Get 'Er Done, Momma!

Alphabet Craft: Free F is for Flamingo Template

2012-02-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

I decided to go ahead and share this printable in case anyone would like to use it. It's funny, cause I thought it would be a cute idea, but it just didn't turn out quite like I pictured in my head. Oh well.

You can get a copy of the printable by clicking the image below. If you decide to share this, please be sure to link back to this post on my blog, and not to the file itself. Also, if you have any trouble downloading the file, would you please come back and leave me a comment on my blog? Thank you!

Fun in the Sun

2012-02-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

The weather around here has been balmy and springlike, so springlike in fact that one of the trees near our apartments has started budding. Methinks Mr. Groundhog was wrong about there being six more weeks of winter here in Sacramento.

I've been sending Liam outside to play most days and playing in his sandbox is one of his favorite outdoor activities.

Here are some pictures I took of him playing outside last week.

Kid's Crafts: Heart Animals

2012-02-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

We read the book My Heart Is Like a Zoo this week and we made some cute heart animals to go along with it. This is a cute book. Check it out at your local library if you haven't already read it.

We were working on the letter F this week, so to make a tie-in we made animals whose names start with the letter F. Actually the fish was not in the book, but I had seen it around the internet, it is made from hearts and it starts with the letter F. It fit.

These guys turned out so cute and, as always, are proudly showcased on my refrigerator art display.

Linking up with:

Valentine's Week Activities

2012-02-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

We did Valentine's themed activities the last two weeks along with our letter of the week activities. Last week I didn't really get many pictures, but I did a lot better this week.

I prepared more activities than we actually did (Momma was being too ambitious again.) and I guess I was picking and choosing activities for Liam to do, because I have worksheets from several different places.

Two of the pictures below are from the I Love Trucks Valentine's Pack from Our Little Monkeys. Liam loved the trucks as expected
H is for Hearts magnet page is from Making Learning Fun.
Sweetheart Maze from 2 Teaching Mommies.
Colored Heart sort idea came from PreKinders.

We did a few crafty things too.

I love you hidden message. Liam used watercolor paint to reveal the hidden message I had written for him. He got so excited when the message appeared!
While we had the watercolors out I quickly showed him how to make a rainbow of sorts. After I did this Liam said he wanted a black rainbow, so he used the black paint to go over the lines I had made.
More play in his sensory bin, but mainly just looking for treats, which weren't present.
Magnet play, which isn't Valentine related, but just doesn't seem to fit anywhere else. I was trying to show Liam that he could create things with the magnets, like people, etc. He wasn't impressed. Maybe later.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Tot School: Letter F

2012-02-18T21:49:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

Our letter of the week was the letter F and Liam and I had some fun with it. My little guy was full of fun and silliness this week, and talky as a jaybird. He was quite often either singing or chattering away all through learning time.

We used some of the pages from the Tot School printables on 1+1+1=1. We also used a few pages from the Making Learning Fun website. They had a pretty good assortment of pages for firetrucks, one of Liam's favorite things!

We did several fun letter F crafts. I got the ideas for the letter F with feathers and letter F food collage on the No Time for Flashcards website in the Letter of the Week area. The others were from the book My Heart Is Like a Zoo, which we read several times for Valentine's Day.

We also did the F is for Flamingo activity that my husband created for us. I didn't feel this turned out as well as I had hoped it would. I will still post the template later in the week in case anyone is interested in using it. Maybe yours will turn out better than mine. My husband says purple wasn't a good color to use with the pink, but it was Liam's choice.

We did several puzzles this week.

1. We worked together on the Ocean Animals (dollar store find) puzzle one time. The interlocking jigsaw puzzles are really too difficult for him and I think he finds them a bit frustrating, even with me helping.
2. I like the Lauri Lace and Link letters I bought recently, because they come all ready to be laced, but you can also work on linking them together as a larger activity too, which we'll probably work on together once we've went through the alphabet once. Right now I just bring out one a week.
3. The Things That Go write and wipe book is my go to pre-writing activity for Liam. I've set it on a low shelf near his desk and he gets it out about once a week to work in it.
4. These Lauri Crepe Rubber puzzles are my newest discovery and I love them. They perfectly bridge the gap between interlocking puzzles, which are too difficult and peg puzzles, which are too easy.

I'm having fun using the My Memories software to create these posts, so I'll probably keep that up for now, until I think it's more work than it's worth. I'm learning a lot about it as I put these pages together, so that's a bonus for me. I do try to use a size that keeps the graphics at a reasonable load time. Don't want to bog anyone's computer down loading graphics. I actually checked this time and was able to lower the graphic size by doing them this way, than if I'd loaded each individual graphic separately.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Moments to Remember: Liam Blossoms

2012-02-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

This week was just an overall memorable week. It went pretty peacefully, which is definitely a blessing. It was also one of those times where I could see Liam's little personality taking shape right before my eyes. He's turned into quite the little conversationalist, which is no surprise to me since children are usually the opposites of their parents.

Our learning times were filled with silliness and almost non-stop chatter. He had me laughing out loud quite a few times. Here he is singing his ABC song with Scout, stamping his letter F's quite exuberantly and chattering while coloring and having his puppet friend help.

Linking up with:

Weekend Valentine Celebration

2012-02-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

We had our main Valentine's Day celebration this weekend since it falls on a weekday. There always seems to be so much to do in the evening on weekdays we barely have time to sit down and catch our breath. This evening will mainly be our normal routine.

Here are some pictures from our Valentine's Day celebration, all done up with the My Memories Suite software. I just have to say that I love this program! I'm not the type of woman who would sit down with a bunch of scrapbook paper and scrap for hours. First of all, I don't have room for a lot of craft supplies. Second, the idea of trying to organize all of it, and my perfectionist mentality makes hands on projects like that feel overwhelming and tedious.

But this is a horse of a different feather, cause I can spend all day at the computer and barely blink an eye (except when I get those horrible, can't hardly bare to have my eyes open, migraine headaches). It's great because I don't have to do much organizing at all. It's neatly organized on my computer! I don't have to store a bunch of scrapbooking supplies that I don't have room for.

It's just absolutely ideal for me and I love it! I'm already planning several projects for myself, such as finally making our 2012 calendar. I know, I'm running just a bit behind. No wonder I see so many fellow bloggers raving about it.

This weekend we sat down together as a family and made homemade Valentine's Day cards for each other. This is the first year we've ever done that, but both my husband and I enjoyed doing it so much we agreed it should become a family tradition.

We also had a special Valentine's Day dinner together.

Happy Valentine's Day to all!

FREE Letter E is for Elephant Template

2012-02-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

We focused on the letter E last week and did a letter craft to go along with it.

We used this template that was designed by my husband to complete our craft. Here is how our craft turned out.

I had wanted to make this craft from gray construction paper, but I didn't have any. So I put some black and white paint on a paper plate and let Liam mix them up, explaining to him that the two colors combine to make gray as he mixed. We painted the whole sheet gray, then let it dry. Once it was dry I cut the shapes needed, then we pasted them on to the paper. The side benefit of this is that Liam was having trouble remembering the color gray, and now seems to have it down.

You can get your own copy by clicking on the picture below. If you share this, please remember to link directly to this blog post on my site, and not to the file itself.

Hope your kiddos enjoy!

Linked up with:

Tot School: Letter E

2012-02-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

Can you tell that I bought the My Memories software this week? I'm having fun playing with it and trying to figure out all the bells and whistles it has. Who knows, I may start doing all of my tot school posts like this.

Anyway, on to our week. We did some of the Tot School Letter E printables on 1+1+1=1. We also completed the letter E magnet page and cut and paste activity available on Homeschool Creations. You can find those here on her site. The picture in the upper right corner is a picture of Liam doing some letter E and D activities on Starfall.com. He enjoys doing the activities on this site a lot, and usually wants to do them more than once.

We did more Valentine's Day activities than this, I just didn't happen to snap a lot of pictures of them. I wasn't my normal camera happy self this week.

Here are some of the toys and games we played with this week. He finally got interested in this Melissa and Doug car maze that I picked out for him for Christmas. Guess it just took a while for him to catch on to how it works.

Finally the crafts we did this week. I focused a lot on elephants this week, so our crafts were elephant related. You can get a copy of the free template for the letter E craft here. Momma learned right alongside Liam. Did you know elephants have emotions just like humans? They can be happy or cry, and grieve for extended periods of time. Very interesting animals.

We watched a video about elephants here on the National Geographic website and read some of the interesting facts about them. You can go check it out if you're interested.

Due to unnaturally spring like weather he spent much time outside in his sandbox with his shovel and bucket. Much fun was had and I think perhaps some dirt was eaten. A little dirt never hurt anyone, right?

Linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: FREE D is for Dog Template

2012-02-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

Our letter D activities this week included making a doggy face out of the letter D. It's a pretty simple craft to put together, especially if you use this printable template.

Sorry, I cut off a portion of the bottom of the image. Feel free to use this template, but if you share it, remember to link to this post on my blog, and not directly to the file itself. Thanks!

Just click the image below and you're off!

Hope you and your kiddos have fun making this D is for dog craft!

Tot School: Letter D

2012-02-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

We focused on the letter D this week. We are working our way through the Tot School printables found on 1+1+1=1 (along with a few other things to supplement).

I mentioned last week that when we did our review of the letters A, B and C, Liam wasn't able to successfully identify any of them. So at the end of this week, I checked to see if he was able to identify the letter we'd worked on all week when presented with it, and he was. We'll see how it goes when review comes in a few weeks.

Learning time:

Do-a-dot page. I think it's cute how he goes and covers up the little pictures in the corners first, then fills the rest of the letter in.

Letter D stamping.

Letter D cut and paste activity from Homeschool Creations. All of her alphabet printables are here.

I broke down and bought some magnets at Target when I saw them in the office supplies area. This helped keep the magnet pages new and fresh for him. These printables are also from Homeschool Creations.

Play activities:

After he finished doing the magnet page he wanted to do this. I half-heartedly tried to get him to do some sorting with them, but decided against it and just watched him have fun.

I printed off this dog pattern block image from PreKinders. I was afraid it was going to be too difficult for him, but he seemed to find it easy.

I didn't have a Moments to Remember post, but if I had made one, this might have been the picture I would have used. I decide to bring out some of his toys that start with the letter D for him to play with. One of the first things he did was pick up his drill and start using it on his toy duck. This makes me laugh because he got banned from bringing this toy into the living room because he had been chasing the dogs around with it. I made sure it got put back in his room when we were finished.

I bought these alphabet puzzle cards from the dollar store. I put out the first four letters for him to do this week.

He put together a dinosaur puzzle that's way too easy for him. He still really enjoys these puzzles though. Sometimes as a challenge we'll dump all of them out and have him put them together like that. That has extended the usefulness of these puzzles quite a bit.

I felt so uninspired when it came to thinking of ways of forming the letter D, so finally we just used some dot stickers.

Nursery Rhyme Time:

Our nursery rhyme this week was Hickory, Dickory, Dock. This is one of Liam's favorite nursery rhymes.

I'd forgotten about it until this week, but a while back I'd also bought an e-book in PDF format from Scholastic Express with poems for each letter of the alphabet. So, we also read a poem entitled Deep, Diving Ducks.

Craft:

Here he is working on his D is for dog craft. I got smart and had my husband make the printable template in advance so we could use it too. I like how it turned out. I'll be posting this printable tomorrow.

We also watched the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD a couple of times this week at Liam's request. If you can afford it, I recommend getting this video. Little kids love it and it is really good for helping familiarize children with the alphabet and the letter sounds.

