TTFN- ta ta for now

I have so many things that I want to share on here, but I will not be posting for a while. I dont know how long, but it will be a while. Blogging has become a chore and that is not what I want this to be. I love the acceptance that you all have made me feel and enthusiasm for the things that I have posted. My enthusiasm for posting has waned lately and that has been reflected in the lesser comments that I've gotten. I have tried and tried to cut down what I put on here and how much time I spend looking at other's blogs, but it's just not enough. My focus needs to be in other places that need attention. I've found my brain is in overdrive all day thinking about what I can post about next and what activities I can do that would appeal to people. I'm just way too stressed out! This blog has served it's purpose in helping M&M and I during the transition from the two of us being at home alone all day, to three of us at home when Bubba was born.

I started this blog to share ideas with other mothers out there, but I've found that the things I am sharing are things that can be found elsewhere. I'm not going to delete my blog so you can still find lots of wonderful links to other bloggers who are defintely a lot more interesting than me! haha!

Well, goodbye for now and thank you all for the kind comments and for sharing the things that you know to help those struggling mothers out there like me. :)

Egg twist letter matching surpise

I love all of the fun activities that you can make with plastic Easter eggs. There are so many out there on the web right now. I found this one last year and have been waiting to do it for a long time. I found it on Eager Little Mind. I got a big bag of plastic Easter eggs, counted out 26 and wrote each uppercase letter on one side of the egg. On the other side I wrote 5-6 different lowercase letters. The object is to twist the egg and match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter. As an added bonus I found little toys, etc. to put in each one that start with that certain letter. They can open it and see what is inside after they've matched the letters. It would be ideal to have something that would actually lock until they matched the letters, but oh well, life isn't suppose to be ideal, right? :)

Tube fun

I was reading a book somewhere a while ago where I found the idea for this activity. I don't know what to call it, but the only supplies are a cardboard tube, small balls and cars, and a couch/chair/small table. I already had a tube from who knows where, but the hole was kind of small so I had to find little balls and cars that could fit through it. I leaned the tube up against the couch and showed Bubba where to put the things in the top so they would roll down.

M&M and Bubba had a great time. M&M learned a lot about taking turns which she has had to learn a lot lately as Bubba gets older and wants to do more things with her. I loved this activity because both kids could do it, it used simple materials and the kids could do it on their own!

Doodlepro discovery

One day as M&M and I were doing some activities with these vegetable and fruit cards from Homeschool Creations. All of the sudden M&M had to run and get her Doodlepro thing so that she could draw the pictures. She started off drawing them herself like with this broccoli:

Then she discovered that she could trace over the picture and it would still show up on the Doodlepro! She's really into tracing right now and this was a great alternative to using paper and pencil.

Her blueberries:

Springtime

Sorry I've been MIA for a little bit. Springtime weather has been too irresistible. We've been enjoying ourselves outside doing this:

And looking at these:

I'll be back soon with some more posts of things we've been up to. In the meantime check out the header that I created! I'm really excited about learning how to do things like that in Photoshop.

Back to Basics

I've been thinking a lot lately about this blog. I started this blog almost a year ago, and most of the focus has been on the learning activities I do with M&M, my almost 4 year old. At that time she was almost 3 and I felt the need to spend more time with her during the day on a one-on-one basis. Especially since I just had our second child a few months before, M&M was feeling a little left out and having a hard time adjusting to our new life with a baby. Doing these things with her have made awesome improvements in her development. She surprises me everyday with what she knows. Just in the past few weeks I have seen major changes in her behaviorally. Ever since she was a baby she would just scream....a lot! It has been difficult to know the best way to handle situations and what discipline would work best for her. She is a VERY stubborn child. While I would see other kids her age have a tantrum for a few minutes and get over it she is the one that would hang onto it for hours it seemed like. For three and a half years I've struggled with this and still do, but lately M&M is becoming more and more independent in a positive way. She is listening to what we ask her to do and doing it without tantrums. I've been surprised many times when I ask her to do something and then brace myself for the screaming. All I heard is "Ok, mommy." What?! That's it!? Wow!

It's funny because my baby, who is 14 months old now, used to be the "easy" child. Now him and M&M have almost done a role reversal. It's like they got together one day and made a pact where M&M told Bubba that she has been challenging enough for us, her parents, in her youngest years. She has taught us all we needed to learn in the past 4 years. Now it's his turn to challenge us in another way so that we can learn something else that will help us grow as parents. Now, he's the one screaming. And running away from us. M&M was always attached to us and she would stay near us at church, the park, whereever we went. Bubba just runs...far...away as fast as he can. Maybe what he's trying to teach us is that we need to get into shape so that we can run after him for the next 4 years!

