Makes me happy

Thank you to everyone that responded to my last post.  I even met some people that I didn't even know!  I mostly just wanted to get an idea of how many people will be looking for school/homeschool related stuff, and how many people come to just read what we are up to.  Well, I will give it a little while longer, and then I will pick someone for the surprise.

Here are some highlights of the fun/neat things from my week.  First off, I finally decided to buy something from etsy.  One of the blogs that I follow, Chocolate on my cranium, makes all kinds of neat things and sells them in her etsy store.  I've been wanting to buy something for a long time because she makes such wonderful stuff, so I finally took the plunge.  I bought some of these book corners, and crayon rolls for church.  At first I thought I could just make the crayon rolls, but I haven't had the time to figure it out and I'm not very good at sewing.  Besides they weren't very much considering all the time and effort it'd take for me to do it all.  

These are the book corners:

also to be part of my surprise giveaway from the last post

This is the book that I started reading this week.  I love "The Little House on the Prairie" tv series, and have been watching them for the past year or so with my family.  We are on season 4.  So, I decided it was time to really read the books too.  Here is our tattered old copy, I think it used to belong in a school library or something.  I have the next book "The Little House on the Prairie" in a big read aloud version.  It's huge, but will still be fun to read.

This is an "Amish Pennsylvania Dutch" Apple Pie.  I love when people bring over fresh home baked goodies and surprise us.  It was a very nice treat from a friend, and was delicious!

My kids are starting school very soon.  Only 1 week until they start, and I'm very excited for them.  I have mixed feelings about not homeschooling, but I know this is the right thing for us now.  With their different school schedules I didn't want to forget who needed to be where and when, so I made and laminated these cards with all their information for each child to put on the refrigerator.  A good way to have the school phone # handy too.

The personal information was changed for privacy, obviously.

One day we were sitting outside playing with some neighbors and chatting, and they were so excited to help us come up with some names for the baby.  It was fun to hear their ideas and we wrote the best ones down.  Of course, we have to have an 'A' name.  Can you tell we like girl A names a lot?

One last thing that I don't really have a picture for, but I am really excited about!  I finally put my first year of blogging in a book and had it printed this week!  I heard good things about blog2print, so that's the site I used.  I loved how easy it was, not a lot of formatting.  Although my hubby thinks I should have done tons of formatting, but I just didn't have a lot of time.  So, we'll see how it comes out.

That's the exciting stuff from this week.

I really wanna know...

...who is reading my blog.  I am just very curious who visits my blog, and how often.  I lost a lot of my readers when I switched blogs, so I'm just not sure who reads it now.  

So, I would love it if you could just leave a comment and say hi!  It would be even better if you could tell me how often you visit.  I don't know how else to do this, so I'm just asking.  If you leave a comment, thanks, I appreciate it.  I will also do a little give away, and pick one of you from the comments to win a surprise.

Tot school--itty bitty bookworm

Aric is currently 25 months old

Most of our tot school last week consisted of a unit from Itty Bitty Bookworm the book we did was Eric Carle's "10 little rubber ducks".  The kids really liked all the activities, even my 9 year-old always gets involved in the itty-bitty bookworm action.  I just adjust things to make them a little more difficult if needed or she just helps her little brothers, like in this first picture.

Here she is reading 10 little rubber ducks to the boys on the first day.  She is such a great read-aloud because she knows how to change her voice and be silly to keep their attention. 

Then we talked about shapes, and the shape on each of these ducks pictured below.  I handed them a picture and they went through the house to find that shape or something close to it.  They had a lot of fun with this.






Then we used the same duck pictures to play a "duck walk" game.  I played music and when the music stopped if they were on the shape that I picked they won, and yes I gave them a quarter for their "prize".  I think each child ended up winning about 2 quarters.

Another day we made duck pictures with all this stuff:

Aric loved this, and he loves it even more when we get out the dot art painters.

Here is his finished duck!

Another day we made "boats" out of the laundry baskets and pretended to be at sea, and the kids played out different parts of the book:

Another day we made duck foot prints with a spatula, and the kids got to dip their feet to make their foot prints too!  They liked this.

And, finally we had a duck bath with blue water.  The kids got to be in the bath too.  They were amazed how the water changed when the blue was added.

As for non-itty bitty bookworm tot school Aric had some fun with felt squares.  I cut 2 squares of each color and he just had fun putting them up on the felt board.

He didn't quite understand matching them so I just let him play for a while.