Linking up with these great sites:

Groundhog's Day Theme

2012-02-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

This week we worked on the letter D, and since Groundhog Day was this week, we did some activities to go along with that.

We started off at the beginning of the week looking at our calendar and talking about how Groundhog's Day would be on Friday. I drew a semblance of a face of a groundhog on the calendar to mark the day.

I had subscribed to the Clifford magazine through Scholastic and we got our first issue this month, which happened to be about groundhogs and other animals that live underground. It was awesome timing and fit in so nicely with our theme. Each day we talked about different animals that make their homes underground in burrows. I showed Liam the picture of what a burrow looks like and how animals have different rooms in their homes just like we do. We also watched a short video on the Scholastic site about groundhogs. I have to give credit to Next Generation Homeschooler, because I first saw these on her site and at one point she mentioned they had been fairly inexpensive, which is what made me go investigate further.

The activities included were mainly shadow matching activities, which was also a perfect go along for Groundhog Day. Here he is working on one of them.

Groundhog Day coloring pages. We did several of these. I think I found these on the Making Learning Fun website.

A Groundhog Day math mat found on Making Learning Fun. This was the first time I'd ever tried having him do an activity like this. I wasn't sure he'd understand what he was supposed to do, but he did great. I gave him a small tub with numbers in it, these were magnetic numbers I'd gotten from the dollar store. I'd ask him first if he knew what the number was, and if not I'd tell him what it was and have him put that many magnets on the page. I ended up telling him all of the numbers, but that's fine. My main goal was counting practice and to try to help him with number recognition.

I was grateful to 2 Teaching Mommies for putting out a mini Groundhog Unit this week. I downloaded it and printed out the parts I felt were level appropriate for Liam. He did a groundhog size sort and a patterning activity.

We did this craft for Groundhog Day, which I'm sure most of you have seen on Pinterest. Isn't he cute?! Momma forgot the whiskers.

Then on Groundhog Day itself we went outside and looked for our shadows, and sure enough we saw them. I don't know if I believe it about the six more weeks of winter bit though. Especially since it hasn't been that much of a winter to start with.

Linking up with these great sites:

Valentine's Sensory Bin

2012-02-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here is our sensory bin for the lovely month of February. It has a Valentine's Day theme, since that is the big holiday this month.

There are quite a few things in here. I got a few things from the dollar spot at Target. The little red mailbox, the Valentine sticker book, Valentine erasers and little plastic, heart-shaped boxes are all from Target. The rest is mostly stuff I already had on hand, like the lacing beads, pom poms, pipe cleaners etc.

I've been reading the blogs of other mommies out there and have been able to get a lot of neat ideas on special things to do for my guys this month. I plan to write little love notes each day until Valentine's Day for both Liam and his daddy. For Liam I put them in the little red mailbox along with a little treat. He gets up each morning and right away asks if he can play with the sensory bin.

Also planning to make little treats for them on the weekend. Did you see this pretty little treat that Lorie from Reading Confetti wrote about? Thinking I'll make this for my guys this weekend.

Here are a few action shots of Liam playing with his sensory bin this week.

Opening his mailbox the first day.

Licking the sucker he found inside. This is the first time I've ever given him a sucker. I've been too afraid to do it in the past because I was afraid it would be a choking hazard for him. He's a really good eater though, so I decided to stay close and gave him several reminders to chew carefully while he was eating it.

He totally did this on his own the first day I set this out. He hasn't done it since, but he did think it was fun the first time.

I also put some special stickers in some of the heart-shaped boxes. He was excited to find these and put them on in various spots. Then when he was finished playing, he got down, took them all off, wadded them up and handed them back to me. Oh, my dear, sweet, little boy.

If you want some ideas for treats to make or crafts to do for Valentine's Day, there are some ideas on my Valentine's Day board on Pinterest.

Linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: Carrot Cut-Paper Collage

2012-01-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liam and I worked together on a cut-paper collage craft to go along with the book, The Carrot Seed, this week. If you want to see the B4FIAR lapbook activities we did to go along with the book, go here.

This was a simple craft to do. I drew the outline of the carrot onto a piece of construction paper. We filled in the outline of the carrot with glue. He had previously cut up some orange construction paper and I still had some scraps from that on hand, so we used the cut paper scraps to fill in the outline of the carrot. Then we cut up strips of green construction paper for the leafy greenery and put that on the top of the carrot.

I love how this turned out. My only regret is not waiting to save this for a spring project.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Tot School: Letters A, B & C Review

2012-01-29T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

Liam and I did a review of the letters A, B and C this week. We focused on one letter each day.

At the beginning of the week I wanted to see if he was able to locate any of the letters we had already gone over. I used one of his alphabet books and showed him the page with the first few letters on it, then would ask him to find one of them for me. He wasn't able to locate them on the first try most of the time. I know this isn't something to be concerned about at this age. We're just going to need a lot of repetition. He's a pretty smart little boy, so eventually he will learn them.

Learning Time:

We did these letter cut and paste activities I found on Making Learning Fun.

These alphabet coloring pages are on Education.com. I was helping Liam with all of his coloring this week. I actually got a kick out of coloring these letters. I love how creative they are.

We also did a color by upper and lowercase letter page for each letter. These were also found on Education.com

Nursery Rhyme Time:

Another fun thing I've started adding to our day is nursery rhyme time. This is specifically to help him learn the letter sounds. I found a cool site that has nursery rhymes sorted by the alphabet, so I went there and chose a couple for each of our letters. I read them to him after learning time asking him to try to listen for the letter sounds. I have no idea if they have helped him with recognizing letter sounds, but one thing I can say is that both my husband and I noticed an improvement in his enunciation of words this weekend. I plan to keep this up for each letter in the future.

Miscellaneous Fun:

I printed out these letter roads that I found on Making Learning Fun and then taped them down on the carpet. I was just certain he was going to love these. He played on them for about 5 minutes (maybe less) the first night I put them down and hasn't since. That's the way it goes sometimes.

He had his trace and wipe book out a couple of couple of times this week.

Craft:

We did alphabet resist paintings for our alphabet craft this week. My intention was to do simple crafts for each of the letters because I didn't want to be putting together some complicated craft each day. This didn't turn out quite as easy as I'd imagined, but I'll write a separate post on this later in the week.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Moments to Remember: Ta-da!

2012-01-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liam was in an especially agreeable mood for our Tot School this week. I can't say things went off completely without a hitch, but it is as close as we've ever come to that since we started I think.

A couple of times this week after completing one of his pages, he would stretch out his arms demonstrating his work, and then say "Ta-da!" So cute! He seemed particularly pleased with his accomplishments this week, which I think is great.

This is one of the pages he did that on. I had him pick it up and show it to me afterward so I could take a picture. Then he ran it over to daddy and said "I made this for you!" Sorry for the glare from the sun!

Another "Ta-da!" moment. It happened this time after coloring his C is for cat page.

I have to say that I decided to make some changes in the way I handle coloring pages after reading Carisa's Tot School post about how she helps her daughter with her coloring pages. Just this little change has made a huge difference. He's always been more of a collaborative colorer. I guess "colorer" is not a word. I guess I'll just say he's always enjoyed coloring more if I am doing it with him.

Linking up with:

B4FIAR: The Carrot Seed

2012-01-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of positive comments about the Five In a Row curriculum since I started doing lesson planning and researching learning activities for Liam. So at the beginning of the year I decided to purchase a copy of Before Five in a Row so I could use this book as a resource when doing our lesson planning this year.

I wasn't sure which book to do first and the one that it happened to be was chosen by happenstance. I had checked out the book The Carrot Seed from the library and was doing research on activities that might go along with it when I realized it was one of the B4FIAR books. so I decided to go ahead and plan our first B4FIAR lesson.

This book is quite short and extremely simple. Perhaps it is meant to be easy for a younger reader to read on their own. Liam loved it and asked me to read it numerous times. We probably read it about 8 times in all during the week. By the second day he was attempting to "read" it on his own and saying "It won't come up." in the appropriate spots. Cute!

Vocabulary:

After reading the book the first time through we added a new word to our vocabulary: persistence. I explained to Liam that being persistent means not giving up. I also explained that the little boy had been persistent by continuing to take care of his carrot plant, even after being told repeatedly that it wouldn't come up. I tried to go over this idea each day we read the book.

Printable Activities:

I downloaded the lapbook template here on the Homeschool Share website. I really liked the activities included in the lapbook. Here are some of the things we did.

Coloring our orange items. You'll have to see the book, but the illustrations in the book are quite dull (color-wise) and muted until you get to the end when the carrot has sprouted and there is a giant orange carrot.

Carrot sizing from smallest to largest.

I don't know why he has such a confused look on his face here. Perhaps he was still trying to absorb what I'd been telling him about what plants need to grow. I explained that plants need sunlight, air, water and soil to grow, then we colored them together.

Our letter C words that we colored together. Good review of our letter we learned last week.

There were also some ideas for doing carrot math in the lapbook, so we did some math activities with carrots, I just didn't snap any pictures during those activities. I was able to work in very simple addition activities by having him give himself, his daddy and me a (paper) carrot, then count how many there were altogether. We did a few things along those lines.

Video:

We watched a short time-lapsed video of a plant growing on the PBS Learning Media site. I wanted to leave Liam with the understanding that a plant was a living, growing thing, so we discussed this a little bit after we watched the video. I'm not really sure how much stuck though. It's ok, I think just being introduced to the concept is enough for now.

Miscellaneous Fun:

We made carrots out of playdough and Liam had a lot of fun chopping them up and pretending to eat them. Had to choose the week when I didn't have any actual carrots on hand to do a carrot theme, right?

We worked together on a carrot collage. I had seen the idea of painting with the green plant portion of the carrot, but again, didn't have any carrots on hand for us to do this. I don't think this turned out too badly though.

There were definitely some things I wanted to do that I didn't get to. One suggestion was cutting off the top of a carrot and placing it in water and watching the greenery grow back. Or planting a seed and watching it grow, something we'll definitely do in the spring.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: C is for Cat with Free Printable Template

2012-01-23T04:00:00.001-08:00

We were working on the letter C in Tot School this week, so we did this C is for cat craft to go along with it.

I had to free hand draw my features for our cat this week, but this weekend my husband sat down and made a template for this craft to make it easier.

To make this craft you trace a C on to construction paper of a color you like. I wanted to do an orange tabby cat, so I chose orange construction paper. Cut out the letter, then have you child paste it on the paper. I cut up thin slices of yellow construction paper for the stripes and had Liam glue them around the C. Then I cut out the ears and also some pink centers, and he glued those in place. The eyes and whiskers I glued on, although it is extremely difficult to see the whiskers in this photo.

The look he gets on his face when we finish one of these letter crafts is always cute. You can just see the little gears in his mind working. I'm not sure exactly what he's thinking, but he's definitely thinking.

If you want to download the free template you can get it here. Please feel free to share this with others, but if you do please link directly to this post on my blog, and not to the file.

Hubby said he tried to give you options on how to use the template. If you want to print it out and complete the craft on the paper you printed it out on, that is an option. You would just cut off the bottom portion and cut out the eyes, ears and mouth for the cat, and paste them in the appropriate places at the top, then your child can color them in or decorate them in whatever way they desire. Or you can use the pieces as a template to trace onto colored construction paper. It's up to you!

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: Snowy Snowman Scene

2012-01-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

Our theme for the week was snow/snowman. See the post with our snowman learning activities over here.

The books we read this week to go along with our snowman theme were:

I had made some tentative plans to take Liam to the snow this year. Although we live in Sacramento and it doesn't really snow here, we live 1 1/2 hours from South Lake Tahoe, which usually has snow in the winter and is known for it's ski resorts. Alas, even South Lake Tahoe hasn't had much snow this season. Perhaps next year.

