even commented on how he liked doing work like this.

 

We even little littlest DD "color" her own map. Ok, it wasn't a map but she doesn't know that. She thinks she was doing school work just like her big brother and sister.

 

I think we'll incorporate more map-work in our curriculum. And if I do that, I'm going to be getting a set of Prismacolor pencils. I used to use them all the time when I was really into paper arts. They blended well and were easy to use for detailed work. The pencils we used today worked ok, but the kids would try to sharpen them in order to color in tiny spaces and the tips kept breaking off. They could never get them to a fine enough point for some of the more detailed coloring they needed to do.

So I am happy to be on track with history again, and am looking forward to finishing Sonlight Core 3 well instead of just getting it done--lol.

Maps and Coloring

Missing Supplies, Oh My!

Last night I actually had a couple of great Valentine project ideas and was looking forward to creating and sharing today. When I went to get started I couldn't find any of my supplies!

Missing:
transparencies
white cardstock
scissors
tape runner
pencils (where oh where do these all go?!)

I hate it when I finally have inspiration, I can't get anything done! Where oh, where have all my supplies gone (sung to the tune of "Oh where oh where has my little dog gone") :)

So instead of crafting I worked with some of my photos instead.

 

 Youngest dd loves wearing this princess hat. I originally was only going to pull it out for birthdays, but I thought the hat would get more use if I left it in the toy box.

I also decided to open a Zazzle store featuring some of my favorite photos. I don't have much there yet, but will in the upcoming months.(If there is a big blank spot in your reader, it is where a flash panel showcasing my stuff is located. Click on the Zazzle link to see)

I know things have been slow on my end here in the blogosphere. The dreary January days are not helping me be creative and I have terrible lighting in my house which doesn't allow for good pictures. Being a perfectionist of sorts, I don't bother when I know it won't be good. --lol. I'm so looking forward to spring!!

Missing Supplies, Oh My!

Quit Teasing Me!

This weekend made me long for spring to be here. The weather was nice enough for the kids to ride their bikes and be outside longer. The younger two were eager to try out their new Strider bikes that they received for Christmas (you can read more about what a balance bike is by clicking the link above).

DD#3 got a pink Strider and a pink bunny Giro Me2 Bike Helmet to match.

 

DD#4 got an orange Strider with an orange Duckie Giro helmet to match. I love that for as short as she is, this bike fits her. It is also extremely light-weight which is another plus.

 

Doesn't she look cute in her Duckie helmet? She did very well for her first time riding a bike. She still has a little difficulty steering, but that will change with practice.

After playing outside for awhile, I went in and checked the weather report. It said that it was supposed to be an even nicer day out the next day. I told the kids that we'd go to the park and ride bikes there. When we got up in the morning and looked out the window-- small snowflakes greeted us. Ummm, I think someone got the forecast wrong! It's been 2 days of cold weather---winter is back. Those two nice days this weekend were teasing me---making me think that just maybe we'd have a mild winter. I'm ready to be outside and work in my garden. I'm longing for some sunshine instead of these dreary, overcast days. Oh spring, come quickly! :)

Quit Teasing Me!

Help for Haiti Collaborative Kit

Haiti has been on my mind, in my heart and in my prayers. When the news of the earthquake started hitting the airways, my team members from Designer Digitals all flocked to the forum to hear news of our team member, Christina, who lives in Port-au-Prince. Thankfully, she and her family escaped harm but her world is changed forever.

The Designers at Designer Digitals created a collaborative kit with 100% of the proceeds going to MercyCorp. This is a downloadable digital kit. Even if you don't do digital scrapbooking, you could use the kit to print out papers and elements to use on traditional scrapbooking layouts or crafts. Please pass the link on to let other crafters know about this offer.

Here's a layout that I created using the Help Haiti Collaborative kit. I'm having a hard time scrapping about the event so I went with a quote paired w/ a pic. from my youngest dd. My heart is so heavy, especially for the children of Haiti. I can't watch the news anymore. Instead I have been following several ministries via Twitter and their blogs. Mixed in with all the reports of devastation and despair, there is still a message of hope. Here are the organizations and people I've been following:

Troy Livesay

Heart Line Ministries - Haiti

That's Church - the BRESMA orphanage (what a miracle!)
Hands & Feet Project

Right now there seems to be little I can do, but the little I can do I will do.

And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Isaiah 58:10-11

Help for Haiti Collaborative Kit