Busy Mom's Bible |Review

I've finally embraced the fact that there are seasons and stages in life, and during these times there are often different expectations and standards I have for myself. I had been taught at an early age that it is important to have a quiet time with God every morning in order to get my day started off right. In my mind, quiet time would be at least 50 min. long with Bible reading, meditation, and intercession, and done way before my household would wake up. Then came my reality---my season with having infants and young kids. I needed to change my expectations of myself and what I thought a good "Christian " quiet time should look like. It was hard to have a set time for myself with 5 kids also needing me. My Bible reading was often done sitting in the van waiting for piano lessons, baseball practice, or while nursing a little one. Usually I would grab a few minutes here and there to read the Word. I didn't have time to do formal Bible studies, but I still yearned for that in-depth study that I seemed to be missing in my 5 min. here-and-there reading. I needed something to help me focus and dig deeper in a limited time-frame.

Then, Zondervan recently sent me a copy of the Busy Mom's Bible. I was intrigued to see how their system worked. At first glance I was impressed with the beautiful Italian duo-tone pink cover--which makes it easy to keep track of in the piles of books and paper that seem to have over-run my house. I quickly glanced through the NIV Bible and noticed that there were 52 thought starters, or mini-devotionals printed on brightly colored paper throughout the Bible. That makes it very easy to find. Here are the details:

Specs:
*Retails around $24.99
*Thin-line NIV Bible
*Type Point Size: 8
*Size: 6.2 wide x 9.2 high x 1.4 deep in. | 157 wide x 234 high x deep 35 mm
*Weight: 1.655 lb
*8 maps included in the back
*Concordance
*Study Index
*Words of Christ in red

What I Thought:
I love the size and weight of the Bible. It fits perfectly in a diaper bag or large purse. The cover and pages seem well-constructed and hopefully will live up to lots of carting around. The main idea of this Bible is to allow moms to have a quality, focused few minutes with the Savior. This is exactly what I needed. Many times I would actually have a few minutes to sit and read my Bible, but I had no plan or direction. These thought starters allow me to study a topic by highlighting a focus verse, providing a short summary, and giving additional verses to look up that pertain to the topic. Some of the topics are:

*Family ties: blending families, transforming hearts, a secure place
*Raising Your Kids: vital discipline, discerning differences
*Your Relationships: influence and encouragement, restore your relationships

Most of the topics are subjects that moms today would be thinking about or could relate to.  The thought starters weren't preachy or too fluffy, but rather did a good job getting me to think about the topic. I liked that additional verses were included for more in-depth study if I wanted. I finally feel like I have some sort of direction when I pick up my Bible. For this season of my life, the Busy Mom's Bible is just what I needed. I highly recommend it.

Busy Mom's Bible |Review

Family Traditions Notebook

Family traditions are what help bring families together and create special family bonds. Many times we focus on the big holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter, but we forget to create special celebrations for each month of the year. By having special occasions each month, you create opportunities for your family to be together, draw closer to each other and share the same memories. These special days do not need to be elaborate or costly, but it does take a commitment to carry through with the plan. For this reason, I created a Family Planner to help me keep track of the special traditions and events that I want to celebrate with my family this year.

I first shared some downloads during Christmas. You can get the cover and some planner pages:
Family Traditions- Christmas

I've added some Easter planning pages too:
Family Traditions - Easter

Here are some more celebration ideas:

* When the date and the month numbers are the same, have a special celebration (January 1, Feb. 2, March 3, April 4, etc.). You might make that date a special game night, movie night, craft night, pizza night or whatever you can dream up!

*Celebrate some of the silly holidays/observances for 2010:
January:

• 19 Popcorn Day

February

• 16 International Pancake Day

March

• 14 Children's Craft Day
• 18 Absolutely Incredible Kid Day
• 26 Make Up Your Own Holiday

April

• 10 Every Day is Earth Day
  12 D.rop E.verything A.nd R.ead Day

May

• 1 Mother Goose day
• 12 Limerick Day
• 23 Neighbor Day

June

• 15 Nature Photography Day
• 25 LEON Day - LEON is NOEL spelled backwards. It is now six months until Christmas. Throw a snowman party in the summer.

July

• 18 National Ice Cream Day
• 24 Tell an Old Joke Day

August

• 3 National Night Out
  18 Cupcake Day

September

• 18 Eat an Apple Day
• 19 Talk Like a Pirate Day (see Pirate treat boxes)

October

• 2 World Card-making Day
• 31 National Knock-Knock Jokes Day

November

• 3 Sandwich Day
• 11 Guinness World Record Day

December

• 17 Wright Brother's Day
• 25 Christmas

 For even more ideas see Brownielocks's calendar.

Well this is what works for me and helps me try to intentionally plan some fun times for my family.  Click below to see even more Works for Me ideas.

Family Traditions Notebook

The Wordless Book for Easter

The Wordless Book is a wonderful way to teach children (and adults) the good news of Jesus Christ.

There are so many creative ways to share the story. We've done cakes, bracelets, booklets, gloves, found objects and more. I've gathered many ideas, links, and printables and presented them in a Squidoo article, The Wordless Book. I also added two new printable Wordless Books:

 Download Version 1

 Download Version 2

Please feel free to share these printables, but share the link to this post or the Wordless book article, not to the download. Thanks!