The original idea for this craft came from here on Make and Takes. I just found her blog and I love all the great quick craft ideas she has. Quick and easy is what I like when it comes to crafting.

Getting this craft ready was super easy. I used a blue sheet of construction paper, but you can use the color of your choice. I had Liam paint the bottom of his paper white for the snow. I cut out three circles in graduated sizes for him to glue to his paper to make a snowman. He used a toilet paper roll to stamp circles all over the paper to give it a snowy wintery effect. Then he sprinkled some glitter on top to give a bit of shimmer.

Here's the finished snowman. We glued on buttons for eyes and buttons down the front, a small strip of construction paper for the scarf and I just drew on the mouth. When Liam saw how his snowman was leaning he at first said it was falling over. Then he must have reconsidered what was going on because a few seconds later he said the snowman was dancing. He does look like he is dancing! A happy snowman dance in a wintery flurry scene.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

FREE Valentine's Day Mini Tot Book

2012-01-22T16:53:00.001-08:00

Valentine's Day is almost upon us, and in honor of that I asked my husband to put together a mini tot book that I could share with all of you here.

The activities included in the mini tot book are:

Trace and color the hearts page
Valentine's Day puzzles
Count and color the hearts
V is for Valentine do-a-dot page

Click on the image below to get a copy. If you share this, please be sure to link directly to this page on my blog, and not directly to the file. Thank you!

Hope your kiddos have fun with these activities!

Linking up with these great sites:

Tot School: Letter C

2012-01-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

Liam is 32 months old.

We were working on the letter C in Tot School this week. We are working our way through the Tot School printables (along with a few other things to supplement) found on 1+1+1=1. One thing that I like about these printables is that there is very little preparation required. Actually, for the pages I use, there is no preparation. Love that! I never realized how much cutting, laminating and pasting I would be doing when I started these learning time activities with Liam.

Just a little background on how our learning time usually rolls out. I try to keep our learning time activities to just three days of the week, and have the other 2 days for doing errands and our crafts (which usually don't take very much time). We normally spend about 30-45 minutes on learning time, and then have a story time before Liam takes his nap. I try to spend about 20-30 minutes reading to Liam. So in all, we spend a little over an hour in learning time activities those three days of the week. We're flexible though, so this isn't a hard and fast schedule.

Liam has a pretty good attention span right now, but 30-45 minutes is really all he can hack at this point, and that is probably pretty darn good for his age.

Learning Time:

I skipped the coloring sheet this week, because Liam seemed to be getting kind of bored doing them. That doesn't mean we didn't do any color reinforcement though. One funny way I've recently discovered for reinforcing color recognition is tied in with his potty training. I'm one of the mommies that gives m&ms as rewards for a successful potty trip. Then I also give him a colorful smiley face sticker to put on his potty chart. Now, when I hand him an m&m I ask him what color he got and I do the same thing with the stickers. Sometimes I forget to ask and he just tells me anyway. If he tells me the wrong answer I usually show him the m&m and ask him again. He usually gets it right the second time around. If he doesn't I just tell him the right color.

Tracing the letter C. You can see how large the font is here. This larger font is the perfect size for tracing with the amount of fine motor control Liam has at this point. We usually only do these pages once, then move on. The activities are repetitive enough, without being exactly the same, that Liam gets the exposure without getting bored.

Filling in the letter C with a do-a-dot marker and then using it to dot his Cs.

These two printables came from Homeschool Creations. You can find all of her alphabet printables here.

Stamping the letter C. He loves this page because he gets to use the stamps. It looks like he gets some fine motor exercise holding the little stamper too.

Letter Formation Fun:

A silly way of making the letter C. With all the vegetable stamping going around in the tot schooling community lately, I couldn't help but join in. I was noticing how much one of these looks like the letter C when it's stamped, so I cut one off the bunch and put some paint out for him to use to stamp. He thought this was so funny.

I cut a C out of the outer ring of a paper plate, pasted it on to a piece of construction paper, then we colored it in with crayons. I liked how he used his finger to go along the edges of the paper plate, so this was a good tactile experience too.

C Is for Cat Craft:

I helped him make this C is for Cat craft. Doubt that it is hard for anyone to see how I put this together, but my husband did create a free template for me that I'll be sharing later in the week.

Looking for more alphabet ideas? Check out my ABC and 123s board on Pinterest.

Some things we used this week:

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Winter Theme: Snow/Snowman

2012-01-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

We did a snow/snowman theme this week, which was the last of the winter themes I had planned for us to do, even though it truly hasn't been much of a winter out here. Sacramento is always mild comparatively, but especially so this year.

Reading:

We read four books to go along with our snow theme: The First Day of Winter, The Snowy Day, The Jacket I Wear in the Snow, and Let's Look at Winter.

We enjoyed reading all of these books. I think of all of them Liam enjoyed The Snowy Day the best, since this is the one he asked me to reread the most. I really liked Let's Look at Winter. I was afraid it was going to be overly wordy and above Liam's understanding, but I think it provided just enough information about the winter season for his age.

Learning Time:

I saw different versions of this snowman button counting activity online. I got this particular one from Kid's Soup, but there are definitely free printables available online for this.

This is a snowball patterning activity I found on Kid's Soup. I think after watching Team Umizoomi about a thousand times Liam understands what a pattern is. He just loves that show. After he finished copying the pattern I told him he had pattern power like Milli. He really liked that.

After seeing how much he enjoyed the polar bear tracing activity last week I made sure to include a similar activity this week and it was again one of his favorite activities. I think he doesn't see this as writing so much as drawing. Either way, it's good fine motor control practice and makes a great pre-writing exercise. This snowman page is from Making Learning Fun.

Miscellaneous:

One new thing I've started doing with Liam this week is calendar time. I loved the post on this that Jen at Peaceful Parenting linked up a few weeks ago. I'd been debating doing something like this with Liam since the beginning of the new year, I just wasn't sure how to approach it since I wasn't sure how well he was going to be able to grasp the concept. What we are doing is very similar to what she described; but we don't do journaling. I think just the simple activity of looking at the calendar, naming the days, counting up to the current day and marking off yesterday has already made an impact. Today he surprised me when he came over to me and said that he would be going out with daddy in the future (which meant in about an hour). I was surprised that he had a concept of what future meant and that he could apply it in a sentence like that. It felt like an encouragement for me to continue with this activity.

After seeing how much Liam loved tracing the polar bear last week I decided I wanted to get him something that would encourage his love of drawing. These wipe clean books by Richard Priddy are perfect.

I gave him the Things That Go version first. I'm saving the Animals version for when he needs some variety.
He's drawn in it several times now. He usually sits down and goes through the whole book drawing all the trucks, then he'll wipe it clean and hand it back to me.

Crafting:

Finally, our snowman scene, that we did to go along with our snowman theme. Liam got a quite a kick out of this because it involved using paint. I'll write a more detailed post about our craft later in the week.

I'm looking forward to reading what everyone else has been up to with their kiddos this week. I always get so much inspiration from other blogging mommies.

Looking for more fun winter activities? Check out my winter board on Pinterest.

I'm linking up with:

Moments to Remember: I Did It!

2012-01-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

This is Liam's victory cheer of "I did it!" after he finished tracing one of his letter C pages this week. Sorry this picture is a little blurry, but I only have a point and click camera, and he was in motion.

Linking up with:

Kid's Crafts: B is for (Polar) Bear with Free Printable Template

2012-01-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

We learned about the letter B in Tot School last week, and our craft to go along with it was B is for (polar) bear. I was very set on doing a B is for bear craft to go along with our winter polar bear theme. After searching the internet for several days trying to find an idea of how to do it or a template I could use, I decided I'd have to come up with a way to do this on my own.

I free-hand drew the parts needed to make our letter B craft. Being someone who is quite artistically challenged I'm surprised I was able to do that and have it come out looking decent. When I draw I seem to have no sense of proportion and things always turn out looking wonky. Keeping this in mind I asked my husband to make a template for this craft that I could share here. So for anyone artistically challenged like me, it's available for you to use.

What you'll need:

Glue stick
Scissors
Black Sharpie (not if you use the template)
1 piece of blue construction paper (or color of your choice)
2 googly eyes (if you don't want to use or don't have any googly eyes, you can also just draw the eyes on)
B is for bear template (I'm providing this template for free. If you decide to share this, please provide a link to this post on my blog, and not directly to the document.)

Here's what I did:

I drew my pieces with a pencil on a piece of white construction paper, then I cut them out and used the black sharpie to go around the edges. If you use the template, all you'll have to do is the cutting if your child is a tot like mine. An older child can do the cutting on their own. I also pasted on the googly eyes.

Here's what Liam did:

Liam did pretty much everything else. He put the glue on each piece, then placed them on the construction paper, with me only guiding him as to where to place them. I love how his little tongue is sticking out in this picture!

Our finished craft:

I think this turned out really cute. Liam was very proud of it too, and wanted to show it to daddy when he got home.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: Polar Bear Craft

2012-01-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Our winter theme for this week was polar bears (you can find this post here), which we used for math and some other miscellaneous activities this week. We did this craft to go along with our polar bear theme.

The books we read:

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle and The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett.

What you'll need:

Glue
Salt
Scissors
White colored pencil
Black construction paper
4-6 Cotton balls
Sheet of star stickers
A circle cut from white paper (I used the paper from the polar bear outline)
Polar bear outline from Making Learning Fun

Here's what I did:

Using the white colored pencil I drew a line on the black construction paper where I wanted the ground to be. I then cut out the polar bear outline I got from the Making Learning Fun website and traced it onto the black construction paper, making sure to trace the polar bear with his feet on the ground. I got this part ready while Liam napped.

I cut apart the cotton balls, because I didn't want the polar bear to look overly bulky. We ended up using six cotton balls to make the polar bear.

When Liam woke up we did our craft. I helped by squeezing glue inside the outline of the polar bear and later onto the ground where we wanted our snow to be. I also ended up having to help shake the salt shaker because it was giving us trouble.

Here's what Liam did:

Liam placed the cotton balls inside the polar bear outline and I helped with placement. The rest he was able to do on his own. He put glue on the back of the moon and put it in the sky, then added on the stars. I had him just use silver stars, but using a variety of colors might be a cool effect as well.

Then he shook salt onto the ground to represent the snow. I ended up having to help with this, because our salt shaker didn't want to let the salt out very well for some reason. Even I had trouble getting it to come out. Some very vigorous shaking occurred, which Liam thought was quite funny.

Our finished craft:

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Tot School: Letter B

2012-01-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

We were learning about the letter B in Tot School this week. Although this is new territory for Liam, I think he is genuinely interested in learning his letters. When we finish reading books with him now, he is starting to want "his turn" at reading. It's definitely cute.

We are going to be working our way through the Tot School printables found on 1+1+1=1 (along with a few other things to supplement). These printables are perfect for toddlers. The letters are in large fonts so they are easy for little hands to trace and Carisa designed them to be easy on your printer ink, which is great, because we all know how expensive that can be.

We have the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set. I keep this out during the week so we can sing the letter sound and ABC song with Scout. I try to do this several times throughout the week.

Learning Time:

We started off by coloring a B is for ball page. Liam isn't one who likes to spend a huge amount of time coloring, but he tolerates doing one page like this.

B tracing page. I'm surprised at how good he is at tracing his letters when he wants to be.

Letter B stamping. This is one of his favorite activities. Playing with the stamps is one of the things he only gets to do during learning time right now.

This cut and paste letter B page came from Homeschool Creations. All of her alphabet printables can be found here. I like this page because it's pretty different than the other activities, but still helps reinforce letter recognition.