With all of that said, my point is that I don't see the need for doing Tot School and Tot School posts on a weekly basis. This is not to say that I won't be doing learning activities with M&M, because I will, but I'm not going to really plan anything, but rather follow her lead in what she wants to do. She's really into writing and drawing anything right now. I will definitely be doing arts and crafts with her, and as it warms up we will be playing outside,  A LOT! I'll post about some of the things we do, but not all of them.

Back in April of last year I wrote this post. The last paragraph says, "My major in college was Home and Family Living. One of the main things that stood out to me in my classes was how to turn everyday, monotonous activities of taking care of the home and family into joyful experiences that we can treasure and remember forever. I want to take the activities of feeding, clothing, cleaning, etc. to the next level. I am at the point in my life where I am just starting to learn and begin to understand how to effectively run a home. This blog will follow me on my journey step-by-step as I try to better my own home through experimenting with new ideas from teaching my children to trying out new recipes."  

This is what I want to get back to. Writing short posts about things that I learn that have made my life easier or helped me learn something new in regards to my home. I will also be dabbling into my interests of sewing, crafts, blog design, photography and organization to name a few. I know, I am interested in way too many things! Along with this you will see that I will probably never do a giveaway or a review. Not that I don't like these things, but I started this blog solely to share and learn ideas., and to meet different people with these same interests. I'm also hoping that my sister/sisters will want to add some of the things that they know because they are much more crafty and organized than I am. ;) hint hint

I am in the process of creating my own blog background and header, but it's taking a while because I am learning everything new and having to read all of these tutorials to understand how to do anything. I'm really excited about learning this though! 

So if you made it through this, I hope you're as excited about these changes as I am!

Tot School-Letters X&Y

M&M is 44 months old

Continuing on with our letter of the week activities, we did two this week. X and Y. I decided to combine these because I didn't have a lot of activities for either one. For the letter Y we did an all out search of the house for everything that was yellow. M&M was totally into this and wanted to get every single little thing that had even a speck of yellow on it. I've seen this color hunt on several blogs.
Then we did yarn art. This activity came from Childcareland. M&M just dipped pieces of yarn into glue on a paper plate then stuck it any which way on the paper. I think it turned out kinda cool looking. 

 

  

For the letter X we did a few worksheets that I printed out. One was about words that ended in X instead of beginning.  M&M traced the words. I left for a second while she was doing this and when I came back she had started writing the words again on her own. This one came from Kidzone.We also did this one and this one from the same website. From DLTK M&M colored this X-ray picture. The interesting thing about this one was when she started coloring the vertebrae she did it in a pattern. She continued doing this when she colored in between the ribs. She did this all on her own as well. She never ceases to amaze me with all that she is learning.

  

  M&M also colored this xylophone picture from ABCTeach.

 

Bubba made up his own fun with spilling the cotton balls out of the bag and pulling them apart. Apparently he needed some sensory work to do.  :) 

 That's it! We are really keeping things simple lately. I've noticed that when I try to do a lot and it stresses me out that we really don't have a lot of fun and that is the whole idea. I'm trying to work up a stash of things for M&M to do because she is asking every day now when she can do "mommy's activities." I just print off a bunch of things for her to color or trace or connect the dots that I can easily pull out when she wants something to do.

Oops!

I just got onto my e-mail to see that people have been telling me that there is a problem with my comment section. I will work on that, although I'm not sure what to do...
Something must have happened when I changed the template. Mmm. You can e-mail me though through my profile page now. :) Thanks for letting me know!

Yay!

My Christmas present got here just in time for my birthday! On Christmas morning my hubby gave me three options for my big Christmas present, but it has taken me this long to figure out what I want... and to order it... and for it to arrive in the mail.

I decided to get a laminator. This laminator more specifically. I have a pile of things to laminate and it has been bugging me for a while that I have not done it yet. Call me crazy, but I am so looking forward to laminating stuff today. I could not think of a better way to make myself happy on my birthday...okay, I guess I could think of something better, but this is right up there! lol!

A One Stop Spot

On a whim I've decided to change the look of my blog. Not that I didn't like the old look, but I just needed a change. With the new additions to blogger it makes it a lot easier to change back and forth. If this one doesn't work out I can easily change back. I didn't lose any of my widgets when I changed and now they have static pages that show up as a navigation bar. I'm thinking since I have so many links to sites on the sidebar that I would just create static pages for each category. I have all of these on here because I am interested in so many different things and love to see the ideas people come up with. It's mostly for my sake so that I can have a one stop spot to look at the title of a new post and see if it's something I want to read about. I also hope that if someone comes to my blog and they are looking for ideas about a certain subject they can go to that page and have access to many different links and they can search from there. One of my favorite things to do is blog surf and find new sites with great ideas. Basically I do all of the work looking for great sites, link to them, and then you can just come here and have access to all of them with a few clicks! A one stop spot!

(It might take me a little while to get them all changed over to static pages so bear with me.)