Directions:

1. Print the booklet out on paper.
2. Cut around the outside black border.
3. Fold in half length-wise (hot-dog fold)
4. Open paper back up and fold in half again (hamburger fold)
5. While still folded, cut on the dashed lines.
6. Open the page up again. Fold so that the page is going length-wise again. You will notice that the part you cute kind of forms a square. You will bring those ends in together so the edges meet.
7. Continue folding the pages so they are flat.

I hope this makes sense! I'll try to add visual steps soon.

For more Easter Ideas check out:

The Wordless Book for Easter

Recording Memories

I caught my youngest asleep on the arm of the couch the other day. While looking at her I just soaked up her chubby cheeks, cute little dimple on her chin and her fly-away hair. I know that soon enough she'll outgrow her baby looks and I want to remember those details.

This is the same little girl awake. Once you put her in her highchair, she is a totally ham! She loves to get the older kids laughing at her antics. Her cheesy smile can brighten our day in an instant. She's been such a joy.

Yesterday my 3yr. old and I were reading her story Bible together. We were reading about the Garden of Eden. On the page there was a picture of the garden with a river running through it. I asked her if she thought it would be fun to play there. She said, "Oh yes mom! Let's go get in the van and go there!" 

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Layout supplies all by www.designerdigitals.com

Recording Memories

Letter A: Toddler/Preschool Time

My 3yr. old has been a little out of sorts during the school day lately. Then it hit me---she was bored! I needed to do something a little more challenging for her, so she started "Letter Time" this week. Our letter of the week was A. Of course that seems obvious, but actually I picked it because I knew she already recognized the letter since it is a part of her name. I haven't decided if we'll go ahead and do all the letters in order or if I'll switch it up. We'll see.

Since I'm not one to reinvent the wheel (I don't have the time!), I purchased Erica's Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum. She has printable activities plus a lesson plan for each letter of the alphabet.  My goal is to get all the activities printed, cut, laminated and put in large envelopes sorted by the letters. Then when I need it, all the resources will be together. As I said, it is my goal. It has not become reality yet--lol. Since we are still at the introductory phase with letters, I only printed a couple of activities that were included. I know that we will probably go through the alphabet at least one other time (w/ little sister in tow next year) so I"ll save some for then.

 

This activity was an size sort activity available in the download. My daughter put the ants in order from biggest to smallest and from smallest to biggest. Then we talked about the colors.

  

We used the letter sort mat. For more variety, we switched it up by hiding capital and small letter a's in a bowl of macaroni. She dug through the bowl and then placed the letter on the appropriate side of the mat. She really enjoyed this.

  

Here she sorted capital a's and small letter a's on the mat. These were the ants that were included in the download.

 

Next we did a letter A craft. I got this idea from Totally Tots, who got it from No Time For Flashcards.

Then on Friday our toddler/preschool co-op did apple activities which fit perfectly into our "Letter A" theme--- and this wasn't planned at all. The kids talked about the different colors of apples, read apple books, tasted apples and played an apple game---which they loved!

I blogged about an apple unit earlier in the year: Everything Apples and Apple Collage Craft

 

Mrs. S. came up with this adaption to the finger-play "Five Red Apples" She had red, green and yellow balloons in a pile on the floor. The children stood in a circle (well as close to a circle as 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5yr. olds can) and did the following poem. When their name was said, they got to "pick an apple" aka balloon from the floor. When everyone had an apple they had fun tossing them in the air. I think the kids played this game at least 4 times.

Five Red Apples

(or however many children there are in the group)

Five red apples hanging in a tree (Hold up five fingers)

The juiciest apples that you ever did see.

(Child's name) came by and wanted a treat (pick a balloon)

And one little apple was hers to eat.

For more preschool ideas check out:

Letter A: Toddler/Preschool Time

Math on my Mind

Math and I never were friends. In fact, math scared me. I wrote about my math feelings a couple months ago. I don't want my kids to feel the same way I felt about math. I want my kids to feel comfortable and maybe even a little excited to do math. So I've been trying to change things up a little in our house.

Right now my kids need to get their basic math facts down. We've been using games and flashcards to try to help.

 

I read about this math game idea in a book several years ago and finally got around to implementing it this year. All you need is an egg carton and two erasers (buttons, dried noodles, beans etc.)

 

 

Number the spaces in the carton. Place two erasers in the carton and shut the lid. Next shake the carton and open up. Then have your student add the two numbers or multiply the numbers where the erasers landed. I make my kids write the number sentence on paper or a dry erase board. Since this is different from our normal math stuff, the kids enjoy playing the game.

 

One of my kids was learning how to read large numbers and having some difficulty remembering the place value names. I used different colors to help differentiate between hundreds, thousands, millions. I made them into pockets and then wrote numbers on index cards. Each evening after dinner, the kids mix the numbers up and each have a turn reading the numbers. They've enjoyed practicing this way.

The last thing we've added to the math mix is a new game for the Nintendo DS. I guess when it's on the DS it just doesn't seem like work. I came across the Personal Math Trainer game and bought it knowing that I'd be able to get my kids to practice their facts via this route more than traditional flashcards. So far so good! The three older kids rotate which day they practice their facts on the DS. I usually give them a 15min. time limit but often find them still working past that. This isn't a fancy video game, but rather a tool to practice basic math facts using different drills.

So that's what's working for us right now. I'm still deciding which direction to go with our math curriculum for next year. If you have an math curriculum reviews or opinions, I'm open to hearing (umm reading) them.

Math on my Mind