Letter B magnet page, also from Homeschool Creations. I think he did this magnet page after the shaving cream activity, which is why he isn't wearing a shirt in this picture.

Letter Making Fun:

We tried making the letter B a couple of different ways this week.

Pardon the Special K box in the picture. I put that down to keep from getting playdough stuck to our table. I had the funny idea of having Liam make the letter B in playdough with googly eyes. Like most kids this age he is pretty intrigued by googly eyes.

This is a learning experience for me as well as Liam. At first, all I did was put a picture of the letter B in front of him, then told him to use the googly eyes to make it. When he kept putting the googly eyes all over instead of forming a B, I realized he didn't really understand how to do it. So, I finally drew a B in the playdough and had him to put the googly over the lines. That worked out better.

Another day we used shaving cream to make our Bs. This again was a mommy learning experience. I set the picture of the letter B in front of him and asked him to trace it in the shaving cream. I wasn't as smart this day, because what I ended up doing was taking his finger and helping him trace the B. I now realize I should have drawn a line, then had him copy it, then drew a hump, had him copy it, etc. Thanks for being so patient with my stumblings, little buddy.

Reading:

I think I forgot to mention last week that I bought Liam these Pre-Reading Skills (My First Bob Books) for us to go through as we go through the alphabet this first time. These books are fairly small and quite simple. If I had picked these up in a store and looked at them before I purchased them, I probably wouldn't have bought them because of those features. However, I'm glad it didn't work out that way, because Liam actually likes them quite a bit and asks to read them repeatedly. I definitely feel like he is getting something from reading these.

Craft Time:

Finally, our letter B craft. I had my heart set on doing a B is for (polar) bear craft, because we were doing a winter polar bear theme as well. I did a search of all my favorite sites and couldn't find any B is for bear crafts. Not a single one! I even went to the Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection, and didn't find a single bear craft. However, I did find this cute B is for beaver craft (you'll have to scroll down) which gave me an idea of how I could accomplish a bear craft.

No template?! Oh, no! So this most artistically challenged momma sat down and free-handed the parts for our letter B polar bear. Love is the ultimate inspiration. I'm posting a how to with a free template I asked my husband to make for me later in the week, though most of you are probably not as artistically challenged as I am and can figure it out on your own.

Do you want more alphabet ideas? Check out my ABCs and 123s board on Pinterest.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Moments to Remember: Sensory Delight

2012-01-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

This week in our Tot School we were learning about the letter B and as one of our fun activities I decided I'd let Liam try tracing it in shaving cream. I thought this would be fun to do along with a winter theme too. After we had traced the letter B, I let him go crazy with the shaving cream like any toddler would want to.

He was tentative at first, just dipping one finger in, but then he saw how fun it was and started really getting into it.

Here he is painting his arms in shaving cream. I think next time we do this I'll let him do it in the bathtub, so he can really have fun with it.

This was Liam's first time playing with shaving cream. We giggled and laughed together and I let him play until he got tired of this activity.

When I look back on this picture I want to savor his delight in this new experience. I'll remember his initial tentativeness and his eventual exuberance at this new sensory sensation.

It wasn't a perfect week in our Tot School, but this was a perfect moment that we shared.

Linked up with:

Winter Theme: Polar Bears

2012-01-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Our main focus for Tot School this week was the letter B, so I saved our polar bear winter theme as the perfect go along for it.

Learning time activities:

We started off our week with this easy polar bear shape match game found on Kid's Soup. This was really too easy for him, but I thought it would be good reinforcement of what he already knows.

Liam practiced his counting skills. He counted the bears, then I would hand him the number to put over the picture. I thought this might help his number recognition skills while working on his counting skills (from Kid's Soup).

I made number finds for him out of polar bear outlines that I found here at Making Learning Fun. It's slow going with the number recognition, but so far he can identify numbers 1 and 2 when asked to point them out in books we read.

We introduced a new concept this week: more, less or the same. He caught on pretty quickly to this, but we'll definitely look for opportunities to reinforce this concept in either everyday activities or other learning activities (from Kid's Soup).

This was his hands down favorite activity of the week. He loved this polar bear pre-writing page and did it about 10 times in a row. Drawing it, wiping it off and drawing it again. I'll definitely be looking for more of this type of activity for him to do in the future (Kid's Soup).

Play Activities:

I'm always amazed at how many color sorting activities I see on other blogs, because that isn't an activity I have an easy time getting Liam to do at all, but I got sneaky this week and told him I wanted us to make something with just his blue blocks. I sat down on the floor and started sorting them out and then he started helping me. Here is the blue structure we made together. After we'd finished building it, Liam was allowed the honor of bulldozing it with one of his trucks. I definitely think that was his favorite part.

Books and Reading:

I subscribed to National Geographic Little Kids for Liam last year, so this week we read the winter edition and learned about arctic hares, spectacled bears and icebergs. These are pretty small, but they do have activities that Liam enjoys, plus I like that it helps him learn about animals.

Our books for this week were 'The Three Snow Bears' by Jan Brett and 'Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?' by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. These were both great books, and we enjoyed reading them.

Craft:

Our polar bear on the snow under the night sky. I saw the cotton ball polar bear in quite a few places, but I decided to put him on snow under the night sky. Liam did most of this, but I helped with the cotton ball placement. You can get the outline I used to trace the polar bear from the same link as above at Making Learning Fun.

Do you want more ideas for winter activities? There are more ideas on my Winter board on Pinterest.

I'm linking up with these great sites:

Kid's Crafts: Mitten Craft

2012-01-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

We read the books "The Mitten" and "The Hat" by Jan Brett this week and did a craft to go along with it.

This year I want to focus on making a lot more of the crafts I choose for us easier for Liam to do mostly on his own. I found the idea for this craft on the DLTK website and it definitely fit the bill. The nice thing about this site is they give you an age guide next to the craft. Helps take the guesswork out of it. If you go there they have a template for you along with the complete directions for how to do the craft.

This craft took a lot of cutting and this is perfect since I've been trying to work Liam's scissor skills. I had him do the cutting that was needed for this earlier in the week, then we did this craft later on in the week.

Linking up with:

Kid's Crafts: Letter A

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Our main focus this week for Tot School was the letter A, and we did the A is for alligator craft to go along with it. . This little craft has definitely made it's way around the internet. I didn't think of doing a craft for the lowercase letter this week, but will try to work that in for future letters.

To do this craft you need:

Scissors
Glue
A googly eye
Small triangles cut from white paper for the teeth
2 sheets of construction paper. 1 green sheet and 1 other color of your choosing.

If your child is old enough you can have him do the cutting that is needed for this craft. Glue the capitol A to the paper, glue on the teeth, then add on the googly eye, and voila! your letter A is for alligator craft is complete.

Liam and I had some fun with this after it was made by picking it up and having the alligator say "chomp, chomp, chomp" while we opened and closed (moved the paper) his mouth.

One idea that I've read often is to make a book out of these alphabet crafts that you and your little one can look at when you finish them all. Sounds like a keeper to me!

Linking up with:

Winter Theme: The Mitten

2012-01-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

This week our main focus in Tot School was the letter A. You can find that post over here. But I also wanted to do a more seasonal theme to keep it interesting and fun for Liam. In addition, this gave me a theme to use for some math activities.

We checked these books out from the library and read them several times this week. I think of the two books Liam slightly favored 'The Hat'. He got quite a kick out of Hedgie the hedgehog. He liked both of them well enough I'm considering adding them to his little library of books.

M is for mitten do-a-dot page, because he loves them so much and also to help him remember what happened in the story. This came from the Making Learning Fun website.

H is for Hedgie magnet page. It's sort of funny because we bought our dogs a toy for Christmas that looks an awful lot like Hedgie. I should've taken a picture of him. Liam is the one that pointed it out to me. This page was also from the Making Learning Fun website.

This is a mitten number match game. You match the cards up by matching the number of mittens on the cards. I would say this activity was bordering on being a little too challenging for Liam. It was certainly different from other matching games we've done, but those matching games are too easy at this point. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but on the back of these pages I drew mitten shapes and made number recognition pages for numbers 1-10. I didn't get a picture of him while he was doing that though. We found this activity here on the Prekinders site.

We also did 2 crafts for our mitten theme.

Our fuzzy mitten craft.

And our cut paper mitten craft.

I really wanted to work on making the crafts more in line with Liam's ability level and I think I mainly hit the mark with these two crafts.

Do you want some more ideas for this theme? I pinned even more ideas on my Winter themed Pinterest board.

Here are links to these books on Amazon:
The Mitten

The Hat

Linking up with:

Tot School: Letter A

2012-01-08T04:00:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited to start teaching Liam the alphabet this year. This was our first week focusing on letters, and I think overall we had a lot of fun this week. There were a few bumps in the road, but for the most part I think he enjoyed it a lot.

We're using the Tot School printables found on the 1+1+1=1 Tot School section as our primary resource, with just a few other things to supplement. I think this was just about the perfect place for Liam to start. I can't thank Carisa enough for sharing this wonderful resource.

Here's what we did.

I tried to start most days by singing the ABC song, then we'd move on to sing the Every Letter Makes a Sound song for the letter a.

Coloring apples. I don't know why but this is usually the first thing I do every week. Liam can do these on his own now, so I gave him the markers and let him choose what order to color the apples in.

I got this letter A magnet page from the Homeschool Creations website. She has one for every letter of the alphabet. You can find all of her alphabet printables here.

I got this letter A find page from the KidsSoup website. He loves Little Einsteins, so he really loved the rocket theme here.

This was another activity he really enjoyed. This is from the 1+1+1=1 Tot School printables. He's stamping the letter A in both capitol and lowercase.

This cut and paste letter A also came from Homeschool Creations and can be found on her site here. I did the cutting part of this for Liam since his cutting skills aren't this advanced yet, but he did the pasting.

I had him make a letter A with toothpicks and marshmallows. It's too bad we can't use this for the whole alphabet, but I figure we can use it for the letters that don't have curves.

And finally, our completed letter A craft. You see this A is for alligator craft all over the internet. I didn't want to use foam, so we just used construction paper. He liked this guy a lot, but I had to keep telling him it was an alligator, not a crocodile.

I also did some activities with him that revolved around the books The Mittenand The Hatby Jan Brett, but I'll make a separate post for that, so this can just contain the alphabet work we did.

If you want, you can go to my alphabet board on Pinterest to get more alphabet ideas.

Linking up with:

Moments to Remember: Fun with the Sensory Bin

2012-01-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

This was a week of peaks and valleys in our little Tot School. We had some great days and some not so great days. My moment to remember for this week was taken yesterday when Liam was playing with his packing peanuts turned winter sensory bin.

When I look back and see this picture it will help me remember how much he loves trucks. How he loves having his best buddy, Scout, around for all the fun. It'll help me remember what a great imagination he has. How he laughed, giggled and had so much fun playing. Oh, I hope I never forget how sweet and musical his little laugh is.

Linking up with:

Winter Sensory Bin

2012-01-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

I was feeling awesomely uninspired to get Liam's winter sensory bin put together, but after seeing others posting about their sensory bins this week, I decided it was time to do something.

Last year I had set aside some packing peanuts specifically for this purpose, but I sort of imagined I'd have other cool stuff to go in it. Not so much. Luckily for me, my little boy is pretty easy to please.

Here it is, our super minimalist winter sensory bin. Notice the green packing peanuts? Please pretend with us that these are white just like snow. This is just the packing peanuts in a big bowl, with a scoop and 3 polar region animals from his Fisher Price Little People A-Z Learning Zoo.

I set this out for him in a bit of a rush this morning right after we got home from getting groceries. Oh boy, was he in heaven. I didn't direct his play, just put this on the floor, snapped a pic, then went to get the groceries put away.