Then I matched them up for him so he could see how there were 2 of each color.  We also talked about colors, he knows them pretty well.

Fun school:  He got a new "trainer" bike with no pedals.  He loves this bike!

He used it for a little bit, but still has to get used to it.

For more tot school fun visit 1+1+1=1 and look for tot school.

Makes me happy!

Our primary in the parade!

This is the group of all the children from our church, we were in the county parade!  We teach the children the phrase "choose the right" which is what CTR stands for, so that when hard choices face them they can remember to make the right choices.  So, we all had shirts on with the CTR shield on them and each child had a red yellow or blue shirt because the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.  We have a primary song that's called "our primary colors", and this is what each color stands for:

"Red is for courage to do what is right.

Yellow for service from morning til night.

Blue is for truth in our thought and our deed."

Okay, I just wanted to explain why we were wearing what we are wearing, and what CTR means for those who don't know.  We gave the kids candy and bubbles, and they had a lot of fun throwing the candy out.  It was a hard walk for me, I should have sat on the float because I was very sore and tired the next day!  It was also pretty warm too!

Tot school--starting back up

Aric is 25 months old

I realized recently how much I missed doing tot school, and how much I really LOVE doing it.  Especially with Aric now that he's older!  He is such a smart cookie, and I also realized how much I love teaching my smaller children and all the fun things that can be done with just a few simple activities.  Don't get me wrong, I love teaching the older ones too, but this age is so fun and full of curiosity, wonder, and connections.  We started back with at least 1 activity a day, but as school starts I'd like to work back into doing the tot trays again.

Aaron is not really part of tot school anymore, he's definitely into the preschool phase, but he really liked joining in with Aric's tot activities.

Scooping:  I love this tot activity, and so does Aric.  He and Aaron got a long so well together while doing it I was a little surprised.  And, thankful that the sparkly pompoms stayed pretty well in the bowl.

Here's the spooning...

...but he really liked the tong's the best.


Sorting:  For this activity I knew I wanted him to try out his stacking/nesting blocks, so I had the idea to use his cars with them and make it into a "car garage".  He thought this was pretty fun.  First we stacked the blocks with the open side out.  Then he parked his cars in there.  When cars are involved, this boy loves it!

Here he is sorting...

...and to my surprise he naturally started sorting them by color.  So that led to talking about what colors were in each box.  He caught on and tried intentionally sorting the rest.  Amazing!

Now he's telling me the colors:


Sensory:  Our next activity was playdough.  I wanted to print some playdough mats out, but ran out of time, and couldn't find good ones so I just got some old place mats out.  He did exactly what I was hoping for.  He picked pieces apart to cover parts of the pictures up.

Here he is covering James and percy up with blue playdough.  I also love his cute little hands and fine motor movements in these pictures.  I realized recently that I don't get enough pictures of my kids' hands working things and doing things.  So priceless.

Then he started covering up the letters of the alphabet with playdough so I would tell him the letter as he was working on covering it up.  What a great way to learn his letters, and he really enjoyed this.  I have to say that he's pretty interested in the alphabet right now.  He is starting to notice letters everywhere.  This is very exciting!

Here he has covered a lot more letters, he lasted quite a while on this.  But, at this point he was almost done.


 fine motor: Aric absolutely loves the automoblox, and it had been a while since we got them out so I got those out for our next tot activity.  He could take the wheels off, but needed my help getting the wheels back on.  He also did not like mixing the colors up, and got very upset when I put different colors together to make a different kind of car.

He mostly just liked pushing them around.


Learning toys:  He has really showed an interest in puzzles so I picked up this set of 4 wooden construction puzzles, and boy he didn't let those go until we came home.  First I helped him complete all 4 so he could see how they went together.

Then, I let him try to figure out how to get them together, and tried not to say anything or suggest any different pieces.  This is mostly what he would do.  A few times he would find the right pieces to put together.

But, mostly this is what he did.  Look at those cute little fingers!


Mom's favorite:  Daddy painted his dump truck blue, and he loves it!  He pushes it all over the place, and puts everything in and out of it.  Not nearly as cool as it was when it was yellow.  As a side note, his sister has hers painted pink, and he wouldn't leave hers alone, so that's the story as to how his ended up blue.

I thought it was so cute how he was wearing the same color blue pj's and he was trying to ride his truck.

Can you believe they don't sell this style truck anymore?  We want to get one more in this style for Aaron and paint it for him too.

For more tot school fun go visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1
click on the tot school thumbnail to go straight to tot school.