Tot School

M&M is currently 44 months old

We didn't do a letter this week, but just some fun Valentine's activities. Our main project was making recycled crayon hearts. These are all over the mommy blogosphere so they aren't a new idea by any means, but they are definitely new to us! I've actually been wanting to do recycled crayons since I first saw them last spring. Yeah, it takes me that long to do stuff sometimes. M&M helped me arrange the crayons in the silicone heart pan that I got in the Target $1 spot. I put them in the oven at 250 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. Then stuck them in the freezer for a little bit. I made these for M&M to give away so I also cut out some hearts out of sandpaper to give with it to do rubbings with. 

 

  

We also made heart flowers out of construction paper. This idea came from Lucky Me. We stuck green pipe cleaners through three hearts, put either a bead or a button through and then folded it over so it wouldn't come off. For the vase M&M put stickers on a piece of paper that I cut to the size of a toilet paper roll then we glued it onto the roll. It is glued onto a square piece of paper to keep the little rocks in the bottom that we put in to keep it from falling over. It turned out really cute.

  

We practiced counting and fine motor skills with this activity from Tired, Need Sleep. M&M clipped a clothespin onto the right number of hearts on the card.  I found two other Valentine counting cards at Confessions of a Homeschooler and Little Did I Know.

  

I've been waiting to get these little tin mailboxes from the Target $1 spot ever since I saw someone post about them last year at about this time. I got four of them to use for an activity. (The decorated one was also used for M&M to take to preschool to exchange Valentine's this week.) I taped a little piece of paper with a shape onto the front of each of them. Then I made 4-5 cards with the same shape on them to put in a bag for her. First I had M&M find a "home" for each shape. She put each in a different room of the house. Then she would take a card out of her bag, see what shape it was and deliver it to the right box. We have a lot of tile in our house so she rode her bike around to each room. She had a lot of fun with this. She was done after delivering about half of the "letters". I probably put too many in her bag to deliver with the hopes of keeping her busy for a longer period of time.  This is a really adaptable activity that can be used for the alphabet, colors, sight words, etc. 

 

I caught M&M and Bubba playing the drums (and the step stool) in the hallway. We use a formula can for our drum. It works great! Bubba is really starting to do lots of stuff and it's exciting to see him grow and learn new things. My house is never clean now because he is always into one cabinet or drawer tearing it apart. *Sigh*

 

M&M started a dance class on Saturday and she loves it. She followed instruction really well and could imitate what the teacher did, better than the other kids who have been there longer than her.  

We had quite the phenomenom where we live this past week. It snowed all day on Thursday. This is from a place where it never snows. My husband put a ruler in it Friday morning and it came up to 10 inches! I grew up in a place where it snowed all winter so this was a fun thing for me to be able to share that part of my childhood with my kids. We built a snowman and went sledding on big tupperware bin lids!

We used the bottom part of the bin to tow Bubba around in the snow so he wouldn't just keep falling down in it and getting frozen.

Tot School - Letter H

M&M is 43 months old

I planned doing the letter H this week so that we could do a lot of stuff with hearts for Valentine's Day.

H is for holes. We started out doing some other activities first though. I gave M&M a hole punch so she could make holes in paper. It ended up being to hard for her so I gave her some scrapbooking scissors to cut the paper with. She absolutely loves cutting right now. This idea came from Delightful Learning.

H is for house. I had printed out this piece of paper a long time ago to use for the letter H, but it doesn't have a website address or anything on it so I don't know where it came from. If it looks familiar let me know. Basically M&M went around the house counting the windows, doors, chairs, etc. and then she came back and reported it to me and I added them up for her.

H is for hammer. I found these foam puzzles at the Dollar Tree and loved that they had the lowercase letters. That's what we need to focus on right now because M&M has her uppercase letters down. She used a hammer to pound them in. We've done this before, but the original idea came from 1+1+1=1. (Can't find the exact post.)

 H is for Hearts.
 I also had this Do-A Dot heart sheet printed out from Childcareland.com.

Since M&M loves cutting so much I knew I had to give her some hearts to cut out on her own. This idea came from Chasing Cheerios.

I found these cute Valentine's Day/Heart worksheets at Super Simple Songs.

I finally found one of these platters at the Dollar Tree. I had been looking in the wrong sections. Anyway we used it to do a simple color sorting activity with conversation hearts.

M&M used tongs to transfer the pom poms to the heart-shaped ice cube tray. 

 

I usually try to do some alphabet, number, and sensory activities as well. This week she worked on her Melissa and Doug See and Spell.

 

I found this great idea on The Shafer Family of how to separate the letters so they are easier to find. These are little wooden shelves from the Dollar Tree which these Melissa and Doug uppercase and lowercase letters fit perfectly into. I want to make some cards with names of people and things so she can start spelling those out and learning them.