He poured and scooped for a little while, but before too long out came the trucks. He filled up his dump truck with "snow" and dumped it out over and over. He zoomed his trucks through the snow. We picked up handfuls, threw them up in the air and pretended it was snow falling. Pretty soon the packing peanuts became popcorn and we pretended to munch on them together. More pouring and scooping from one place to another. Then it became cookie dough and we stirred it as fast as we could and watched the "flour" fly. Then daddy got in on the funny and filled a small box up with some of the packing peanuts, put in Liam's bestest buddy Scout, and pretended to give Scout a bubble bath.

These were an imaginative fun powerhouse! Anytime it was playtime this evening he was playing with these.

Of course, packing peanuts were scattered from one end of the living room to the other, but the mess was worth all the fun we had!

Linked up with:

12 Books I Plan to Read in 2012

2012-01-03T15:08:00.000-08:00

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss

One of my goals for the new year is to read at least 12 books in the coming year. I'm sort of disappointed in myself because for the last few years I really haven't been reading very much, and reading used to be an activity I really enjoyed. Of course I did have a baby, moved 3 times in the last 2 years, and also had various health issues during that time, so I might go ahead and give myself some grace. However, I think it's time to get back to reading on a regular basis.

A part of my inspiration came from Crystal at Money Saving Mom (of course). If you haven't ever read her blog I encourage you to go take a peek, because it is so much more than a blog about saving money. You'll find information on goal-setting, menu planning, financial planning, time management and the list goes on... and on. So, she posted about how she had set a goal to read 24 books in 2011 and ended up reading 60 books! She sat down and planned out the books that she wanted to read, made reading a priority, then set time aside for it.

Well, I'm not going to pretend that I think I'll be able to read 60 books this year. However, I do think that making reading books this year a priority, then setting aside the time to get it done will prompt me to read more than I would have otherwise. With this in mind I sat down this weekend and made a list of the books I would like to read this year. Most of these are parenting books, because that's my main area of interest at this season of my life.

Parents Do Make a Difference: How to Raise Kids with Solid Character, Strong Minds, and Caring Hearts (Jossey-Bass Psychology Series)

A Pebble for Your Pocket

The Family Virtues Guide: Simple Ways to Bring Out the Best in Our Children and Ourselves

Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy

I Love You Rituals

Positive Discipline for Preschoolers: For Their Early Years--Raising Children Who are Responsible, Respectful, and Resourceful (Positive Discipline Library)

Fun on the Run!: 324 Instant Family Activities

I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature

Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler

Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids

Of course, I plan to be flexible. I may choose to change a few of the books for something else as the year goes on. But right now, these are the books I'm most interested in reading.

I also plan to join Life as Mom for Booking It in 2012. This is an online book club, and they do have a list of recommended reads, but you don't have to read the suggested books. You can also just link up and share what you've been reading for the last month. I added 'One Bite at a Time' to my book list after viewing the book list for this year. I'm also thinking of adding in some books from her list of books read for 2011.

What about you? Do you have any particular books you plan to read in the next year?

12 Goals for 2012

2012-01-03T12:39:00.000-08:00

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

~ C.S. Lewis

This is the time of year when people start thinking about things they want to change in their lives and how they can go about accomplishing these things. After reading the goal-setting posts from Crystal at Money Saving Mom over the last few weeks I've been inspired, for the first time in quite a few years, to set some goals for the coming year.

Personal Goals:

1. Continue exercising 4 days a week for 30 minutes.
2. Lose 20 pounds.
3. Read at least 12 books this year.

Family:

4. Implement a date night once a month with my husband.
5. Do a special activity together as a family at least once a month.
6. Continue making healthy, nutritious (as unprocessed as I can manage) food for our family. Work on adding in more vegetables to our meals.

Home:

7. Continue with my Flylady routine and add 6 new habits to it this year.

Learning Time/Liam:

8. Potty train Liam this year.
9. Include activities that will help Liam learn the alphabet during our learning time activities.
10. Teach Liam to count to 20 and to recognize numbers 1-20.
11. Continue to spend time reading with Liam every day.
12. Start a college fund for Liam.

Although this list certainly doesn't include everything I want to accomplish this year, it is a good start and will help me get started off on the right foot and headed in the right direction.

Tot School: Our Week Without a Theme

2012-01-01T04:00:00.001-08:00

Liam is 31 months old.

I didn't have a theme in mind for this week's Tot School. I kept it low key very intentionally. I wanted to keep the activity schedule in place while at the same time not doing much.

I plan to start teaching Liam the alphabet this year, so starting next week we'll start using the Tot School printables available on 1+1+1=1 (with a few other things to supplement). I like her printables because they are very printer friendly for the most part. In some of her tot school posts she talks about how she made things a certain way to minimize the amount of printer ink used, and I am very grateful to her for doing that. We've always had a printer around the house, but we really only used it occasionally before I started using it for doing these activities with Liam, so I'm only now realizing what an expense printer ink can be.

When I was working on making my letter A printables for the upcoming month I got a little overzealous and printed out more pages than I thought was practical for Liam to really accomplish, so I used some of those for this week.

This is an A is for alligator page I got from Making Learning Fun.

A tracing page from 1+1+1=1.

Reinforcing his color recognition. He does these worksheets on his own for the most part now.

I found this page in one of his coloring books and I'm hoping this type of activity will help with his number recognition as well as reinforce his color recognition. This page came like this, but you can very easily turn any simple coloring page into a color by number page. I'm planning to keep it simple and use only a few numbers at a time to start, just like on this page.

We bought him the Don't Break the Ice game for Christmas. We had a couple of play sessions with this this week. This was a good opportunity to teach Liam about taking turns and waiting for his turn. This isn't a skill that comes naturally when you don't have any siblings. Well, I guess it doesn't really come naturally then either, but he doesn't have a lot of chances to practice it.

I got this foam puzzle from the Dollar Tree. One of the things I like about it is how open-ended it is. You can put it together any old way you want. I think that contributed to Liam taking it apart and putting it together numerous times before he got bored of it. Plus it has Cars characters on it, so that may have helped too.

This last activity was an idea I got on Pinterest. I admit that when I saw this on Pinterest I immediately thought I was looking at a picture of toothpicks and marshmallows and I thought how ingenious! Well, when I finally followed the link (which was after we did this activity) I saw it was actually toothpicks and styrofoam balls. Anyway, we did this with toothpicks and marshmallows. It was a little difficult for Liam, but I think if he were presented with the same activity a second time it would be easier for him, so we'll probably do this again in the future. The side benefit is it's better for the environment than styrofoam and can also be a little treat when you are finished with the marshmallows.

I don't think you can see this very well on the newspaper, but we made a square, triangle, diamond and pentagon with our materials. I had Liam count all the marshmallows to start. Then he counted how many marshmallows were used for each individual structure, so he worked shapes and counting with this activity.

There you have it, our week of rather randomly slapped together activities. That's what happens when I don't have a theme.

Wishing a very Happy New Year to everyone!

Linking up with:

Moments to Remember: Letter A

2011-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

First of all, I wanted to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! It's been such a wonderful holiday here with lots of playing, snuggling and enjoying spending time together. My husband had the whole week off with us. It's been so nice having him home all week.

I did just a few days of Tot School this week. I didn't want Liam getting too far out of the swing of things, figuring it would be that much harder to get him back into it if we took too long of a break.

My plans are to start using the Tot School Printables available from 1+1+1=1 to start teaching Liam his alphabet this year (along with a few supplements). So part of my time the last two weeks has been spent getting his papers ready for the next month. While I was doing this I got a little overzealous with my letter A printables, so I used some of those for our learning time this week.

Here is a picture of his very first letter A. This was his first try and I can't believe what a great job he did. I was such a proud mommy when I saw this I think my smile just about split my face in two. This is going in mommy's file of papers to save for sure.

Then he was doing this do-a-dot page very carefully and making sure to get it all colored in. At the end, he picked it up and handed it to me saying "Here, mommy. I made this for you." Aww! My mommy heart totally melted.

These are now both proudly displayed on my refrigerator and will be going in my keeper file when I'm finished displaying them.

Tot School: Christmas Week

2011-12-26T18:30:00.000-08:00

Liam is 31 months old.

Last week was very abbreviated for Tot School activities. The only activities we did were on Monday, then the rest of the week we kicked back, relaxed, snuggled and played.

Our activities on Monday included 'The Very Hungry Reindeer' printable from Playing With Words 365. This was a great activity that worked a variety of skills. First we read the book together, then we went to the table and did the story retelling activity by pasting in the pictures in the appropriate places. I think this was one of Liam's favorite Christmas books. We read it quite a few times.

We also did most of the pages from the Reindeer Mini Tot Book I made for him.

Here he is doing the coloring page.

Dot marker page.

Magnet page.

We had all this done in about an hour, and the rest of the week was very lax. I let Liam watch every Christmas special I could find. We read so many Christmas stories Liam was sick of them. We made Christmas cookies and decorated them.

We are back to doing Tot School activities this week, but it's still going to be pretty abbreviated. Just a few activities each day.

His Christmas presents included quite a few toys that I would consider learning toys, but the one that had the biggest learning time tie in was the Fisher Price Little People A-Z Learning Zoo. I was so excited to get this for him! Honestly, I think I was more excited for Christmas to come than he was.

We also got him the Fisher Price Little People Animal Sounds Farm and several puzzle sets from Melissa & Doug. But he got plenty of toys that were intended for just good playing fun too, like trucks, airplanes, puppets and musical instruments. We've had several family jam sessions already, with the animal puppets playing!

Hope everyone had an equally enjoyable Christmas week!

Linking up with:

Reindeer Mini Tot Book Printable (FREE!) and Christmas Break

2011-12-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

I put together a little mini tot book last night to go along with the reindeer theme I'm doing with Liam this week. I was inspired to do a reindeer theme by The Very Hungry Reindeer Mini Book put together by Katie at Playing With Words 365. I was planning to use her mini book this week, and these are just some little side activities I thought Liam would enjoy doing.

Included in the mini tot book:

Reindeer colors page
Reindeer magnet page
Reindeer do-a-dot page
Reindeer puzzles

I have to thank my husband for his help with the magnet page and the do-a-dot page, because those pages were beyond my graphic abilities. I was trying to have him show me how to do it, but then we both figured it would be easiest and quickest if he just did them for me. Thanks, hon!

Click the picture below to get your copy. If you want to share this with someone else please link directly to my site, not the document. Hope you enjoy doing these with your tots!

Here are some go along activities if you want some ideas:

Toys In the Dryer shows you how to make Magic Reindeer Food.

Craft Ideas from Pinterest:

Source: mamamiasheart2heart.com via Jenny (Get 'Er Done, Momma!) on Pinterest

Source: mommygaga.com via Jenny (Get 'Er Done, Momma!) on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Jenny (Get 'Er Done, Momma!) on Pinterest

Taking a bloggy break from now until the New Year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Linking up with:

Tot School: Gingerbread Theme

2011-12-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

Things went a little more smoothly for us this week during our learning time.

Our main theme for tot school this week was the gingerbread man. I tried to tailor most of our activities to have a gingerbread twist, but we did a few miscellaneous activities too.

Books:
Of course we read several books this week, but I based our theme around 'The Gingerbread Man.' Liam seemed to enjoy this book a lot.

Worksheets:

Most of our worksheets this week came from either Making Learning Fun or 2 Teaching Mommies. Thanks so much to these ladies for providing so many wonderful resources!

Here he is coloring a gingerbread man coloring page. He seems to enjoy coloring the most when I color with him, so I participate to make it more enjoyable for him. Plus, I still really enjoy coloring too.

