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.