  

These magnetic foam letters and numbers were in the $1 section in Target and after I popped them out I just couldn't bear the thought of throwing the other part away. (That is what has happened to me since I started blogging and reading other people's blogs. I'm very conscious of what I am about to throw away and think twice about what I could do with it.)  

So...I decided to use them as stencils. M&M hasn't tried them out yet but she loves to use other stencils we have so these will be a great addition.

  

I've been meaning to get this activity out for a while to add to M&M's sensory tub play. I put black beans in this plastic gumball machine and she played with it for half an hour by herself letting them spill out and then scooping them back in. This idea came from All About the Journey. I got this gumball machine at Walmart for $7.50, but then I saw smaller ones which would work at the Dollar Tree.     

  

This is another thing that I have had printed out and laminated for a while, but just found it again recently and decided that M&M is ready for it. These beginning consonant cards came from Homeschool Creations. There are also a ton of other free printables on the left side of the blog. We didn't finish all of them in one sitting, I didn't want to overwhelm M&M, but this is still a challenge for her which is really good because a lot of the things I give her to do are really easy for her, but she stills love to do them. 

Yet another one that I've had ready for a while, but just needed to bring it out for M&M to do. I got these letter building templates from Tired, Need Sleep. I love these because I've always seen the How to Build an A book and really wanted to get it, but I couldn't get myself to buy it yet. This is free if you already have foam sheets!

 

We used Do-A Dots to do these letter recognition pages, A-F, from PreKinders. Like I said, I'm really into anything right now that helps M&M learn the lowercase letters.  I saw somewhere after we had done these to use transparent colored discs to cover up the letters instead so they can be reusable.

  

I tried a water transfer activity using a dropper with M&M a while back, but she couldn't quite do it yet. I brought it out again and she can do it now.

Whew! We had quite a full week this week which is good because we haven't been able to do that for a while. It felt good.

Find more Tot School ideas at 1+1+1=1.

Winter theme ideas

I've decided that since I don't get to every fun idea that I want to do for a certain theme that I would still post about them with links. I use Evernote to store all of my ideas and I have TONS of stuff on there that I might never get to, but I would still like to share it with those that would like more ideas. I might make this a regular thing, but we'll see. I guess you could say it's kind of like a round-up. I really like the blog One Pretty Thing and how it is just a bunch of ideas from other blogs.

I won't have any pictures because I don't know exactly how to go about using other people's pictures on my blog and I definitely don't want to do anything that would go against copyright laws, etc. So here's just a list of winter themed ideas.

Cute Marshmallow Snowmen from Frugal Family Fun blog.

Hot Chocolate on a Stick from Giver's Log.

January Ornaments from Home Sweet Home.

Snowflake Building Activity from my Montessori Journey and Making Learning Fun.

There are tons of snowman and winter-themed printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Popsicle Stick Sled Ornament from The Creative Crate.

Snowman Treats from Little Inspirations.

For a winter-themed party there are cute ideas on Little Inspirations.

Lucky Me has some kid's craft ideas like this cute snowman.

These might be a little late for this year, but if you're like me you can save it for next year! I hope I got all of the links correct, if not let me know.

Receipt organizer

I absolutely despise little pieces of paper piling up on my desk, kitchen counter, and kitchen table. I have tried many things to keep them contained, but nothing has worked yet. A lot of times these are necessary papers like receipts and coupons that I need to keep. I recently came across a tutorial for a VERY simple solution. This envelope organizer pictured below will hopefully save my sanity! Basically you lick (or take off the paper like I did) to moisten the sticky stuff and stick it onto the back of the one above it. Make sense? If you are like me and need a little bit more explanation than that because your afraid to do something wrong even on something as simple as this, then click on the link to go to the tutorial. I like mine even better though because the envelopes are straight across so you can not see what is in them at all.

Snickerdoodle Chex Mix

We made this very tasty snack today that we found on the back of the Cinnamon Chex box. I also found it on the Chex website.

Snickerdoodle Chex Mix
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 cups Cinnamon Chex cereal
2 cups Chocolate Chex cereal
4 cups popped popcorn
1/4 cup butter or margarine

1. In small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon; set aside. In large microwavable bowl, mix cereals and popcorn.
2. In 1-cup microwavable measuring cup, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Pour over cereal mixture, stirring until evenly coated.
3. Microwave uncovered on High 2 minutes, stirring after 1 minute. Sprinkle half of the sugar mixture evenly over cereal mixture; stir. Sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture; stir. Microwave 1 minute longer. Spread on waxed paper or paper towels to cool. Store in airtight container.

I couldn't find the Chocolate Chex so I used Chocolate Cheerios. This is a really yummy snack and I keep grabbing handfuls from the counter....I think it's cool enough now to store away so I don't keep eating it! I just have to keep telling myself it's for the kids!