I had trouble finding gingerbread man printables that were level appropriate for Liam, so I ended up making some myself. I wanted to incorporate as many skills as I could with this activity, so it included colors, shapes, number recognition, counting and matching.

First I laid out the shapes and asked him to find the yellow circle, purple square, etc. Then I placed the gingerbread men in front of him in numerical order. I pointed out the number on each man, had him count the buttons on the man, and then match up the shape of the buttons with the bigger shape.

Then, inspired by the success with these, I cut out more gingerbread men and made a number find game for him. This was more of a hit than I thought it would be. Liam seemed to enjoy this activity quite a bit.

Of course we haven't really done a theme unless we throw in some magnet pages.

Or do-a-dot pages. He loves these so much I always include some in our learning activities for the week. I noticed this week that he seemed to mainly color in just the picture, and he is normally all over.

Sensory Activity:

I also made some gingerbread cloud dough for him as a sort of sensory activity. I found this idea on the What's Fun Today? blog. I love her blog and I always get a lot of inspiration when I visit her site.

I have to say that we had never made or had any exposure to cloud dough before so I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would be like playdough, but not so much. The texture when you put your hand inside it is sort of cloud-like I guess. It's feels sort of soft and fluffy. Anyway, Liam had a lot of fun with this and played with it several times during the week.

Here he had just taken a bite and learned, although it smells wonderful, it doesn't taste that great.

A few miscellaneous non-gingerbread activities we did.

We did a few Christmas puzzles from the 2 Teaching Mommies pack. Unfortunately Liam isn't feeling the puzzle love lately, so I might leave these out for a while.

I let him practice using his scissors several times this week. Fortunately he does enjoy this activity.

Water play. He does this almost every night while my husband and I are making dinner. This particular night I had given him some pasta shells to play with. He loved it!

Overall I think Liam had a lot of fun learning this week.

Linking up with:

Moments to Remember: The Gentler Side

2011-12-17T09:07:00.001-08:00

I often comment to my husband that Liam is "all boy." He loves to climb, play with his trucks and trains, run and just generally be a bit rough and tumble. But this week I got to see a gentler side of him.

He asked for his rabbit (this bunny was a present from his grandmother) to sit in his highchair at the dinner table with us. He wanted us to get a cup for rabbit so he could have a drink, and shared bits of his food with rabbit throughout the meal.

The following evening he did the same thing and after dinner got his little stuffed animal, Scout, in on the fun. He put both in chairs and pretended to feed them applesauce and yogurt form some plastic containers I'd saved for him to play with.

And the next day while he was playing in his room he asked for some bowls and a cup. He put blocks in the bowls as "food" and said he was feeding his babies.

Good moments to remember when I'm telling him to stop chasing the dogs for the 10th (what feels like the 100th) time in a day!

Linking up with:

Winter: Snowman Printables (FREE!)

2011-12-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to plan a winter snowman theme for Liam, so I wanted to share some (free) printables I made to go along with my theme.

I'm not making an entire pack because I plan to use this mainly to supplement other printables I'll be using. Also, this is my first time attempting to make any printables so I'm starting off small so I don't get too overwhelmed.

The first printable is just a snowman colors printable for your kiddos to color. You can get this printable here or click on the picture below to get your copy.

This next printable is for helping with number recognition. The PDF includes pages for numbers 1-10. I'm sure you can be creative with this, but I plan to have Liam use this like a letter or word find game. He'll search for the number printed on the snowman's hat and use the bingo dauber to highlight it on the snowman's belly when he sees it. I also plan to encourage him to say the number as he finds each one. Click here to get this printable or click the image below.

I made a similar activity for Liam this week for our gingerbread theme, but I made it by hand. He really enjoyed it so I decided to make up a printable that he could use for our upcoming winter theme.

I hope you enjoy these, or that someone out there finds them useful. If you have any problems with them please let me know in the comments below. If you'd like to share these printables with others please be sure to link directly to my site, and not to the file.

Have a great weekend!

Linked up with:

Kid's Crafts: Simple Christmas Crafts

2011-12-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

I made a bit of an effort to find ideas for some simpler craft ideas this week that I could do with Liam. Looking back in my pictures it looks as if the crafts got easier and easier as the week moved on. Think that was because mommy was getting worn out.

This first craft was from an idea I found on Pinterest and it was super easy. It's a Christmas wreath you make from torn up construction paper.

I started this craft after Liam had woke up from his nap. He woke up a little discombobulated and didn't feel much like participating until we had gotten things underway quite a bit. We started by ripping up the green construction paper. I thought he would really enjoy that part of it, but due to his mood, not so much.

I cut the middle out of a paper plate and used the outer ring to form our wreath. I then applied glue liberally to the ring and we put the ripped up construction paper on it. Liam did this part and he continued until there was at least one piece of paper all along the outer edge.

I could have stopped with that but I then decided to go a little crazy and kept on adding more and more paper to the wreath and then cut out red circles from construction paper and glued them on. I finished this up while Liam played with his Christmas sensory bin.

It's now hanging on the wall as one of our Christmas decorations!

Then on to our foam Christmas tree craft. I used a foam Christmas tree from Dollar Tree (part of an 8-pack), and foam Christmas stickers from the Dollar Tree as well. I had Liam place the ornaments on the tree, then let him use glitter glue to add a sparkly effect. He loves playing with glitter glue.

Our last craft was this candy cane made from construction paper and cotton balls. I cut out the candy cane shape and put glue on it in strips and Liam put on the cotton balls. I think this took less than 5 minutes.

I hope these ideas provide some inspiration to someone like so many others have done for me.

Linking up with:

Kid's Crafts: Santa Craft

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

We read the books 'How Santa Got His Job' and 'How Santa Lost His Job' this week, so I wanted to do a craft to go along with it.

I got the idea and the template for this craft on the Confessions of a Homeschooler website. I almost always like to have a template, because I am not the greatest at drawing. My art skills are pretty much nil.

I cut out all the parts for Liam onto construction paper. To help Liam see how the picture would come together I placed all the parts where they should go before we glued them on. I started doing this recently and I think it helps him get a better understanding of what our finished craft is going to look like.

Once we had done that I had Liam start putting glue on each of the pieces, then I'd help him place them.

Once we got the picture pretty much assembled it was time for the cotton balls. I had to put the glue on the cotton balls for Liam because my bottle of glue is very difficult to get glue out of for some reason, then he placed the cotton balls on Santa. Our finished craft looked like this.

Although this craft was a little too difficult for Liam to do on his own at 30 months old, he got through it with my assistance. And I have a cute picture of Santa to decorate our home with.

Weekly Goals

2011-12-12T08:59:00.001-08:00

This week was semi-productive. I ended up accomplishing more of my goals than I thought I had, but overall I don't feel like I ended up getting much accomplished. I'm hoping to do better this week. Or maybe I should remember it's the holidays and pare down my expectations?

Last Week's Goals:

~~1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.~~

2. Stick to the meal plan.

3. ~~Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)~~

4. Vacuum.

~~5. Dust the house.~~

6. ~~Start working on projects sitting on my desk.~~ (Clip coupons from several weeks of papers, Tot school worksheets, organizing recipes, etc.) I did start working on these goals, but I have a lot left to do.

~~7. Continue reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.' - three chapters.~~ This is being removed from the list, not because I accomplished it, but because I had to return the book to the library. Couldn't renew it because someone else had it on reserve. Seems to be a very popular book!
Start reading 'Parents Do Make a Difference' - two chapters.

8. Must clean up my desk. My desk does look better, but I still have a lot to do.

~~9. Work on December Tot School worksheets, crafts, etc~~.

~~10. More Christmas crafts with Liam. Decorate the house for Christmas more.~~

~~11. Do a special Christmas activity with Liam. (See Christmas lights, Fairytale Town, Go Downtown and see the light show, etc.)~~ We took Liam to see Santa.

This Week's Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.

2. Stick to the meal plan.

3. Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)

4. Vacuum.

5. Clip coupons.

6. Keep working on getting my desk cleaned up and organized.

7. Start planning next month's Tot School activities. Gather ideas, prepare worksheets and crafts, etc.

8. Start reading 'Parents Do Make a Difference' - two chapters.

9. More fun Christmas crafts and activities with Liam.

10. Do a special Christmas activity as a family. (See Christmas lights, Fairytale Town or Go Downtown to see the light show)

11. Plan blog posts for next week.

Linked up with:

Money Saving Mom

Tot School: Continuing Christmas Theme

2011-12-11T10:17:00.001-08:00

Liam is 29 months old.

We had a somewhat bumpy week in Tot School this week. I suppose it's normal at this age, but everything this week was either "No!" or "I don't want it!" even when it was something he actually wanted to do.

I have to share this picture I got of him, which to me epitomizes his attitude for the week. Oh, the look on his face!

Worksheets:

Our worksheet this week came from 2 Teaching Mommies and Making Learning Fun.

Liam went crazy with his Do-A-Dot pages this week. He dotted the second page so much it actually started to tear some, but he was happy doing it, so I let him have fun with it.

I realized we hadn't done any pre-writing pages last week, so I made sure to include those this week.

I included some puzzles to do as usual. On Monday he happily put puzzles together, but later in the week not so much.

This was a new style of worksheet for us. He had to draw a line between matching pairs of items. He didn't understand how to do this at first. So I showed him step-by-step what to do. I first had him find the matching pair, then I traced the line between the two items with my finger, had him trace the line with his finger, then finally draw the line on the paper. He did very well when we followed this pattern.

Other learning activities:

I got these foam stickers from the Dollar Tree. We did sorting, counting and worked on patterns with them. He did ok with the sorting and counting, but I'm not sure that he understood the patterning. I'd definitely take any tips for how to present patterning activities if anyone has them.

I tried letting him use his scissors again this week. This started out as a scissors practice worksheet, and I quickly became aware he was nowhere near ready for that, so I just let him cut the paper randomly. It was actually painful for me to watch him try to cut with these scissors.

These are the ultra-safe scissors. They are difficult even for me to use because they don't open all the way, however I realize this is a safety feature. It doesn't make it any easier on Liam though.

We also had several play sessions with his sensory bin this week. Sorting, counting, tonging, pouring. He actually enjoyed playing the I-spy game with me this week.

Linking up with:

Moments to Remember: Holiday Fun

2011-12-10T11:56:00.001-08:00

It was a challenging week at our house. The type of week described in the link-ups description:

"The week may have been tough, there may have been more bumps than smiles, but in the end these are the moments that keep us going, the ones we need to remember."

However, this morning we did manage to have a good time with some fun holiday activities. First we made salt dough ornaments, a popular activity this time of year. Then we made a sweet holiday treat, the ice cream cone Christmas treats you see posted all over and on Pinterest.

Here is a picture of Liam and Daddy making their cones. The table was still a mess from making the salt dough ornaments, so please excuse the mess.

And a picture of Liam taking his first bite. Oh so cute!

Think this will become one of our family's holiday traditions in the year's to come. We all smiled, laughed and had a good time.

Linked up with:

Weekly Meal Plan

2011-12-09T16:44:00.001-08:00

I did decent at sticking to my meal plan last week, however, it was not well received. It's just unfortunate that my husband does not like food that has been prepared in the crockpot overly much. So this week I'm trying to plan some easy meals that do not use the crockpot.

Chicken & Dumplings - I'm sort of cobbling together my own recipe out of two other recipes I found online.

Fire Roasted Sausage and Beef Rigatoni (Rachael Ray)

Tacos

Mesquite Chicken

Pizza

Stuffed Pasta Shells

Chicken Tetrazzini (Rachael Ray)

Need more ideas? Over 300 meal plans each week at Orgjunkie.com

Thankful Thursday

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Inspired by reading the blog by the author of the book One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp, I've decided to start intentionally recognizing the things in my life I'm thankful for. My goal is to keep this up till I get to one thousand.

38. Each new day. Each new day an opportunity to try to be my best me.

39. Nap time. By this I mean my little boy's nap time. I think any woman who has been the mother of a toddler will know exactly how I feel.

40. Quality time. A chance to talk and spend some quality time with my husband.

41. Solutions. Thankful I found a solution I've been looking for for a while

42. Christmas. I love this time of year. I'm enjoying it even more now that I have a little one who helps me see things with renewed wonder.

Kid's Crafts: Christmas Tree Shape Crafts

2011-12-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

We did crafts this week to go along with our Tot School theme of Christmas Trees. My goal this week was to make our crafts a little more simple with the hopes that Liam would be able to participate in and do more of the crafts on his own.

These were all pretty much shape crafts and I had never realized how well a Christmas tree would lend itself to this. I think I saw a shape craft for all the basic shapes except the square, and I can envision a shape craft for that too.

I had wanted to do 5 different shape trees, but I only got around to doing 3 of them.

Our first Christmas Tree was done with triangles. You can see the post for that craft here. This is a picture of the finished craft.

Here is our heart Christmas tree shape craft. I got the idea for this from the Learning Ideas K-8 blog.

I was impressed with how Liam was willing to do the gluing himself on all of these crafts. He only needed assistance from time to time when things would stick to him instead of the paper.

I applied glue at the bottom of each heart and then let Liam shake on some salt so we could have "snow" on our Christmas tree. He really liked this part. He's been wanting to turn that salt shaker upside down and go crazy for a while now.

This is our finished Heart Christmas tree. I think this one is my favorite of the 3 we did.

Our last craft was a rectangle Christmas shape craft, also known as the longest to smallest Christmas tree craft. I've seen this one around the internet a lot, so I'm sure most of you are familiar with it. For whatever reason I didn't get a picture of the finished craft, but here it is in progress. I found this craft while browsing on Pinterest, but the original post is here.

If you want more inspiration for Christmas tree shape crafts here are some more I found on Pinterest.

Here is a Christmas tree made with ovals found on Making Learning Fun.

A star Christmas tree shape craft. It takes minds more creative than mine to come up with this, folks!

Source: allkidsnetwork.com via Jenny (Get 'Er Done, Momma!) on Pinterest

An advent calendar or just a circle Christmas tree shape craft.

Source: mama-jenn.blogspot.com via Jenny (Get 'Er Done, Momma!) on Pinterest

Linked up with:

Weekly Goals

2011-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't end up accomplishing many of my goals last week. I felt behind from the start of the week and just never seemed to catch up. I think it's because the pile on my desk is starting to become a little bit too much. I feel a little overwhelmed just sitting there.

Last Week's Goals:

~~1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.~~ Back on track with this goal this week.

2. ~~Stick to our meal plan.~~

3. ~~Keep up FlyLady routine~~. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.) I kept up with my routine, but due to overflow on my desk one of my other hotspots is piling up again.

4. Reorganize and rewrap Halloween decorations.

5. Dust remaining rooms in the house. I didn't do this, but I did some other important household chores.

6. Work on projects sitting on my desk. (Clip coupons from several weeks of papers, Tot school worksheets, organizing recipes, etc.) All I did was work on Tot School papers.

7. Continue reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.'

8. Try to finish up plans for December Tot School, print out worksheets, organize crafts, etc.

9. ~~Plan blog posts for next week.~~

10. ~~Do some Christmas crafts with Liam / decorate the house for Christmas some more.~~

This Week's Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.

2. Stick to the meal plan.

3. Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)

4. Vacuum.

5. Dust the house.

6. Start working on projects sitting on my desk. (Clip coupons from several weeks of papers, Tot school worksheets, organizing recipes, etc.)

7. Continue reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.' - three chapters.
Start reading 'Parents Do Make a Difference' - two chapters.

8. Must clean up my desk.

9. Work on December Tot School worksheets, crafts, etc.

10. More Christmas crafts with Liam. Decorate the house for Christmas more.

11. Do a special Christmas activity with Liam. (See Christmas lights, Fairytale Town, Go Downtown and see the light show, etc.)

Linked up with:

Money Saving Mom

Tot School: Christmas Trees

2011-12-04T08:20:00.001-08:00

We had a Christmas tree theme for Tot School this week in honor of having put up our Christmas tree last weekend.

We used worksheets from the 2 Teaching Mommies Christmas Trees pack and also some Christmas worksheets from Making Learning Fun

Worksheets:

Here he is working on coloring his presents. I love the look on his face. He was putting a lot of effort into it.

This is another worksheet to enforce color recognition. He had to put the correct color pompoms on the Christmas tree.

Here he would count the dots on the Christmas tree, put on the same number of pompoms and circle the correct number. He doesn't recognize his numbers yet, so I had to help with that part.

Playdough mat for T is for Christmas tree.

Other Activities:

Christmas puzzles of course. I printed out a variety of Christmas Puzzles from Activity Village then cut them up in different ways.

I got an 8 pack of foam Christmas trees from the dollar store, so I used a hole punch around the edges on one of them and used it for this lacing activity. Liam did pretty good with this.

A peg game I found at the dollar store. He and I didn't really it play it together, but he did have fun putting the little pegs in and then dumping them out and doing it all over again. I figured this was good for his fine motor skills.

I bought Liam this little Christmas tree sticker activity book online at Amazon.com. He loves stickers so this was a good activity for him. Worked on fine motor, plus we were able to build his vocabulary some since it included some things he wasn't familiar with.

We also played with our Christmas sensory bin some. I just didn't get any pictures of us playing with it. I tried to do an I-spy type of activity with the sensory bin by having him try to find what I would call out, but he didn't seem super interested in that. Maybe another day.

There will be a separate post with our craft activities later in the week.

Linked up with:

Weekly Meal Plan: Dec 3rd - Dec 9th

2011-12-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

I wanted to find more crockpot recipes to use this week, so I searched online and found a couple in addition to one of my favorite Rachael Ray recipes.

Hamburgers and Fries

Crockpot Chicken Cacciatore

Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings

No Peeking Peking Chicken (crockpot) from Rachael Ray

Easy Rice Casserole from Kalyn's Kitchen

New Orleans Red Beans 'N Rice from Rachael Ray

Happy cooking!

Moments to Remember : Week of Nov 27th

2011-12-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

Liam was getting over being sick this week and so a little more on the cuddly side, which is unusual for him.

I got him this My Pal Scout by LeapFrog when he was 6 months old. He didn't really do much with it at that point, but since he's turned two he's actually started playing with his stuffed animals. He brought Scout out into our living room and snuggled with him in the mornings this week, which isn't something he's done before. I thought this picture was so adorable.

He also insisted on having Scout at the table during our learning time sessions.

Occasionally he would press Scout's paw and Scout would say "Wanna play?" to which Liam would answer "After learning time, Scout." So precious and definitely something I hope to remember.

Our Christmas Sensory Bin

2011-12-02T13:22:00.001-08:00

I was so excited to make Liam's Christmas sensory bin that I've been collecting stuff for the last month to put in it. I'm going to show it to him today, so we'll see how he likes it.

I got most of the items in the bin from Dollar Tree. Here is what's in it:

Candy Canes
Miniature present ornaments
Miniature ball ornaments - Target $1 aisle
Miniature bows - I got these at Wal-Mart for $1.25 I think.
Christmas themed erasers
green, red and white pom poms
A few jingle bells

I'm considering buying a little Christmas tree from the Dollar store or something so Liam can decorate it with his ornaments, put presents underneath it, etc. I think that would be so cute!

Linked up with:

Thankful Thursday

2011-12-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

Inspired by reading the blog by the author of the book One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp, I've decided to start intentionally recognizing the things in my life I'm thankful for. My goal is to keep this up till I get to one thousand.

33. Being prepared. You have no idea how thankful I am that I already have all my Christmas shopping done and I don't need to try to take care of that now. I would love to avoid the stores altogether at this time of year, but we do still have to eat.

34. 5 minutes to relax. You mommies out there know how I feel.

35. Christmas carols. Something about December 1st rolling around that puts me in the mood to sing Christmas carols and I don't seem to get out of the mood until January.

36. Our Christmas tree. My husband and I have had the same tree for the last 15 years. We got it our first Christmas together the year we got married. It's old, and some of the branches are starting to be loose, but it has a nostalgia to it.

37. Hot showers. The water relaxes you and your cares melt right down the drain.

Kid's Crafts: Triangle Shape Christmas Tree

2011-11-29T18:01:00.001-08:00

We put up our Christmas tree this weekend and in honor of that I decided we should have a Christmas theme for our Tot School week and crafts.

I have mostly easy crafts planned since Liam is only 30 months old. I'm hoping he'll be able to do the majority of these crafts by himself, with only a little assistance from me. We did our first craft yesterday, and so far so good.

This is just a simple shape tree made from triangles. I put the triangles in front of Liam, then had him put them in order from biggest to smallest. I explained we'd be putting them on our paper in the same order. Then I lined them up on the paper to show him what it would look like.

I handed him the glue stick and let him go to town. Much to my surprise he took the glue stick from me and did an awesome job of spreading the glue on the triangles. I only had to help him with the smallest of them.

To decorate his Christmas tree I gave him a small page of stickers and had him place them on the tree. He did a good job with this and I only reminded him once or twice to try to keep his stickers on the tree, not all over.

Here is his finish Christmas tree. I even had him put a little star at the top. He was so proud when he had finished with it; he told me he was going to show it to daddy when he got home.

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Thankful Thursday (The Monday Edition)

2011-11-28T04:00:00.001-08:00

26. Time. My husband had Thanksgiving and the day after off from work, so we were able to get some nice quality time together as a family. I'm thankful for the extra time we had with him this week.

27. Traditions. I'm thankful for the chance to create fun and hopefully memorable traditions for us to do as a family.

28. Family. I'm thankful for my family.

29. Enough. I'm thankful we have enough. Enough to pay our bills, enough to eat, enough to afford a place to live, enough love, enough laughter, and enough sadness to keep us mindful of the good.

30. Everyday beauty. The leaves are finally turning out here in Sacramento and when you step outside you are struck by the simple beauty of it all.

31. Life. Enough said.

32. Transportation. We have two cars that run well and are paid for.

Weekly Goals, Nov 27th - Dec 3rd

2011-11-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

Last Week's Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week. This isn't a goal I normally allow myself to slide on. I managed to exercise 3 days of the week. The only reason I didn't make it the 4 days I normally do is because our little boy got sick over the weekend and I had to get up with him several nights in a row. Life does happen. I'll just make sure I get this goal finished earlier in the week this time.

2. Stick to our meal plan. I'm starting to notice a trend here.

3. ~~Deeper clean in the bathroom~~ and kitchen.

4. Keep up FlyLady routine. ~~Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)~~ I let my FlyLady routine slide a bit over the holiday weekend. I'm back on track this week though.

5. ~~Two loads of laundry each day this week until I get caught up~~.

6. ~~Dust one room in the house~~

7.~~Start reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate." - two chapters?~~ Read five chapters.

8. ~~Start collating ideas for December Tot School worksheets, crafts and activities~~.

9. ~~Have a relaxing and Happy Thanksgiving with my husband and little boy.~~

10. ~~Put up Christmas tree.~~

This Week's Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.

2. Stick to our meal plan.

3. Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)

4. Reorganize and rewrap Halloween decorations.

5. Dust remaining rooms in the house.

6. Work on projects sitting on my desk. (Clip coupons from several weeks of papers, Tot school worksheets, organizing recipes, etc.)

7. Continue reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.'

8. Try to finish up plans for December Tot School, print out worksheets, organize crafts, etc.

9. Plan blog posts for next week.

10. Do some Christmas crafts with Liam / decorate the house for Christmas some more.

Linked up with:

Money Saving Mom

Tot School: Thanksgiving, Part 2

2011-11-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

We kept up our Thanksgiving theme this week. We kept it low key with only two of our days including any official learning time activities.

Most of our worksheets this week came from Our Little Monkeys Thanksgiving Tot Pack, 2 Teaching Mommies Thanksgiving or Turkey Pack, and 1+1+1=1 Thanksgiving pack. I just chose worksheets from each pack that I felt were at his level of ability.

These pictures were taken Monday afternoon after he woke up from his nap and we'd snuggled on the couch with our puppies for a while.

"What's Different?" worksheet. The top line of this pack was a tricky one for him, because he didn't really understand that the upside down turkey was different from the others, but the rest of it was easy peasy.

We haven't done a lot of work with patterns, but when I do give him a worksheet like this he seems to do ok with it.

He's doing great with these. I find it helps him if I talk him through the line a bit before he tries it. I trace my finger over the line and say, "up, down, up down" or "across, up, across, down, across."

He asked to do the sticker page after we'd done the other activities. Sometimes he will place one of the stickers quite off from where it is supposed to go because he wants to put another sticker on the page. He's such a silly little monkey at times.

Play Time:

The rest of our week was filled with either holiday, play or kick back and relax activities.

The blocks got a lot of use this week. One day we all had a play session on the floor and made a bunch of different kinds of bridges. Liam enjoyed walking his man over them and trying to drive his trucks across these.

Daddy built him a rainbow and Liam enjoyed driving his trucks and walking his toy men underneath it.

His Daddy also built him a castle and they had fun playing with this for a while. Then he and I created a little Christmas tree farm and played with that for a while. You can see the building blocks of the Christmas tree farm in this picture. Isn't it wonderful to use your imagination?

One of his Christmas presents came in this box and he saw it on our bed getting ready to be thrown out. What is it about packing peanuts that kids get such a kick out of? This held his attention for over 30 minutes. I thought of it as a rather large sensory experience for him and decided to save the packing peanuts for a winter sensory bin.

I cut out the pieces for a felt turkey and we used it for numerous activities such as counting, patterning, color sorting, etc. It's funny how much you can get from one simple little thing.

A numbered (from 1-10 on the front and 11-20 on the back) snake shape puzzle I got from the dollar bin at Target. This is a challenging puzzle for him since you have to have decent motor skills to get the pieces together. I helped him with it and showed him how to slide the pieces together, then he would do it after me.

Linking up with:

Weekly Meal Plan, Nov 26th - Dec 1st

2011-11-26T18:39:00.001-08:00

Hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and lots of good food to eat. Our little home consists of only the 3 of us (my hubby, our little boy and me), so we always plan our Thanksgiving menu with fairly normal sized portions of food. That way we don't have tons of leftovers left to use up. That's the reason you won't find any recipes or ideas for using up your Thanksgiving leftovers here.

But I do have my normal selection of somewhat easy meals planned this week.

Leftover Crockpot Chili (from Kalyn's Kitchen) - I made this recipe last week and we really enjoyed it, even my husband who is quite the picky eater. It made a large batch by our standards. We got two dinners out of it and several lunches too.

Enchiladas

Spaghetti

Crockpot Salsa Pork Chops (from Kalyn's Kitchen)

Hamburgers and Fries

Turkey Shepherd's Pie (from Sweet Pea's Kitchen)

Need more meal plan ideas? Over 300 meal plans each week at OrgJunkie.com.

Moments to Remember: Week of Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T16:04:00.001-08:00

Here are a few special moments from our week:

Snuggled up under a blanky on the couch with our puppies close by. You can't take your puppy to school.

This was one of our weekly craft time activities that turned out to be a bit of a flop. When we were finished making it I took Liam to the bathroom so he could see himself with the headband on. As soon as I lifted him up to show him how he looked he started crying and refused to wear the headband. Later on, I put it on my head so he could see that it didn't hurt me when I had the headband on. A bit later he came over and took the headband off my head and put it on his big stuffed bunny rabbit's head. Definitely a moment to remember.

One of my favorite caught moments of the week. Liam sitting on his daddy's lap coloring our family turkey together. This was planned as part of our Thanksgiving themed activities and I planned it for a weekend day so daddy could be involved. Nothing touches my heart as much as a picture of my two guys together.

Head over to the Moments to Remember link-up to see more memorable moments.

Thanksgiving Crafts

2011-11-23T06:48:00.001-08:00

We've been doing Thanksgiving crafts around here, like everyone else I'm sure. I didn't get to every craft I wanted to, but we do still have some time and there is always next year.

We started off doing these Pilgrim and Indian shape crafts. I got the Indian shape craft template from the 2 Teaching Mommies Thanksgiving pack. The Pilgrim shape craft idea was also found on 2 Teaching Mommies.

I love shape crafts. They are good for teaching shapes of course, but also colors and fine motor control.Right now Liam still doesn't like the feel of the stickiness of the glue, so he usually only gets involved in about 1/3 of what's done, but I think he still gets some benefit from the activity.

Here is a picture of our completed shape crafts. We talked about the Pilgrims and Indians so much this week that he can identify a Pilgrim when shown one. I don't think he really understands about Indians yet though.

I cut out this felt turkey for Liam and then we played with it several different ways. First we named the colors of the feathers, counted them, sorted out different colored feathers and worked on patterning.

Occasionally I like to take the easy way out and have someone else do all the cutting and stuff for me. This was a kit I got at Michael's for $2. He helped take the back off of the different parts, then helped place the feathers on the turkey. Here he is working on his foam turkey craft

Here's our finished craft.

I got this big drawing of a turkey from our weekend newspaper. They were having a contest on the best decorated turkey and included this in the paper for people to complete. Well, we didn't participate in the contest, but I had the idea for us to color and decorate the turkey as a family project. So this weekend we sat down together as a family to work on it. I was taking breaks from time to take pictures obviously.

Here's our completed turkey. I think he looks a bit garish with all the brightly colored turkey feathers, but cute in a way too. We hung him up next to our dinner table.

I thought this last craft would be cute. We made an Indian headband together. It was a very simple craft and took about 5 minutes to make, and since I have some American Indian heritage I thought it would be sort of neat.

Liam helped me put it together, then I put it on his head and took him into the bathroom so he could see it. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror though he started to ball and refused to wear it. I'm not sure what the problem was, but he was pretty averse to wearing that headband.

He was ok with his stuffed bunny rabbit wearing it though.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving and finds much to be thankful for!

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Weekly Goals, Nov 20 - Nov 26th

2011-11-21T13:41:00.001-08:00

This Week's Goals:

1. ~~Stick to my meal plan. (Think I'll schedule in one day to eat out to help me actually stick to the plan this week.)~~ All but one day, so not bad.

2. ~~Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.~~

3. ~~Continue reading Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Two chapters seemed pretty easy to accomplish, so I think I'll shoot for 4 chapters this week.~~ I finished reading chapter 4 in this book, but have decided it's really not the right book for me. I'll be returning this one and starting on my next book.

4. ~~Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared.~~ (Setting this goal really helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots last week, except for my desk, which is in a constant state of mess right now.)

5. ~~Finish preparing my Tot School worksheets for the month~~ and start working on what we'll do in December.

6. ~~Plan blog posts for next week.~~

7. ~~Prepare things that are needed to do our Thanksgiving crafts.~~ (I got some of this done, but there is still more to do.)

8. Dust the house. (Nope.)

9. ~~Spend time decluttering one area in our home. (My desk perhaps?)~~

10. Work on hemming up pants that are too long for Liam. (I'm just going to use some Stitch Witch on them. I can sew, but I'm lazy about it.) (Didn't even look at them. I'll work on this after the holiday)

This Week's Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes at least 4 days this week.

2. Stick to our meal plan.

3. Deeper clean in the bathroom and kitchen.

4. Keep up FlyLady routine. Keep hot spots cleared. (Setting this goal has helped me keep things from piling up in my hot spots (except my desk) the last few weeks, so I'm leaving it on my goal list.)

5. Two loads of laundry each day this week until I get caught up.

6. Dust one room in the house

7.Start reading 'The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate." - two chapters?

8. Start collating ideas for December Tot School worksheets, crafts and activities.

9. Have a relaxing and Happy Thanksgiving with my husband and little boy.

10. Put up Christmas tree.

Linked up with:

Money Saving Mom

Weekly Meal Plan, Nov 20 - Nov 26

2011-11-21T06:51:00.001-08:00

We did ok with our meal plan last week. Ate out slightly more than I planned, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Taco Bowls
Fire Roasted Tomato and Sausage 'N Ground Turkey Rigatoni (Rachael Ray)
Crockpot Chili
Ham (for Thanksgiving)
Leftovers
Easy Rice and Italian Sausage Casserole

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Need more ideas? Over 300 meal plans each week at Orgjunkie.com.

Tot School: Thanksgiving Part 1

2011-11-20T08:11:00.001-08:00

Liam is 29 months old.

Thanksgiving was our theme for Tot School this week, of course. A big thank you to all the wonderful ladies who put packs together! Most of the worksheets we did came from 2 Teaching Mommies, 1+1+1=1 and Over the Big Moon.

Worksheets:

I had previously mentioned that he didn't like to color in particular, but I realized this week that he will color like a champ if he gets to use markers. So most of our coloring was done using markers this week. We do this type of coloring activity every week since I'm trying to focus on helping him learn his colors. He seems to know all of his colors but red.

We did a couple of these do a dot pages this week. This is one of his favorite activities.

The magnet pages are a new favorite of Liam's since I discovered I could let him use stickers with them.

I really liked this activity that was included in the 2 Teaching Mommies Tot pack. I helped Liam write the letters of his name on the turkeys and then gave him foam stickers to match up next to the letters.

I cut up a ton of puzzles for Liam this week. I think I pretty much used the puzzles from all the packs. Liam enjoys puzzles a lot. This one did seem to confuse him at first since it was lined up horizontally instead of vertically.

Play Activities:

I found this idea for this activity while browsing through the pages of the TGIF link-up. It comes from Our Worldwide Classroom. She gave a great tutorial for what she does, and even included a printable. I knew this was something Liam would enjoy. I didn't download the printable, I just used some scrap construction paper I had and drew the grid lines on it myself, since our stickers seemed exceptionally small.

In retrospect I realize I should have introduced this in tinier steps. It was quite an involved task for him. Especially since he is very new to scissors. What I'd do different in the future is have him do the stickers one day, then cut off one of the strips each day for him to cut apart.

We read 'There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie' this week and afterwards we did this activity which I found on makinglearningfun.com. I seriously love this site. She has so many great activities.

I printed off the Five Little Turkeys poem from the DLTK site, then we did this felt board activity together. I read the poem and each time a turkey waddled off he would take one off the board and count how many were left.

After we did this activity we had a turkey hunt. Liam just loved this and wanted to do it several times in a row. His daddy and I would take turns hiding the turkeys, then Liam would come in and search for them. This was the hands down favorite of the week.

Here he is searching for turkeys.

Yay! He found one.

When he finished collecting the turkeys we'd lay them out and count them together.

I bought him 3 different Thanksgiving themed sticker books. Here he is playing with one of them. He seemed to really like the tee-pees and making a little village with them.

I'll try to remember to come back and link up our crafts post when I get it done this week.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

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